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 .
Claims 1-20 are pending.
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, 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.
Claims 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stecher US 20140059658, in view of Richard US 20130218983.
For claims 1, 8 and 15, Stecher discloses a device comprising:
one or more memories (par. 0016); and
one or more processors (par. 0016) communicatively coupled to the one or more memories and configured to execute instructions stored in the one or more memories for performing operations of:
receiving an email, wherein the email includes: (1) a provider email address associated with the provider, the provider email address being a from email address and (2) an anonymized user email address associated with the user and provided by the identity management service, the anonymized user email address being a to email address (par 0077 of Stecher discloses the privacy broker 205 can receive the email 615a from the web application and modify the addressing and headers of the email 615a to hide or remove the identity of the web application. A web application 510 can send an email 615 to an anonymous user (e.g., 505) using the private ID of the anonymous user. For example, the email 615a can be initially addressed (e.g., at 620a) to the private ID at a domain of the privacy broker, and from the web application (e.g., at 622));
extracting an anonymous user identifier from the anonymized user email address, wherein the anonymous user identifier is persistently associated with the user and at least one of the provider, an application of the provider, or a service of the provider (par 0077 of Stecher discloses the identity provider 210 can identify a user account of the user 505 associated with the private ID included in the email 615b (e.g., in address information 620b, 625a) along with email address information (e.g., 630) of the user account. Par 0039 of Stecher a privacy broker 205 can negotiate a unique user identifier (ID) (also referred to herein as a "private ID") (e.g., 245) for a particular user (e.g., 215) in pairings of the particular user with a particular web application (or service, vendor, or other online entity, etc., referred to collectively as web application, in some instances) (e.g., 225). Par 0076 of Stecher discloses a rule 605 at the privacy broker 205 can dictate that emails be addressed to a known recipient (e.g., as identified by the recipient's private ID) and from a known sender (e.g., a web application with which the privacy broker 205 has a relationship, such as one whose identity is bound to a particular known private ID));
determining a replacement address for the provider email address using at least the provider identifier (Paragraph [0077] of Stecher discloses the identity provider 210 can identify a user account of the user 505 associated with the private ID included in the email 615b (e.g., in address information 620b, 625a) along with email address information (e.g., 630) of the user account. Paragraph [0076] of Stecher discloses a rule 605 at the privacy broker 205 can dictate that emails be addressed to a known recipient (e.g., as identified by the recipient's private ID) and from a known sender (e.g., a web application with which the privacy broker 205 has a relationship, such as one whose identity is bound to a particular known private ID);
replacing the provider email address with the replacement address (Paragraph [0077] of Stecher discloses the identity provider 210 can readdress the email 615b (to 615c) to forward the email from the web application 510 to the email address 630 of the user 505 (and from identity provider domain address 625b) and complete delivery of the email); and
forwarding the email to the user using the replacement address (Par 0077 of Stecher discloses the identity provider 210 can readdress the email 615b (to 615c) to forward the email from the web application 510 to the email address 630 of the user 505 (and from identity provider domain address 625b) and complete delivery of the email).
While Stecher discloses “a rule 605 at the privacy broker 205 can dictate that emails be addressed to a known recipient (e.g., as identified by the recipient's private ID) and from a known sender (e.g., a web application with which the privacy broker 205 has a relationship, such as one whose identity is bound to a particular known private ID” (par. 0076) and the identity provider 210 can readdress the email 615b (to 615c) to forward the email from the web application 510 to the email address 630 of the user 505 (and from identity provider domain address 625b) (par.0077), it fails to explicitly teach “retrieving, from a user table, a provider identifier using at least the anonymous user identifier of the anonymized user email address and the provider email address”.
However, in a related field, Richard discloses “if the sender wants the recipient to initiate an anonymous email session, he would insert the sender ID tag 78352, and the anonymous communications server computer would lookup the email address sender@anonymous.com and send the recipient email message to that email address when the sender ID tag is received from the recipient device 104” (par. 0035).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill before effective filing date of instant application to have introduced Richard’s teachings alongside Stecher. The motivation to combine would have been to permit entities—via an intermediary server—to communicate with each other without either revealing their identity to the other (Richard, par. 0019 and 0020).
