DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
The claim set, filed on 4/21/2025, is acknowledged and considered.
Claims 1 and 15 are independent. Claims 1-28 are pending.
Priority
The present application has relationship to:
PRO 62535263, filing date 7/21/2017
CON 16040604, filing date 7/20/2018
CON 17818441, filing date 8/9/2022
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 12/1/2025, 4/6/2026, 8/21/2026 was filed after the mailing date of the claims on 4/21/2025. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(d):
(d) REFERENCE IN DEPENDENT FORMS.—Subject to subsection (e), a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, fourth paragraph:
Subject to the following paragraph [i.e., the fifth paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112], a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
Claims 25 and 28 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(d) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, 4th paragraph, as being of improper dependent form for failing to further limit the subject matter of the claim upon which it depends, or for failing to include all the limitations of the claim upon which it depends. Claims 25 and 28 recites “the system…further comprising”, which is improper dependent claims because the parent claim is directed to a system whereas the dependent claims are further comprising method steps. As such, claims 25 and 28 are drawn to two different categories of invention. A suggestion for amending the claims to recite ‘further configured to’. Applicant may cancel the claim(s), amend the claim(s) to place the claim(s) in proper dependent form, rewrite the claim(s) in independent form, or present a sufficient showing that the dependent claim(s) complies with the statutory requirements.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1-28 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Link [US 20170006034] in view of Lawson, et al. [US 20140044123].
As per claim 1: Link, et al. teaches a method for providing secure communication between secured and unsecured devices, the method comprising:
receiving, at a proxy service via a secure connection, a connection request from a client on a subscriber device [Link: para 0015; the remote wireless device initiates an outgoing connection to the requesting server. Para 0119; added software supporting the capability of securely monitoring for specific incoming connections from a PASS platform], the connection request including a node address for a target publisher device; [Link: para 0022; When the WWAN connected device is connecting to the internet, the GGSN/PGW firewall translates the device access to the Internet in much the same way as one's home Digital Subscriber Line (“DSL”) or Cable router translates the addresses for the personal computers in a home network]
connecting, via an unsecure connection, the proxy service to the target publisher device; [Link: para 0110-0112; a publish-subscribe platform perform the role of a PASS to interface between the Internet or the private network external to the carrier SGi or Gi Interface established on the CXI side of the PGW or GGSN. This specific CXI connects to a specific and designated APN for the designated services. A Publish-Subscribe communications architecture allows a UE to connect to a bus, broker, or to a device in a point-to-point topology. Para 0119; allowing wireless USB modem to enable otherwise insecure and unconnected devices to connect to and share data with other computers, platforms, application servers, and end-users over the WWAN]
establishing a bridge between the subscriber device and the target publisher device via the proxy service; [Link: para 0113; the subscriber is a peer and the connection is initiated from the intermediary message broker. A bridge between the subscriber and the publisher may broadly be in the form of a middleman or intermediary entity that can establish communication or connection to each other]
utilizing a proxy channel over the bridge to negotiate a connection [**rejected under a secondary reference, discussion below] between the subscriber device; and [Link: para 0120; when a decision is made, or action occurs, at an initiating device having a network connection to a public network to request an action by a device having a network connection to a private communication network. An application running on the initiating device/application server generates a request message to be sent to the private-connected device, which may be a UE connected to a wireless communication network and wherein the UE connected to the wireless network has a network connection]
exchanging data between the subscriber device and the publisher device over the connection. [Link: para 0116; interested ‘subscribers’, such as UE devices, based on security credentials received from the initiating device/publisher]
Link teaches when a decision is made, or action occurs, at an initiating device having a network connection to a public network to request an action by a device having a network connection to a private communication network. An application running on the initiating device/application server generates a request message to be sent to the private-connected device, which may be a UE connected to a wireless communication network and wherein the UE connected to the wireless network has a network connection [Link: para 0120-0122]. Thus, Link suggest negotiating a connection between the subscriber device. However, Link does not clearly teach “utilizing a proxy channel over the bridge to negotiate a connection between the subscriber device”.
