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 .
Claims 1-16 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 1-4 and 9-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Liu, et al. (WO 2017/116303, herein Liu) in view of Sharma, et al. (US 8,714,442, herein Sharma).1 Regarding claim 1, Liu teaches a method and system for providing an integrated platform for secure product labelling, verification, and enforcement, said method comprising the steps of: registering, via the integrated platform, a brand owner (paragraph 0028); providing a designated product produced by the brand owner for registration, (paragraph 0016) wherein the brand owner seeks protection for the designated product, the brand owner providing product certifications for the designated product during registration (paragraph 0022); checking, via regulatory bodies, to ensure the designated product has proper compliance (paragraph 0028); registering, via the integrated platform, the product (paragraph 0025); providing to the brand owner, via the integrated platform, a first label having an embedded NFC anti-counterfeiting feature (paragraph 0023) and a second label having a QR code (paragraph 0022); providing an online platform, via the integrated platform, to be used by at least one enforcement agency for monitoring activities of the designated product; and, for supporting a plurality of multi-agency collaboration activities (paragraph 0028); providing an application resource installed on a user device associated with a user (paragraph 0026), the application resource including a label scanner module for identifying authentic and/or counterfeit labels from the first label and/or the second label, wherein the application resource includes a reporting module for recording findings of counterfeit labels (paragraph 0028), and, a retailer module to allow the one or more retailers to receive and scan the designated product (paragraph 0028); sending product info to a user device corresponding to the first label applied to the product scanned by the label scanner module, and receiving a report from the user device (paragraph 0030); generating the second label associated with the first label applied to the product scanned by the retailer module (paragraph 0022); and sending product info to a user device corresponding to the second label, which is generated by the scanning of the first label by the retailer module, when the second label is scanned by the label scanner module, and receiving a report from the user device (paragraph 0029). Liu does not explicitly teach securing the first label and the second label onto the designated product prior to distribution of the designated product; and distributing the designated product to one or more retailers for sale. Sharma teaches securing the first label and the second label onto the designated product prior to distribution of the designated product (column 11, lines 52-60); and distributing the designated product to one or more retailers for sale (column 6, lines 24-35). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art at the time of invention to combine the teachings of Liu and Sharma, because such a combination prevents counterfeiting, diversion and theft (column 1, lines 53-58 of Sharma). Regarding claims 2 and 10, Sharma further teaches capturing where and when the second label was scanned (column 11, lines 52-60). Regarding claim 3, Sharma further teaches the step of upgrading an existing Regulatory Label with a secure, encrypted label via the first label and/or the second label (column 16, lines 25-30). Regarding claims 4 and 11, Liu further teaches said method is configured to be used only on designated products that comply with the manufacturing standards and regulatory body requirements (paragraph 0028).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-8 and 13-16 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims. The cited art fails to disclose the additional features of the data authentication, NFC tag, and QR code as claimed.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MATTHEW MIKELS whose telephone number is (571)270-5470. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Thursday 7:00 AM ET - 4:30 PM ET, Friday 7:00 AM ET - 11:00 AM ET, the Examiner is on central time.2
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/MATTHEW MIKELS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2876
1 In addition to the cited portions in each reference, please see also the associated figures.
2 The Examiner can also be reached at matthew.mikels@uspto.gov.