For claims 3, 10 and 17, Stecher-Richard discloses the device of claim 15, wherein the operations further comprise receiving registration information from the provider, wherein the registration information includes a pattern of allowable email addresses (Stecher, Par 0076 discloses a rule 605 at the privacy broker 205 can dictate that emails be addressed to a known recipient (e.g., as identified by the recipient's private ID) and from a known sender (e.g., a web application with which the privacy broker 205 has a relationship, such as one whose identity is bound to a particular known private ID)).
For claims 4, 11, and 18, Stecher-Richard discloses the device of claim 17, further comprise generating the provider identifier using at least the registration information (Stecher, Para 0076 discloses a rule 605 at the privacy broker 205 can dictate that emails be addressed to a known recipient (e.g., as identified by the recipient's private ID) and from a known sender (e.g., a web application with which the privacy broker 205 has a relationship, such as one whose identity is bound to a particular known private ID)).
For claims 7 and 14, Stecher-Richard discloses the non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the anonymized user email address is generated from the anonymous user identifier (Paragraph [0073] of Stecher discloses logging-into the site or registering with the provider of the web application. A user can select a login button 562 to initiate a login or authentication sequence involving the generation of a private ID using, for instance, a privacy broker and identity provider).
Claims 2, 9, 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stecher US 20140059658, in view of Richard US 20130218983, in view of Evans US 20050198173.
For claims 2, 9 and 16, Stecher-Richard discloses the device of claim 15. Stecher-Richard does not explicitly disclose “further comprise rejecting the email when a number of emails from the provider to the user exceed a threshold.
However, Evans discloses each token being valid for a limited number of occasions of access to a user's e-mail inbox (par. 0023).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing of the invention to combine the anonymous email system as disclosed by Stecher-Richard, with limiting the number of emails as disclosed by Evans. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine to apply these well-known technique to a known device. Stecher-Richard and Evans are directed toward anonymous email systems and as such it would be obvious to use the techniques of one in the other.
Claims 5, 6, 12, 13, 19 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stecher US 20140059658, in view of Richard US 20130218983, in view of Ganesan US-20140046792.
For claims 5, 12 and 19, Stecher-Richard discloses the device of claim 15, wherein the operations further comprise:
receiving an indication of a user sign on with the application or service provided by the provider, wherein the user sign on includes user sign on information (Stecher, paragraph 0073 discloses logging-into the site or registering with the provider of the web application);
generating a user identifier using at least the user sign on information (Stecher, paragraph 0073 discloses logging-into the site or registering with the provider of the web application. A user can select a login button 562 to initiate a login or authentication sequence involving the generation of a private ID using, for instance, a privacy broker and identity provider);
associating a user identifier with the provider identifier (Stecher, paragraph 0076 discloses a rule 605 at the privacy broker 205 can dictate that emails be addressed to a known recipient (e.g., as identified by the recipient's private ID) and from a known sender (e.g., a web application with which the privacy broker 205 has a relationship, such as one whose identity is bound to a particular known private ID)
Stecher-Richard does not explicitly disclose “wherein the provider receives an indication that the user is a real user, wherein the indication is part of the user sign on information.”
However, Ganesan discloses buyers and sellers/service providers remaining anonymous through anonymous email/Voice/SMS or Text message relay (par. 0018). Furthermore, Ganesan teaches checks are also made to ensure that a human is entering the data by means of a captcha (images displayed to be entered by the person manually) (Paragraph 0091).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing of the invention to combine the anonymous email system as disclosed by Stecher-Richard, with checking for a real user as disclosed by Ganesan. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine to apply well-known techniques for confirming authentic/real user with the combination. Stecher and Ganesan are directed toward anonymous email systems and as such it would be obvious to use the techniques of one in the other.
For claims 6, 13 and 20, Stecher-Richard-Ganesan discloses the device of claim 19,
wherein the indication is determined based on a set of signals collected by a device associated with the user (Ganesan, Paragraph [0018] discloses Buyers and Sellers/Service providers can remain anonymous through anonymous email/Voice/SMS or Text message relay. Ganesan Paragraph [0091] of Ganesan discloses checks are also made to ensure that a human is entering the data by means of a captcha (images displayed to be entered by the person manually)).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CLAYTON R WILLIAMS whose telephone number is (571)270-3801. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10:00am - 6:00pm.
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/CLAYTON R WILLIAMS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2443
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