Lawson teaches receiving an incoming communication request at the system bridge, functions to accept a communication from an outside entity directed to a client. A cloud-based communication router preferably initially receives/initiates the incoming communication [Lawson: para 0035]. Link obviously suggest “utilizing a proxy channel over the bridge to negotiate a connection”, by the method of making inbound calls directed at the client allows a client application to establish a signaling channel, then for an outside calling entity (e.g., an application, a PSTN device, a SIP device and the like) to initiate a communication request, subsequently a signaling channel and a media channel are established between a system bridge and the calling entity (or a proxy of the calling entity), a media channel is established between the system bridge and the client application, and then the signaling and media channels are merged as shown in FIG. 27 [Lawson: para 0074]. As such, motivation would be to accept a communication and facilitate connection from an outside entity.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Lawson with Link to teach “utilizing a proxy channel over the bridge to negotiate a connection” for the reason to provide communication and facilitate connection from an outside entity [Lawson: para 0035].
Claim 2: Link: para 0081; discussing the method of claim 1, wherein the proxy service is implemented on a stream manager server configured with a domain name and an Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate.
Claim 3: Link: para 0091; discussing the method of claim 2, wherein the stream manager is implemented on a cloud infrastructure.
Claim 4: Link: para 0048-0050, Fig.19 [suggest session setup information using interactive establishment technique, by network data session is established and establish a connection between a public-internet-connected initiator device and a private-network connected UE device based on information corresponding to the initiator device] in view of Lawson: para 0074 [suggesting “establishing the bridge”, under the same pretext and motivation as in claim 1]; discussing the method of claim 1, wherein the establishing the bridge comprises negotiating session setup information between the subscriber device and the publisher device using an Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) technique.
Claim 5: Link: para 0086, 0119 [insecure connection] in view of Lawson: para 0034, 0038 [suggesting “WebSocket secure (WSS) secure connection”, under the same pretext and motivation as in claim 1]; discussing the method of claim 1, wherein the bridge comprises: the connection between the subscriber device and the proxy service uses a WebSocket secure (WSS) secure connection or a Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) connection; and the connection between the publisher device and the proxy service uses a WebSocket (WS) unsecure connection or a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) connection.
Claim 6: Link: para 0086, 0119; discussing the method of claim 1, wherein the bridge enables secure data to flow from a secure subscriber device to an unsecure publisher device.
Claim 7: Link: para 0086; discussing the method of claim 1, wherein the subscriber device connects to the proxy service from a web browser client.
Claim 8: Link: para 0067, 0115; discussing the method of claim 1, wherein the publisher device is a media server without a domain or SSL certificate and is configured to broadcast multimedia to connected subscriber devices.
Claim 9: Link: para 0072; discussing the method of claim 1, wherein: the connection is a direct connection between the subscriber device and the publisher device or the connection is a Network Address Translation (NAT) connection; and the connection is configured to exchange multimedia data between the subscriber device and the publisher device.
Claim 10: Link: para 0025 in view of Lawson: para 0074 [suggesting “keep the bridge open”, under the same pretext and motivation as in claim 1]; discussing the method of claim 1, wherein the proxy service is configured to keep the bridge open during the exchange of the multimedia data between the subscriber device and the publisher device using a pinger mechanism.
Claim 11: Link: para 0072, 0098 [a network “filter-router” of the PASS examines the destination IP address of the packet to determine if the IP address is one which is a member of the initiating IP station's group and if not, the packet is dropped, suggest load balancing] in view of Lawson: para 0063-0064 [suggesting “load balancer”, under the same pretext and motivation as in claim 1]; discussing the method of claim 1, further comprising balancing load between subscriber devices and publisher devices with a load balancer.
Claim 12: Link: para 0116 in view of Lawson: para 0003, 0071 [suggesting “WebRTC”, under the same pretext and motivation as in claim 1]; discussing the method of claim 1, wherein the proxy service provides WebRTC information exchange between the secured and unsecured devices for efficiency and reliability.
