Ex Parte Carpenter et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardOct 31, 201814803987 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 31, 2018) Copy Citation 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. 2 Appeal2018-000337 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 3 Appeal2018-000337 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. 4 Appeal2018-000337 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. 5 Appeal2018-000337 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 6 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation