DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application is being examined under the pre-AIA first to invent provisions.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-18 have been examined.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-4, 6-13 and 15-18 are rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Dewan (US 20140157410) in view of Johnson (US 20120163589).
With respect to claims 1 and 10 Dewan discloses:
receiving, by the secure zone, information pertaining to code that is executable on one or more secure processors within the secure zone via the interface (See paragraph 0027-0028 and Fig 3);
determining, by the secure zone, whether requirements are fulfilled for the code (See paragraph 0028 i.e. identifies it as protected content);
if the requirements are fulfilled, loading, by the secure zone, the code into the one or more instruction memories located within the secure zone (See paragraph 0028 and Fig 3);
causing, by the secure zone, the secure processor to execute the code that has been loaded into the one or more instruction memories located within the secure zone (See paragraph 0028 and Fig 3).
Dewan further discloses: cleans the hardware state (see paragraph 0029) Dewan does not explicitly disclose: clearing and/or pre-filling, by the secure zone, the one or more data memories located within the secure zone. Johnson discloses: clearing and/or pre-filling, by the secure zone, the one or more data memories located within the secure zone (See paragraph 0055). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skills in the art at the time invention was filed to modify the Dewan reference with Johnson reference in order to provide extra data security.
With respect to claims 2 and 11 Dewan in view of Johnson discloses all the limitations as describe above. Dewan further discloses: wherein the secure zone further includes one or more cryptographic engines configured to implement one or more cryptographic algorithms (See paragraph 0014).
With respect to claims 3 and 12 Dewan in view of Johnson discloses all the limitations as describe above. Johnson further discloses: wherein the secure zone is further configured to control one or more indicators that are used to indicate security modes of the electronic device (See paragraph 0079). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skills in the art at the time invention was filed to modify the Dewan reference with Johnson reference in order to provide extra data security.
With respect to claims 4 and 13 Dewan in view of Johnson discloses all the limitations as describe above. Dewan further discloses: wherein the secure zone is further configured to control one or more peripherals within the electronic device (See paragraph 0040 and 0044-0045).
With respect to claims 6 and 15 Dewan in view of Johnson discloses all the limitations as describe above. Dewan further discloses: wherein the supervisor is configured to control access to components of the secure zone (See paragraph 0028-0030) Additionally, Johnson (paragraph 0086).
With respect to claims 7 and 16 Dewan in view of Johnson discloses all the limitations as describe above. Dewan further discloses: wherein the supervisor is configured to enforce operational rules of the secure zone so as to provide security assurances to a user (See paragraph 0028-0030).
With respect to claims 8 and 17 Dewan in view of Johnson discloses all the limitations as describe above. Dewan further discloses: wherein the non-secure zone comprises an operating system and one or more applications (See paragraph 0019 and 0031).
With respect to claims 9 and 18 Dewan in view of Johnson discloses all the limitations as describe above. Dewan further discloses: wherein the non-secure zone is configured to provide one or more of messages, codes or tasks to the secure zone (See paragraph 0027).
Claims 5 and 14 are rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Dewan (US 20140157410) in view of Johnson (US 20120163589) and in further view of Bates (US 6634020).
With respect to claims 5 and 16 Dewan in view of Johnson discloses all the limitations as describe above. Dewan in view of Johnson does not explicitly disclose: provide visual feedback to a user regarding an origin of the loaded code. Bates discloses: provide visual feedback to a user regarding an origin of the loaded code (See column 4 lines 43-49 and claim 31). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skills in the art at the time invention was filed to modify the combination of Dewan and Johnson references with Bates reference in order to facilitate debugging of computer program (Bates column 3 lines 7-11).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZESHAN QAYYUM whose telephone number is (571)270-3323. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9:00AM-6:00PM EST.
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/ZESHAN QAYYUM/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3697