DETAILED ACTION
This office action is in response to the application filed on 04/11/2025. Claims 1-19 are pending and are examined.
Priority
Applicant’s benefit claim is hereby acknowledged of the U.S patent application No. 18/442,883, filed on 02/15/2024, which is a continuation of the U.S patent application No. 18/369,936, filed on 09/19/2023, which is a continuation of the U.S patent application No. 18/095,754, filed on 01/11/2023, which claims benefit of the provisional application No. 63/298,434, filed on 01/11/2022, which papers have been placed on record in the file.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 04/14/2025 was filed. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the "right to exclude" granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The filing of a terminal disclaimer by itself is not a complete reply to a nonstatutory double patenting (NSDP) rejection. A complete reply requires that the terminal disclaimer be accompanied by a reply requesting reconsideration of the prior Office action. Even where the NSDP rejection is provisional the reply must be complete. See MPEP § 804, subsection I.B.1. For a reply to a non-final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.111(a). For a reply to final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.113(c). A request for reconsideration while not provided for in 37 CFR 1.113(c) may be filed after final for consideration. See MPEP §§ 706.07(e) and 714.13.
Claims 1-19 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over both claims 1-20 of any patents granted on application No. 18/442,883 and claims 1-19 of any patents granted on application No. 18/369,936. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because they are both claiming a common subject matter. “At cybersecurity service, identifying a security event, determining a severity threat of the security event and executing a threat mitigation action or an event disposal action based on the threat severity of the security event.”.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 10-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because they claim “A computer-implemented system comprising: at a cybersecurity event detection and response service” with respect to claim 10, without excluding a software per se.
Regarding claim 10, it claims “A computer-implemented system comprising: at a cybersecurity event detection and response service”. The claim is a software per se, since there is no record showing that the term "system” is limited to only a combination of software and hardware either in the claims or in the specification.
Claims 11-14 are dependent to claim 10 and therefore, they are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-9 and 15-19 would be allowable, should applicant overcome the Non-Statutory Double Patenting rejection, set forth in this office action.
Claims 10-14 would be allowable with a terminal disclaimer or rewritten to overcome the Non-Statutory Double Patenting rejection also should Applicant overcome the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101, set forth in this office action.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for identifying allowable subject matter.
The closest prior arts made of records are, Chapman et al. (U.S Pub No. 2023/0004650 A1, referred to as Chapman), Ahuja et al. (U.S Patent No. 9,716,617, referred to as Ahuja) and Nedbal et al. (U.S Pub No. 2021/0126948, referred to as Nedbal).
Chapman discloses a method to enable a security risk manager embedded in an application to manage security vulnerabilities of the application. More specifically, the application comprises code entities such as components, packages, libraries, or microservices. The entities are modified as part of the application development process to have an enabled state, in which these entities are permitted to run normally when called, and a disabled state, in which these entities do not run when called but instead perform a back-out behavior such as generating an error message.
Ahuja discloses system, methods used to monitor network traffic of a datacenter and report security threats are described. For example, one embodiment scales out a hierarchy of microservices in a security system. In particular, the embodiment calls for scaling out a hierarchy of microservices in such a security system, creating a new microservice of a first hierarchy, configuring data plane connectivity between the new microservice and a microservice of a second, higher-level hierarchy; configuring data plane connectivity between the new microservice and a microservice of a third, lower-level hierarchy; and configuring the microservices of the third level of hierarchy to include the new microservice in load balancing decisions to the first hierarchy.
Nedbal discloses systems, methods to enable one or more security microservices to optimize a security configuration of a networked environment by applying security policies to resource groups passively to determine whether network sets, resource groups, or security policies should be modified, prior to active enforcement. When security policies are applied passively, security actions that are performed in response to a violation of security policy do not impact network traffic.
However, regarding claim 1, the prior art of Chapman, Ahuja and Nedbal when taken in the context of the claim as a whole do not disclose nor suggest, “identifying, via one or more processors, a security event associated with a subscribing entity; automatically determining, via the one or more processors, a context-informed threat severity of the security event using (a) one or more context-informed event handling instructions of the cybersecurity event detection and response service and (b) a corpus of computing environment data of the subscribing entity; displaying the security event in association with the context-informed threat severity on a contextual intelligence graphical user interface; and executing a threat mitigation action or an event disposal action for the security event based on an assessment of the contextual intelligence graphical user interface.”.
Regarding claim 10, the prior art of Chapman, Ahuja and Nedbal when taken in the context of the claim as a whole do not disclose nor suggest,” assessing the first security event against (a) one or more context-informed event handling instructions and (b) a corpus of environment data corresponding to the subscribing entity associated with the first security event; based on the assessing, associating one of: (i) a context-informed threat severity to the first security event using at least one of the one or more context-informed event handling instructions when at least one piece of event data of the plurality of distinct pieces of event data of the first security event is equivalent to a subject piece of data included within the corpus of environment data, and (ii) a subscriber-agnostic threat severity to the first security event when each piece of event data of the plurality of distinct pieces of event data of the first security event is excluded from the corpus of environment data; displaying, on a security threat mitigation user interface, the first security event in association with the context-informed threat severity of the first security event; and executing a threat mitigation action or an event disposal action for the first security event based on data included in the security threat mitigation user interface.”.
Regarding claim 15, the prior art of Chapman, Ahuja and Nedbal when taken in the context of the claim as a whole do not disclose nor suggest, “automatically assessing the security event against (i) one or more event handling instructions of the event detection and response service and (ii) a corpus of environment data corresponding to the subscribing entity associated with the security event; displaying the security event, on a contextual intelligence graphical user interface, wherein the security event includes information pertaining to at least a threat severity of the security event and the plurality of distinct pieces of event data; and executing a threat mitigation task or an event disposal task for the security event based on an assessment of the contextual intelligence graphical user interface.”.
Claims 2-9 depends on claim 1 and claims 11-14 depend on claim 10 and claims 16-19 depend on claim 15 and are of consequence identified as allowable.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: See PTO-892.
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/HASSAN SAADOUN/Examiner, Art Unit 2435
/AMIR MEHRMANESH/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2435
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