Ex Parte Guarnieri et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jan 5, 2018

14026065 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 5, 2018)

United States Patent and Trademark Office
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
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APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
14/026,065 09/13/2013 Salvatore Angelo Guarnieri YOR920120869US2 8283
48237 7590 01/09/2018
HARRINGTON & SMITH
4 RESEARCH DRIVE, Suite 202
SHELTON, CT 06484-6212
EXAMINER
LANE, GREGORY A
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2438
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
01/09/2018 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):
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PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte SALVATORE ANGELO GUARNIERI, MARCO PISTOIA,
STEPHEN DARWIN TEILHET, and OMER TRIPP
Appeal 2016-006301
Application 14/026,065
Technology Center 2400
Before ERIC S. FRAHM, CATHERINE SHIANG, and
SCOTT E. BAIN, Administrative Patent Judges.
FRAHM, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2016-006301
Application 14/026,065
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
This is a decision on appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of a final
rejection of claims 1—13. Appellants sought entry of new dependent claim
14 and independent claims 15 and 16 in an after-final amendment filed May
21, 2015, but this amendment was not entered (see Adv. Act. mailed June
12, 2015).* 1 Therefore, only claims 1—13 are properly before us on appeal.
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse.
We have reviewed Appellants’ arguments in the Appeal Brief (App.
Br. 10-43) and the Reply Brief (Reply Br. 2—16) that the Examiner erred in
rejecting (i) the sole independent claim 1 and dependent claims 7—10 and 13
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Haviv, Benjamin, et.
al., Merlin: Specification Inference for Explicit Information Flow Problems,
PLDI’09 (Dublin, Ireland), (June 15—20, 2012)(hereinafter, “Haviv”) and
Livshits (US 2012/0076179 Al; published Mar. 29, 2012); and (ii)
dependent claims 2—6, 11, and 12 as being unpatentable over the base
combination of Haviv and Livshits taken with various other tertiary
references. We have also reviewed the Examiner’s obviousness rejections
1 Additionally, we note the Examiner indicates the after-final amendment
does not place the application in condition for allowance (see Adv. Act. at p.
1, box 12), and also indicates that should claims 14—16 be entered, they
would be rejected with claims 1—13 (see Adv. Act. at p. 1, box 15). The
remainder of the Advisory Action discusses only the merits of the rejection
of claim 1 (see Adv. Act. at p. 2). The Examiner primarily addresses the
rejection of claims 1—13 in the Final Rejection and the Answer (see Final
Act. 1—2; Ans. 10). Finally, Appellants list only the rejection of claims 1—13
as being grounds of rejection to be reviewed on appeal (see App. Br. 8—9;
Reply Br. 2—3).
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Appeal 2016-006301
Application 14/026,065
(Final Act. 4—25), as well as the Examiner’s response to Appellants’
arguments in the Appeal Brief (Ans. 2—9).
The Examiner relies on Livshits (Figs. 2, 18, 19; Section 1
Introduction; Section 6.1 Merlin Findings; Section 7.2 Mining
Specifications) as teaching reading rule files having rules as recited in
independent claim 1 (Final Act. 4—6; Ans. 5). Specifically, the Examiner
points to Figure 18 as showing a rule file with rules (Final Act. 6).
We agree with the Examiner (Final Act. 2; Ans. 3, 5) that Livshits
teaches or suggests an inferred specification and inference technique for
analysis. Clearly, the title of Livshits includes the phrase “Specification
Inference” (and not “rule”), and the description for Figure 18 is
“Specification inferred for Example 6”. Nearly every section of Livshits
cited by the Examiner discusses specification inferences, not rules.
Based on Appellants’ arguments, the primary issue before us is
whether or not an inferred Specification is a rule or a rules file. To ascertain
the scope and meaning of the claims, we consider the claim language, the
Specification, the prosecution history, and relevant extrinsic evidence.
Phillips v. AWHCorp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1314—17 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc).
“[AJbsent contravening evidence from the specification or prosecution
history, plain and unambiguous claim language controls the construction
analysis.” DSW, Inc. v. Shoe Pavilion, Inc., 537 F.3d 1342, 1347 (Fed. Cir.
2008).
We find the Examiner has not sufficiently articulated with rational
underpinning as to how or why one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of
Appellants’ invention would have understood, that an inferred specification
is equivalent to a rule (see Ans. 3), and/or “[a]n inferred specification, as
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Application 14/026,065
taught by Livshits, is still a rules file” (Ans. 5), as recited in independent
claim 1.
Appellants describe the invention as pertaining to “Rule Matching”
(Title), and to “analysis of programs using rule matching for languages with
no types or as an adjunct to current analyses, for security vulnerability
analyses” (Spec. 12). Appellants further describe “rules” in the
Specification as follows:
“Rules are something used by taint analyses to configure where to
start tracking tainted flows [sic], and where to report vulnerabilities” (Spec.
1 6). “A rule for [a] source might indicate that ‘objects of type UserContent
are sources of potential taint’” (id.). Appellants show a sample rule file 175
used to configure an analysis in Figure 2 (Spec. H 21—23; Figs. 2A, 2B).
“typical rules for taint analysis are based on types of objects. Thus, typical
rules may specify sources, sinks, and sanitizers using types of objects,” and
“rules may [] describe a path to retrieve the objects or methods that are
sources, sinks, or sanitizers” (Spec. 117).
In short, Appellants’ disclosed and claimed invention relates to rules
and rule files, not to inferences and inferred specifications as taught by
Livshits. We do not find, and the Examiner has not adequately shown, how
or why Livshits’ specification inferences (Figs. 18 and 19) are the same as
Appellants’ rules having rule files shown in Figures 2A and 2B. Further,
Livshits’ disclosure of “infer[ring] specifications from code by seeking rules
that involve action pairs” (Section 7.2) is not the same as “rules having
specified paths to methods,” as recited in claim 1. Based on the foregoing,
we concur with Appellants’ assertions (see App. Br. 10-30; Reply Br. 3—13)
that the cited portions of Livshits do not teach or suggest the limitation
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Application 14/026,065
“reading by a computing system a rule file comprising one or more rules
having specified paths to methods, each method corresponding to one of a
sink, source, or sanitizer” as recited in sole independent claim 1; or (ii) the
commensurate limitations recited in remaining dependent claims 2—13.
Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejections
of independent claim 1, as well as corresponding claims 2—13 depending
respectively therefrom.
CONCLUSION
The Examiner erred in rejecting independent claim 1 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a), as well as claims 2—13 depending respectively therefrom.
DECISION
We reverse the Examiner’s obviousness rejections of claims 1—13.
REVERSED
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