Ex Parte Chen et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Apr 25, 2011

10831808 (B.P.A.I. Apr. 25, 2011)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________

Ex parte LIDONG CHEN and BALAKUMAR JAGADESAN
____________

Appeal 2009-008063
Application 10/831,808
Technology Center 2400
____________

Before JOSEPH F. RUGGIERO, ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, and
BRADLEY W. BAUMEISTER, Administrative Patent Judges.

RUGGIERO, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APP EAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
rejection of claims 1 and 3-18. Claim 2 has been canceled. We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
Rather than reiterate the arguments of Appellants and the Examiner,
reference is made to the Appeal Brief (filed October 7, 2008) and the
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Answer (mailed December 15, 2008). Only those arguments actually made
by Appellants have been considered in this decision. Arguments which
Appellants could have made but chose not to make in the Brief have not
been considered and are deemed to be waived (see 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(1)(vii)).

Appellants’ Invention
Appellants’ invention relates to a wireless communications device in
which a lower layer cipher key is generated from a lower layer access key
that is stored on the wireless communications device. A higher layer
authentication key is then generated from the lower layer cipher key and is
used by an application server to authenticate subscriber device service
requests with an authentication and authorization server. See generally
Spec. ¶ [0014]-[0017].

Claim 1 is illustrative of the invention and reads as follows:
1. A method in a wireless communications
device including a lower layer access key, the method comprising:
generating a lower layer cipher key from the lower layer access
key of the wireless communications device,
generating a higher layer authentication key from the lower layer
cipher key,
authenticating a packet network using the lower layer access key.

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The Examiner’s Rejections
The Examiner relies on the following prior art references to show
unpatentability:
Maggenti US 2004/0179689 A1 Sep. 16, 2004
(filed Mar. 23, 2004)
Henry US 7,069,433 B1 Jun. 27, 2006
(filed Oct. 29, 2001)

Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 180-1 (hereinafter
“Pub 180-1”), Secure Hash Standard, pp. 1-18, April 1995; available at
http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/fip180-1.htm.

SIP: Session Initiation Protocol (RFC3261) (hereinafter “SIP”), pp. 1, 8, 10,
and 269, June 2002; available at http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3261.txt.

Claims 1 and 12-17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being
anticipated by Henry.
Claims 3, 4, 7-9, 11, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Henry in view of Pub 180-1.
Claim 5 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Henry in view of SIP.
Claim 6 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Henry in view of Maggenti.
Claim 10 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Henry in view of Pub 180-1 and Maggenti.

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ANALYSIS
35 U.S.C. § 102(e) REJECTION
Claim 1
Appellants’ arguments initially focus on the contention that the Henry
reference has no disclosure of generating a lower layer cipher key, which the
Examiner has equated to Henry’s decryption key, from the lower layer
access key, which the Examiner has equated to Henry’s VSA password.
According to Appellants (App. Br. 5), while Henry discloses that the VSA
client calculates the decryption key, there is no clear indication that the
decryption key is generated from the VSA password (col. 7, ll. 63-67).
We do not agree with Appellants as we find ample evidence within
the disclosure of Henry to support the Examiner’s stated position. As
pointed out by the Examiner (Ans. 17), Henry explicitly discloses that all
authentication credentials are encrypted using a key generated from a user’s
VSA password (col. 3, ll. 27-29). Further, Henry discloses that the key used
to decrypt all authentication credentials, i.e., the decryption key, is derived
from the VSA password (col. 3, ll. 29-34).
Further evidence that the decryption key is derived from the VSA
password is provided by Henry’s disclosure that the decryption key will be
correct if the submitted VSA password is correct (col. 8, ll. 8-11). In
addition, we find that, contrary to Appellants’ contention (App. Br. 5-6), it is
Henry’s local and remote authentication credentials, which are decrypted by
the decryption key (i.e., the lower layer cipher key), that correspond to the
claimed “higher layer authentication key,” as explained by the Examiner
(Ans. 18-19).
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In view of the above discussion, we find that the Examiner did not err
in finding that all of the claimed limitations are present in the disclosure of
Henry and, accordingly, the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) rejection of
independent claim 1 is sustained.

Claims 12 and 13
We also sustain the Examiner’s anticipation rejection, based on
Henry, of independent claim 12, as well as the rejection of dependent claim
13 not separately argued by Appellants. We initially refer to our previous
discussion in which we agreed with the Examiner’s finding that Henry’s
local and remote authentication credentials correspond to the claimed
authentication key. We further agree with the Examiner (Ans. 20-21) that
Henry’s VSA client is an “application” and, accordingly, Henry’s local and
remote authentication credentials, which are generated from the decryption
key derived from the VSA password generated by the VSA client,
correspond to the claimed “application authentication key.” (Henry, col. 3,
ll. 11-17, col. 5, ll. 30-34, and col. 8, ll. 33-35).

Claims 14-17
The Examiner’s anticipation rejection of dependent claims 14-16 and
independent claim 17 based on Henry is also sustained. With respect to
dependent claims 14-16, Appellants’ arguments (App. Br. 7) are not
persuasive of any error in the Examiner’s finding (Ans. 23-24) that Henry’s
local access network and targeted remote network correspond, respectively,
to the claimed “second network entity” and “third network entity.” (Henry,
col. 8, ll. 33-39). With respect to independent claim 17, we find no error in
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the Examiner’s determination (Ans. 24-25) that it is inherently necessary in
Henry to have an application authentication key stored at the authentication
entity in order to verify an application authentication message.

35 U.S.C. § 103(a) REJECTIONS
Claims 3, 4, 7-9, 11, and 18
We find no error in the Examiner’s application of the HTTP digest
password and Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) teachings of Pub 180-1 (Fig. 1,
page 2, paragraph 4) to the authentication system disclosed by Henry and,
accordingly, the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claims 3, 4, 7-9, 11,
and 18 is sustained. We agree with the Examiner (Ans. 26-35) that the use
of the SHA algorithm would be recognized by an ordinarily skilled artisan as
an obviousness enhancement to the system of Henry for use with
applications such as e-mail and electronic funds transfer which require data
integrity assurance and data origin authentication. Although Appellants
suggest (App. Br. 8-11) that an HTTP digest password, such as taught by
Pub 180-1, would not be suitable for authenticating the remote networks in
Henry, Appellants have not provided any line of reasoning as to why they
would not be suitable. Accordingly, Appellants have not shown error in the
Examiner’s findings and reasoning.

Claims 5, 6, and 10
We also sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of dependent
claims 5, 6, and 10 in which the Pub 180-1, SIP, and Maggenti references
are applied in various combinations with Henry. Appellants have made no
separate arguments for the patentability of these claims.
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CONCLUSION
Based on the analysis above, we conclude that Appellants have not
shown that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1 and 12-17 for
anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e), nor in rejecting claims 3-11 and 18
for obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).

DECISION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1 and 12-17 under
35 U.S.C. § 102(e) and claims 3-11 and 18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) is
affirmed.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv) (2009).

AFFIRMED

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