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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) (IDS) submitted on 12/04/2025 was filed before the mailing date of this office action. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the patent documents of the information disclosure statement are being considered by the examiner. However, the submission of the non-patent documents is not in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97, and thus the non-patent documents, NPL Cite No. 1 and 2 in each IDS, are not being considered and have been stroked-out because of the lack of specific publication date.
Examiner's Note:
The limitation "… compare the received indications of observed transmissions of operational commands or operational information associated with the software update process to indications in the model of expected transmissions of operational commands or operational information associated with the software update process to determine whether a particular transmitted operational command is a proper operational command associated with the software update process or to determine whether particular transmitted operational information is proper operational information associated with the software update process.", under claim 4, appear to 1) not recite a further mental process, and 2) recites a practical application, and thus no Alice 101 rejection issued. Claim 12 recites substantially the above same limitation in the form of a method, and hence no Alice 101 rejection issued.
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 1-9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention under claims 1 and 4 is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the "a processor", in claims 1 and 4, line 1, respectively, is not explicitly indicated to be a hardware processor in the Applicant's instant Specification, and thus the "monitoring system" of claims 1 and 4 under the broadest reasonable definition, may be interpreted as being directed to software per se.
Claims 1-3 and 10-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim(s) recite(s) “place the monitoring system into a training mode ...” (mental process - observation), “receive indications of observed transmissions ...” (mental process - observation), and “generate the model of the software update process …” (mental process - judgement). This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the claims do not recite any further limitations that either apply, rely on, or utilize the abstract idea in a manner that imposes meaningful limit on the abstract idea itself. For example, there’s no further recitation(s) of an improvement to a computerized function nor an improvement to a technology or technical field. The claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because none of claims 1 and 10 recite any additional elements which would amount to significantly more than the abstract idea itself. For example, claim 1 recites a “monitoring system” that comprises a “processor”, which is equivalent to a typical generic computer component used to apply the judicial exceptions. The examiner also takes Official Notice regarding the claimed “monitoring system comprising a processor configured to perform operations …’ as being well-known and conventional in the computer arts. Thus, the above identified abstract idea recited within claim 1 when considered individually and in combination with the above recited well-known, conventional component, fails to recite subject matter that would constitute as significantly more than the abstract idea itself.
Further, dependent claims 2-3 and 11 also fail to recite any further limitations that would either recite a non-abstract idea, further integrate the above identified abstract idea into a practical application, or recite anything considered as significantly more than the abstract idea itself. Thus, these claims are also rejected for the same reasons as applied to respective claims 1 and 10 above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 12-16 are allowed as claimed.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
The closest prior art being “Kling” (US 2020/0089885 A1), and “Jones” (US 2024/0430232 A1). Kling discloses a method of providing industrial system cybersecurity event detection and corresponding response, comprising: receiving sensor outputs from one or more industrial sensors in the industrial system, the industrial sensors being used to monitor and control an industrial process in the industrial system; deriving sensor data from the sensor outputs, the sensor data reflecting one or more industrial processing aspects of the industrial process; processing the sensor data using one or more pattern recognition algorithms, the one or more pattern recognition algorithms trained to recognize potentially suspicious/malicious patterns that indicate a potential cyberattack on the industrial system; determining whether the one or more pattern recognition algorithms recognize the sensor data as a potentially suspicious/malicious pattern; and executing a malicious pattern response process in response to the sensor data being recognized as a potentially suspicious/malicious pattern. Jones discloses a method of protecting an operational technology (OT) system having connected hardware equipment, including at least a communication interface configured to receive a control communication, the method comprising: a first receiving step of receiving a maintenance request for lowering a security state of the OT system from the communication interface; a first determining step of determining whether the received maintenance request is valid; a first blocking step of blocking the maintenance request in a case where the received maintenance request is determined to be invalid; a first passing step of lowering the security state of the OT system in a case where the received maintenance request is determined to be valid; a second receiving step of receiving the control communication for the OT system from the communication interface; a second determining step of determining whether the received control communication contains an undesirable control command; a second blocking step of blocking the received control communication to the OT system in a case where the received control communication is determined to contain an undesirable control command; and a second passing step of passing the received control communication to the OT system in a case where the received control communication is determined not to contain an undesirable control command.
What is missing from the prior art is: a method(s) of using a model of a software update process to analyze observed transmissions of operational commands or operational information associated with the software update process, the method comprising: receiving, by a processor of a monitoring system, and from at least one interchange device of a monitored system, indications of observed transmissions of operational commands or operational information among multiple monitored devices of a monitored system; and comparing, by the processor, the received indications of observed transmissions of operational commands or operational information associated with the software update process to indications in the model of expected transmissions of operational commands or operational information associated with the software update process to determine whether a particular transmitted operational command is a proper and expected operational command associated with the software update process, or to determine whether the particular transmitted operational information is proper and expected operational information associated with the software update process.
Thus, the prior art of record, when considered individually and in combination, does not teach or suggest the subject matter recited by claim 12 as a whole, therefore claim 12 is deemed allowable over the prior art of record. The dependent claims which further limit claim 12 are also deemed allowable by virtue of their dependency.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MATTHIAS HABTEGEORGIS whose telephone number is (571)272-1916. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8am-5pm ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, William R. Korzuch can be reached on (571)272-7589. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MATTHIAS HABTEGEORGIS/Examiner, Art Unit 2491
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