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 .
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 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.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 03/12/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
The Amendment filed on 08/19/2026 has been entered.
Claims 4 and 8 are cancelled.
Claims 1-3 and 5-7 are pending of which claims 1 and 5 are independent claims.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed on 08/19/2026 have been fully considered and they are not persuasive.
In response to applicant’s argument that there is no teaching, suggestion, or motivation to combine the references, the examiner recognizes that obviousness may be established by combining or modifying the teachings of the prior art to produce the claimed invention where there is some teaching, suggestion, or motivation to do so found either in the references themselves or in the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 5 USPQ2d 1596 (Fed. Cir. 1988), In re Jones, 958 F.2d 347, 21 USPQ2d 1941 (Fed. Cir. 1992), and KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007). In this case, applicant argue that “The Office Action does not explain why a person of ordinary skill would have modified Parla, in view of Kim, to use Kim's exploit information in the particular claimed manner: as computer-executable exploit code received by the LLM for generating the claimed mitigation policy/configuration file and then used again by the FLAE to test the generated policy and produce feedback”, examiner acknowledged Applicant’s perspective but respectfully disagrees for the following reasons:
Parla teaches the threat intelligence service 144 collects data from many devices and adds to it all the data collected by partners to analyze vectors of new attacks using LLM. The vectors of new attacks are used as input to generate policy. However, Parla doesn't explicitly teach a plurality of inputs including textual description of vulnerabilities, meta-data, and code with one or more vulnerability exploits comprising computer-executable exploit code configured to exercise a known vulnerability of a target API or application. Kim paragraph [0048] and [0053] teach a plurality of inputs including the required information in the claims. Because the claims of the instant application don’t recite the data structure and algorithm for input and how the LLM uses input to achieve the claimed output, it’s obvious for a person in the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine Kim’s input information with Parla to generate and fine tune the LLM model to generate updated API and policies.
Therefore, the USC § 103 rejection is maintained.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 of this title, 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 set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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.
Claims 1, 3, 5 and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Parla (Pub. No.: US 2025/0097237) in view of Kim et al. (Pub. No.: US 2021/0168169, hereinafter Kim).
Regarding claim 1: Parla teaches: A computer-implemented method for generating application programming interface (API) and application vulnerability mitigation policies, the method comprising:
generating, by the LLM and based on the received inputs, API and application vulnerability mitigation policies that include a policy and/or configuration file for at least one of an API gateway, a web application firewall, a next generation firewall, or intrusion prevention/detection systems (IPS/IDS) (Parla - [0089] Using the attack vectors 224, a policy and configuration generator 226 then generates a policy 228 for the prompt generator 230. Policy 228 directs the prompt generator 230 regarding the substance (e.g., the attack vectors 224) and style of the summary 232 to be created by the prompt generator 230. Policy 228 can include a comprehensive list of known attack vectors relevant to the system or software in consideration. This list could contain vulnerabilities, exploits, malware, and social engineering tactics. For each attack vector identified, policy 228 outlines which specific security measures and configurations are necessary to mitigate or prevent any associated attacks);
executing, by a feedback loop automation engine (FLAE), the API and application vulnerability mitigation policies against the code with the one or more vulnerability exploits to produce feedback data including at least one of policy errors, mitigation errors, or exploit- mitigation results; and updating, by the LLM, the API and application vulnerability mitigation policies based on the feedback data generated by the FLAE (Parla - [0093] FIG. 3 illustrates an example process for penetration testing for optimization of network security policies. [0099]: analyzing one or more cybersecurity threats that successfully penetrated the security service and generating the update of the policy used by the security management service 108 is performed using an LLM. The LLM can be made aware of a current policy used by the security service and prompted to analyze one or more cybersecurity threats to generate an update of the current policy. See also [0103] and [0119]).
Although Parla [0075] discloses the threat intelligence service 144 collects data from many devices and adds to it all the data collected by partners to analyze vectors of new attacks using LLM, Parla doesn’t explicitly teach a plurality of inputs including textual description of vulnerabilities, code with one or more vulnerability exploits, and meta-data, and code with one or more vulnerability exploits comprising computer-executable exploit code configured to exercise a known vulnerability of a target API or application. However, Kim discloses:
receiving, by a large language model (LLM), a plurality of inputs including textual description of vulnerabilities, meta-data and code with one or more vulnerability exploits comprising computer-executable exploit code configured to exercise a known vulnerability of a target API or application (Kim - [0048]: The collector 120 collects various information for generating and/or optimizing a rule. For example, the collector 120 may collect information on a device (e.g., a name, a manufacturer, an operating system, firmware, etc.), vulnerability information on the device (e.g., CVE information), exploit information, or the like. [0053]: The exploit information may include, for example, exploit codes, exploit attack types, related vulnerability information, or the like);
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method of Parla with Kim so that LLM input data can be vulnerability information on the device, exploit information and meta-data. The modification would have allowed the system to increase usability and be more flexible.
Regarding claim 3: Parla teaches: wherein the meta-data comprises one or more of information regarding the API, technical infrastructure information, notation of error handling, notation of exceptions/error codes, or user-defined extra requirements (Parla - [0070]: The threat research service 112 may contain threat identification updates, also referred to as definition files and can store these definition files in the knowledgebase 136. A definition file may be a virus identity file that may include definitions of known or potential malicious code. The virus identity definition files may provide information that may identify malicious code within files, applications, or the like).
Regarding claims 5 and 7: Claims are directed to computer readable medium claims and do not teach or further define over the limitations recited in claims 1 and 3. Therefore, claims 5 and 7 are also rejected for similar reasons set forth in claims 1 and 3. Furthermore, Parla [0131] discloses a processor and memory on which stored a set of instructions.
Claims 2 and 6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Parla (Pub. No.: US 2025/0097237) in view of Kim et al. (Pub. No.: US 2021/0168169, hereinafter Kim) and Cameron et al. (Pub. No.: US 2025/0036777, hereinafter Cameron).
Regarding claims 2 and 6: Parla as modified doesn’t explicitly teach but Cameron discloses:
wherein the textual description of vulnerabilities comprises manually created and validated policies for vulnerabilities (CVEs) with their exploits and step-by-step guides on its reproduction (Cameron - [0061]: the information included in security vulnerability descriptions, the information included in the platform-specific policy, the one or more computing aspects, and the impact level measures, the system protection measures, or other information).
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method of Parla and Kim with Cameron so that vulnerability description includes policies and many other information. The modification would have allowed the system to increase security.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MENG LI whose telephone number is (571)272-8729. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:30-5:30.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Alexander Lagor can be reached on (571) 270-5143. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MENG LI/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2437
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