Ex Parte Biswas

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 16, 2017

14298726 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 16, 2017)

United States Patent and Trademark Office
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O.Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www.uspto.gov
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
14/298,726 06/06/2014 Soma Biswas P243628.US.01 4614
119663 7590
Clairvolex Inc.
Attention: Allied Inventors
111 E Broadway
Suite 725
Salt Lake City, UT 84111
EXAMINER
ZOUBAIR, NOURA
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2434
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/20/2017 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address(es):
Allied-Inventors-Docketing@clairvolex.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte SOMA BISWAS
Appeal 2017-001101
Application 14/298,726
Technology Center 2400
Before JEAN R. HOMERE, KARA L. SZPONDOWSKI, and
JON M. JURGOVAN, Administrative Patent Judges.
HOMERE, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
Final Rejection of claims 1—15, 17—29, which constitute all claims pending
in this application.1 Claim 16 has been canceled. Claims App’x. We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
1 Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Empire Technology
Development LLC. App. Br. 3.
Appeal 2017-001101
Application 14/298,726
Introduction
According to Appellant, the claimed subject matter relates to a
method and system for securely executing sensitive portions of an
application code. Spec. 13. In particular, upon receiving the application
code at an execution environment in a user device (210), a processing unit
(214) parses the code to identify one or more sensitive portions therein. Id.
3—10, Fig. 2. During the processing of the application (216), prior to
initializing the application on the user device (210), the processing unit
(214) forwards the identified sensitive portion of the code to a trusted
execution environment (218, 220) suitable to securely execute the sensitive
portion of the application.
Representative Claim
Independent claim 1 is representative, and reads as follows:
1. A method comprising:
parsing code of an application configured for execution
in an execution environment on a user device to identify one or
more sensitive portions of the code;
identifying a trusted execution environment, different
from the execution environment of the user device, suitable to
execute the one or more sensitive portions of the code; and
prior to initialization of the application on the user device,
configuring the code to provide the one or more sensitive portions of
the code from the execution environment of the user device to the
trusted execution environment during execution of the application in
the execution environment of the user device.
Prior Art References
Anglin et al. (“Anglin”)
Gu et al. (“Gu”)
US 2012/0042162 Al Feb. 16, 2012
WO2013142947 Al Mar. 30, 2012
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Application 14/298,726
Sumeet Bajaj, TrustedDB: A Trusted Hardware based
Database with Privacy and Data Confidentially, SIGMOD’ll, June
12-16, 2011 (“Bajaj”).
Rejections on Appeal2
Claims 1—9 and 11—13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112(b),
second paragraph as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and
distinctly claim the subject matter which Appellant regards as the invention.
Final Act. 3.
Claims 1—3, 5—7, 9, 10, and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Bajaj. Final Act. 4—12.
Claims 4, 8, 11, and 12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over the combination of Bajaj and Anglin. Final Act.
12-16.
Claims 14, 15, and 18—29 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over the combination of Bajaj and Gu. Final Act. 16—23.
Claim 17 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over the combination of Bajaj, Gu, and Anglin. Final Act. 23—
24.
ANALYSIS
Indefiniteness Rejections
Appellant argues the Examiner erred in concluding that the recitation
of the term “sensitive” renders the claim indefinite. App. Br. 6. According
to Appellant, one of ordinary skilled artisan would have been able ascertain
the scope of “sensitive code” from the numerous examples provided in the
2 The Examiner withdraws the indefmiteness rejection previously entered
against claim 14. Ans. 24.
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Application 14/298,726
Specification. Id. at 6—7, Reply Br. 2—3 (citing Spec. 1 64). This argument
is persuasive.
We do not agree with the Examiner that the recitation “sensitive”
renders the claim indefinite. Ans. 3, 24, and 25. “[It] is well-established that
the determination whether a claim is invalid as indefinite ‘depends on
whether those skilled in the art would understand the scope of the claim
when the claim is read in light of the specification.’” Atmel Corp. v.