Claim 13: Link: para 0082 in view of Lawson: para 0034, 0071 [suggesting “streaming clusters”, under the same pretext and motivation as in claim 1]; discussing the method of claim 1, wherein the publisher device comprises streaming clusters including plurality of physical nodes or virtual instances.
Claim 14: Link: para 0075, 0102; discussing the method of claim 1, further comprises creating custom headers to track original client information for the subscriber device and the publisher device.
As per claim 15: Link, et al. teaches a system for providing secure communication between secured and unsecured devices, the system comprising:
a proxy service in electronic communication with a subscriber device via a secure connection; and [Link: para 0022; When the WWAN connected device is connecting to the internet, the GGSN/PGW firewall translates the device access to the Internet in much the same way as one's home Digital Subscriber Line (“DSL”) or Cable router translates the addresses for the personal computers in a home network]
a target publisher device in electronic communication with the proxy service via an unsecure connection [Link: para 0110-0112; a publish-subscribe platform perform the role of a PASS to interface between the Internet or the private network external to the carrier SGi or Gi Interface established on the CXI side of the PGW or GGSN. This specific CXI connects to a specific and designated APN for the designated services. A Publish-Subscribe communications architecture allows a UE to connect to a bus, broker, or to a device in a point-to-point topology. Para 0119; allowing wireless USB modem to enable otherwise insecure and unconnected devices to connect to and share data with other computers, platforms, application servers, and end-users over the WWAN], wherein the proxy service, in response to receiving a connection request from the client device [Link: para 0015; the remote wireless device initiates an outgoing connection to the requesting server. Para 0119; added software supporting the capability of securely monitoring for specific incoming connections from a PASS platform], is configured to:
establish a bridge between the subscriber device and the target publisher device via the proxy service; and [Link: para 0113; the subscriber is a peer and the connection is initiated from the intermediary message broker. A bridge between the subscriber and the publisher may broadly be in the form of a middleman or intermediary entity that can establish communication or connection to each other]
**utilize a proxy channel over the bridge to negotiate a connection [**rejected under a secondary reference, discussion below] between the subscriber device [Link: para 0120; when a decision is made, or action occurs, at an initiating device having a network connection to a public network to request an action by a device having a network connection to a private communication network. An application running on the initiating device/application server generates a request message to be sent to the private-connected device, which may be a UE connected to a wireless communication network and wherein the UE connected to the wireless network has a network connection] to facilitate an exchange of multimedia data between the subscriber device and the publisher device over the connection. [Link: para 0116; interested ‘subscribers’, such as UE devices, based on security credentials received from the initiating device/publisher]
Link teaches when a decision is made, or action occurs, at an initiating device having a network connection to a public network to request an action by a device having a network connection to a private communication network. An application running on the initiating device/application server generates a request message to be sent to the private-connected device, which may be a UE connected to a wireless communication network and wherein the UE connected to the wireless network has a network connection [Link: para 0120-0122]. Thus, Link suggest to negotiate a connection between the subscriber device. However, Link does not clearly teach “utilize a proxy channel over the bridge to negotiate a connection”.
Lawson teaches receiving an incoming communication request at the system bridge, functions to accept a communication from an outside entity directed to a client. A cloud-based communication router preferably initially receives/initiates the incoming communication [Lawson: para 0035]. Link obviously suggest “utilizing a proxy channel over the bridge to negotiate a connection”, by the method of making inbound calls directed at the client allows a client application to establish a signaling channel, then for an outside calling entity (e.g., an application, a PSTN device, a SIP device and the like) to initiate a communication request, subsequently a signaling channel and a media channel are established between a system bridge and the calling entity (or a proxy of the calling entity), a media channel is established between the system bridge and the client application, and then the signaling and media channels are merged as shown in FIG. 27 [Lawson: para 0074]. As such, motivation would be to accept a communication and facilitate connection from an outside entity.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Lawson with Link to teach “utilizing a proxy channel over the bridge to negotiate a connection” for the reason to provide communication and facilitate connection from an outside entity [Lawson: para 0035].
