Ex Parte Carpenter et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Oct 31, 2018

14803987 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 31, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
14/803,987 07/20/2015
45457 7590 11/02/2018
SCHWEGMAN LUNDBERG & WOESSNER/Intel
P.O. Box 2938
MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55402
Robert Carpenter
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
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
884.I32US2 3647
EXAMINER
JACKSON, JENISE E
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2439
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/02/2018 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):
uspto@slwip.com
SLW@blackhillsip.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte ROBERT CARPENTER and HONG LI
Appeal2018-000337 1
Application 14/803,987
Technology Center 2400
Before: ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, CATHERINE SHIANG, and
JOHN D. HAMANN, Administrative Patent Judges.
MANTIS MERCADER, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a rejection of claims
16-39. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
1 The Appeal Brief states Intel Corporation is the real party in interest. App.
Br. 1.
Appeal2018-000337
Application 14/803,987
CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
The claims are directed to proactive network attack demand
management. Claim 16, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed
subject matter:
16. At least one non-transitory machine readable medium
including instructions that, when executed by a machine, cause
the machine to perform operations comprising:
receiving a network request that is suspected to be part of
an attack on a network, the network request directed to a first
resource available on the network;
intercepting the network request in response to the
network request being part of the attack and routing the request
to a virtual local area network; and
servicing the network request from a second resource
available on the virtual local area network.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Britt
Gupta
Sedayao
Elrod
US 6,430,617 B 1
US 2007/0168512 Al
US 2012/0089663 Al
US 8,615,785 B2
REJECTIONS
Aug. 6,2002
July 19, 2007
Apr. 12, 2012
Dec. 24, 2013
Claims 16-21, 24--29, and 32-37 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C § I03(a) as being unpatentable over Elrod in view of Sedayao.
Claims 22, 30, and 38 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C § I03(a) as being
unpatentable over Elrod in view of Sedayao and further in view of Gupta.
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Application 14/803,987
Claims 23, 31, and 39 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Elrod in view of Sedayao and further in view of Britt.
OPINION
We adopt the Examiner's findings in the Answer and Final Office
Action. We add the following for emphasis. We note that if Appellants
failed to "present arguments on a particular issue----or, more broadly, on a
particular rejection-the Board will not, as a general matter, unilaterally
review those uncontested aspects of the rejection." See Ex parte Frye, 94
USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010) (precedential)); Hyatt v. Dudas, 551 F.3d
1307, 1313-14 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (The Board may treat arguments Appellant
failed to make for a given ground of rejection as waived).
Claims 16-21, 24-29, and 32-37 rejected under 35 US.C § 103
Appellants argue that the combination of Elrod and Sedayao does not
teach or suggest servicing requests for suspected attacks by intercepting and
routing the suspect requests to different resources on a different network to
be serviced while additional analysis is performed to determine the ultimate
nature of the traffic ( e.g., an attack or legitimate traffic). App. Br. 6. At the
outset, we note that claim 16 recites:
receiving a network request that is suspected to be part of
an attack on a network, the network request directed to a first
resource available on the network;
intercepting the network request in response to the
network request being part of the attack and routing the request
to a virtual local area network; and
servicing the network request from a second resource
available on the virtual local area network.
Nothing in the claim requires additional analysis being performed to
determine the ultimate nature of the traffic (i.e., an attack or legitimate
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Application 14/803,987
traffic) as argued. App. Br. 6. Thus, Appellants' argument is not
commensurate in scope with the claim language.
Appellants also argue that Elrod never discusses servicing the traffic
by an entity other than the intended recipient; explicitly noting that any
redirecting is only to the security management device (SMD). App. Br. 7-8.
Appellants further argue that in Sedayao, the service request is made to the
dispatch agent, or directly to a VM, and the service is directed to an entity
that completes the service by marshalling the requisite hardware. App. Br.
7. According to Appellants, Elrod never discusses servicing the requests
from the isolated VLAN. App. Br. 8.
Appellants argue impermissible hindsight because Elrod does not
need the dynamic resource allocation of Sedayao because it is either
handling the information or dropping it. App. Br. 9. Appellants assert that
using more resources, as would happen combining Sedayao and Elrod, does
not deal with the attack. App. Br. 10.
We are not persuaded by Appellants' arguments. The Examiner finds,
and we agree, that Elrod teaches that the packets/network traffic/network
requests can be redirected and the network traffic can be redirected to a
virtual local area network (VLAN). Ans. 5, citing Elrod, col. 4, 11. 25-27,
3 8--41. Elrod teaches the SMD can handle redirected
packets/traffic/network requests in different ways. Ans. 6, citing Elrod, col.
6, 11. 49-50. Elrod further teaches that the SMD may ignore or discard it or,
if harmless, may forward to their original destination (col. 6, 11. 49-56) or if
the traffic is harmful, can redirect the traffic to the VLAN ( col. 7, 11. 3---6).
Ans. 6.
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Application 14/803,987
We also do not agree with Appellants' argument that "there is no
objective evidence that one of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to
seek out Sedayao to modify Elrod because Elrod simply drops the offending
packets" (App. Br. 8). The Examiner finds, and we agree, that Elrod does
not only teach that the SMD may ignore or discard packets, but also if
harmless, may forward the packets to their original destination ( col. 6, 11.
49--56) or if the traffic is harniful, can redirect the traffic to the VLAN (col.
7, 11. 3---6). Ans. 6. Thus, the Examiner properly combined the teachings of
the references relying on Sedayao for teaching servicing the network request
from a second resource available on the virtual local area network (paras.
37-39). Final Act. 9.
Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner's rejection of claim 16 and, for
the same reasons, the rejections of claims 17-39 not argued separately. See
App. Br. 10.
Non-statutory Obviousness-type Double Patenting Rejection
Appellants state that the cited rejections are non-statutory double
patenting rejections and propose the rejections be held in abeyance until
allowable claims are identified. App. Br. 11. Thus, we do not reach the
merits of the Examiner's double patenting rejections because this issue is not
ripe for decision by the Board.
DECISION
The Examiner's rejection of claims 16-39 is affirmed.
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Application 14/803,987
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(l )(iv).
AFFIRMED
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