Information Storage Devices Inc., 198 F.3d 1374, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 1999)
(quoting North Am. Vaccine, Inc. v. American Cyanamid Co., 7 F.3d 1571,
1579 (Fed. Cir. 1993)). Although the examples provided in the cited portion
of the Specification of what “sensitive portions of code” may (or may not)
include do not particularly define the scope of the term in dispute, we find
nonetheless that the ordinarily skilled artisan, having read the cited portion
of the Specification would understand the scope of “sensitive portions” of
the code Spec. | 64. Thus, while we agree with the Examiner that the
disputed claim recitation is broad, its perceived breadth does not per se
render the claim indefinite. See In re Gardner, 427 F.2d 786, 788 (CCPA
1970) (“Breadth is not indefmiteness.”) Accordingly, we do not sustain the
indefmiteness rejection.
Anticipation Rejections
Appellant argues that Bajaj does not describe, prior to initializing the
application on the user device, configuring the application code to provide
sensitive portions thereof to a trusted environment during execution of the
application, as recited in independent claim 1. App. Br. 9-10, Reply Br. 7—
8. In particular, Appellant argues that the Examiner erred in finding Bajaj’s
disclosure of parsing a query into private and public subqueries forwarded
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Application 14/298,726
by the Query Dispatcher to the host server and the Secure Central Processing
Unit (SPCU) does not describe the disputed limitations. Id. (citing Bajaj, p.
7, col. 1). According to Appellant, because the Query Dispatcher
forwarding the subqueries is located inside the SPCU, Bajaj describes
transmitting codes from a trusted execution environment to an execution
environment, as opposed to the claimed transmission of the codes from the
execution environment to the trusted execution environment during the
processing of the code application in the execution environment. Id.
Further, Appellant argues that the Examiner’s additional reliance on Bajaj’s
disclosure of processing the public queries in the host server, and then
processing the private queries in the SCPU to describe the disputed
limitations is also in error because it is intended to describe the result of
public query to the SCPU. Reply Br. 8 (citing Bajaj, p. 7, col. 2). These
arguments are persuasive.
Bajaj discloses a host server, upon receiving an encrypted query from
a client, forwards the encrypted query to a SCPU, which utilizes a Request
Handler to decrypt the query, a Query Parser to parse the Query into
public/private subqueries, and a Query Dispatch to forward the private
subqueries to the SCPU’s database engine while forwarding the public
subqueries to the host server’s database engine. Bajaj p. 7, col. 1, Fig. 5.
Bajaj further discloses after the host server processes the public queries, the
SCPU processes the private queries, such that the result of the processing is
shared between the host server and the SCPU. Id., at column 2. Although
the host server’s transmission of the encrypted query to the SCPU describes
transmitting of the application code including sensitive portions thereof from
an execution environment to a trusted execution environment, such a
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Application 14/298,726
transmission is not performed during execution of the application, as
required by the claim. Further, although Bajaj discloses processing the
public queries at the host server followed by the processing of the private
queries at the SPCU, we agree with Appellant that the two executing
environments exchanging query processing results does not describe the
required transmission. Instead, the disclosed result sharing/transmission
occurs subsequent to processing the codes at the respective execution
environments, whereas the claim requires the transmission to be performed
during the execution of the code in the execution environment.
Because Appellant has shown at least one reversible error in the
Examiner’s rejection, we need not reach the merits of Appellant’s remaining
arguments. Accordingly, we do not sustain the anticipation rejection of
claim 1, as well as the anticipation rejections of claims 2, 3, 5—7, 9, 10, and
13, which also suffer the deficiencies noted above.
Obviousness Rejections
Appellant argues that none of the secondary references relied upon by
Appellant cures the noted deficiencies in Bajaj noted above. App. Br. 11—
14. We agree with Appellant. Accordingly, we do not sustain the rejection
of claims 4, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, and 17—29, which also recite the disputed
limitations.
DECISION
For the above reasons, we reverse the Examiner’s indefmiteness
rejections, anticipation rejections, and obviousness rejections as set forth
above.
REVERSED
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