Claim 16: Link: para 0081; discussing the system of claim 15, wherein the proxy service is implemented on a stream manager server configured with a domain name and an Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate.
Claim 17: Link: para 0091; discussing the system of claim 16, wherein the stream manager is implemented on a cloud infrastructure.
Claim 18: Link: para 0048-0050, Fig.19 [suggest session setup information using interactive establishment technique, by network data session is established and establish a connection between a public-internet-connected initiator device and a private-network connected UE device based on information corresponding to the initiator device] in view of Lawson: para 0074 [suggesting “establishing the bridge”, under the same pretext and motivation as in claim 1]; discussing the system of claim 15, wherein the establishing the bridge comprises negotiating session setup information between the subscriber device and the publisher device using an Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) technique.
Claim 19: Link: para 0086, 0119 [insecure connection] in view of Lawson: para 0034, 0038 [suggesting “WebSocket secure (WSS) secure connection”, under the same pretext and motivation as in claim 1]; discussing the system of claim 15, wherein the bridge comprises: the connection between the subscriber device and the proxy service uses a WebSocket secure (WSS) secure connection or a Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) connection; and the connection between the publisher device and the proxy service uses a WebSocket (WS) unsecure connection or a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) connection.
Claim 20: Link: para 0086, 0119; discussing the system of claim 15, wherein the bridge enables secure data to flow from a secure subscriber device to an unsecure publisher device.
Claim 21: Link: para 0086; discussing the system of claim 15, wherein the subscriber device connects to the proxy service from a web browser client.
Claim 22: Link: para 0067, 0115; discussing the system of claim 15, wherein the publisher device is a media server without a domain or SSL certificate and is configured to broadcast multimedia to connected subscriber devices.
Claim 23: Link: para 0072; discussing the system of claim 15, wherein: the connection is configured to exchange multimedia data between the subscriber device and the publisher device; and the connection is a direct connection between the subscriber device and the publisher device or a Network Address Translation (NAT) connection.
Claim 24: Link: para 0025 in view of Lawson: para 0074 [suggesting “keep the bridge open”, under the same pretext and motivation as in claim 1]; discussing the system of claim 15, wherein the proxy service is configured to keep the bridge open during the exchange of the multimedia data between the subscriber device and the publisher device using a pinger mechanism.
Claim 25: Link: para 0072, 0098 [a network “filter-router” of the PASS examines the destination IP address of the packet to determine if the IP address is one which is a member of the initiating IP station's group and if not, the packet is dropped, suggest load balancing] in view of Lawson: para 0063-0064 [suggesting “load balancer”, under the same pretext and motivation as in claim 1]; discussing the system of claim 15, further comprising balancing load between subscriber devices and publisher devices with a load balancer.
Claim 26: Link: para 0116 in view of Lawson: para 0003, 0071 [suggesting “WebRTC”, under the same pretext and motivation as in claim 1]; discussing the system of claim 15, wherein the proxy service provides WebRTC information exchange between the secured and unsecured devices for efficiency and reliability.
Claim 27: Link: para 0082 in view of Lawson: para 0034, 0071 [suggesting “streaming clusters”, under the same pretext and motivation as in claim 1]; discussing the system of claim 15, wherein the publisher device comprises streaming clusters including plurality of physical nodes or virtual instances.
Claim 28: Link: para 0075, 0102; discussing the system of claim 15, further comprises creating custom headers to track original client information for the subscriber device and the publisher device.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Leynna Truvan whose telephone number is (571)272-3851. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9:00AM-5:00PM, EST.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Amir Mehrmanesh can be reached at 571-270-3351. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
Leynna Truvan
Examiner
Art Unit 2435
/L.TT/Examiner, Art Unit 2435
/EDWARD ZEE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2435