Ex Parte HarsDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardAug 21, 201814340294 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 21, 2018) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR 14/340,294 07/24/2014 122219 7590 08/23/2018 Miller, Matthias & Hull LLP/ The Boeing Company One North Franklin, Suite 2350 Chicago, IL 60606 Laszlo Hars 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. 14-0047-US-NP 5610 EXAMINER SALEHI, HELAI ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2433 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 08/23/2018 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): bmatthias@millermatthiashull.com patentadmin@boeing.com ynunez@millermatthiashull.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte LASZLO HARS Appeal2018-002092 Application 14/340,294 Technology Center 2400 Before JOHNNY A. KUMAR, JENNIFER S. BISK, and JASON M. REPKO, Administrative Patent Judges. KUMAR, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal2018-002092 Application 14/340,294 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § I34(a) from a final rejection of claims 1-11 and 13-19. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ). We affirm. Introduction According to Appellant, the invention relates to a method of providing security for data stored in external memory. Abstract. Exemplary Claim Independent claim 1 is reproduced below: 1. A method of providing security for data stored in external memory in a computing system, the computing system also including internal memory, the method comprising: storing in the internal memory a reference updatable hash value for each protected window of the external memory; and continually generating, via a dedicated circuit separate from a central processing unit ( CPU) of the computing system, a current hash value for each protected window and comparing each current hash value to its corresponding reference hash value. Rejections Claims 1-11 and 14--19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Schunter (US 2008/0235793 Al, published Sept. 25, 2008) in view of Pauly (US 2007/0150754 Al, published June 28, 2007). Final Act. 3-18. 1 Appellant is the Applicant and The Boeing Company is the real party in interest. App. Br. 2. 2 Appeal2018-002092 Application 14/340,294 Claim 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Schunter in view of Pauly, further in view of Venkatesan (US 2008/0209226 Al, published Aug. 28, 2008). Final Act. 19--20. Appellant's Contentions2 1. Appellant contends that Schunter and Pauly do not teach or suggest "storing in the internal memory a reference updatable hash value for each protected window of the external memory," as recited in independent claim 1 (hereinafter "disputed feature"). App. Br. 8- 9. In particular, Appellant contends that "Schunter' s TPM may indeed use hashing, but there is no indication that any particular memory window, whether 'internal' or 'external,' is targeted for verification in Schunter." App. Br. 9. 2. Appellant also contends that Schunter is non-analogous prior art to Pauly because although "Schunter could be characterized as being directed toward a method for protecting the integrity of a set of memory pages" (Reply Br. 8), "Pauly is directed toward a system that simply partitions operation of software in a secure environment" (Reply Br. 10). 3 2 Appellant focuses its contentions on claim 1, and advances no separate, substantive arguments for the remaining rejected claims 2-11 and 13-19. App. Br. 8-10. Arguments not made are considered waived. See 37 C.F.R. § 4I.37(c)(l)(iv). 3 We note that arguments made for the first time in the Reply Brief that could have been presented in the Appeal Brief to rebut rejections made in the Final Office Action are waived and not considered, but, for purposes of efficiency, we nonetheless address Appellant's argument regarding non- 3 Appeal2018-002092 Application 14/340,294 ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner's rejections in light of Appellant's contentions that the Examiner has erred. Further, we have reviewed the Appellant's arguments and the Examiner's response to those arguments. We disagree with Appellant's conclusions. We adopt as our own ( 1) the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken (Final Act. 2-21) and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Examiner's Answer (Ans. 2-19) in response to Appellant's Appeal Brief (App. Br. 8-10). We concur with the conclusions reached by the Examiner. However, we highlight and address specific findings for emphasis as follows. As to contention 1, we agree with the Examiner's analysis (Ans. 19) in response to Appellant's arguments. The Examiner relies upon Schunter for teaching the disputed feature. In particular, the Examiner finds, and we agree: Schunter et al. discloses TPM is a dedicated integrated circuit where hash values compared with known values for a trusted system to verify integrity intact (0006), an integrity controller (IC), which is a dedicated circuit separate from a central processing unit (0039), MPT (mirror page table) comprising table of trusted known value to the IC (0043), which are trusted by marking each page as trusted or non-trusted (0025, 0028), memory allocated by the IC for mirror page 15 table (0045), on main machine, which is internal between hardware (2 ) and hypervisor ( 6), hence discloses "storing in the internal memory a reference updateable hash". Schunter et al. discloses analogous art that was made for the first time in the reply brief. See 37 C.F.R. § 4I.41(b)(2). 4 Appeal2018-002092 Application 14/340,294 Id. hypervisor ( 6) monitors virtual machines (7) (guest OS) comprises system page table (OSPT) which is external on OS, comprising page table which records mapping of each process to the memory area allocated to the VM (0040), virtual machine is external and needs own memory to run therefore discloses "data stored in external memory in a computing system". (See Figures 1 and 2). For essentially the same reasons articulated by the Examiner (id.), we find Schunter's description (that MPT 15 of Schunter corresponds to the claimed internal memory and the OSPT 14 of Schunter corresponds to the claimed external memory) teaches or suggests the disputed feature. We observe that Appellant's Reply Brief does not rebut the Examiner's findings regarding Schunter. As to contention 2, we find Appellant's contention unpersuasive, and instead agree with the Examiner's finding (Final Act. 5) that Schunter and Pauly are analogous art, because both Schunter and Pauly relate to prevention of attacks, i.e., the same field of endeavor. 4 In particular, Schunter relates "to integrity protection in data processing systems" (Schunter ,r 2) and Pauly relates "to a system for partitioning the operation of software in a secure environment" (Pauly ,r 2). Thus, the Examiner's finding that Schunter and Pauly are directed to prevention of attacks is reasonable. 4 Prior art is analogous where: 1) the prior art is from the same field of endeavor as the claimed invention; or 2) is "reasonably pertinent" to the problem faced by the inventor. In re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320, 1325-26 (Fed. Cir. 2004). 5 Appeal2018-002092 Application 14/340,294 For the reasons set forth above, we agree with the Examiner (Final Act. 3---6) that the combination of Schunter and Pauly would have taught or suggested all of the contested limitations of representative claim 1 to one of ordinary skill in the art. DECISION The decision of the Examiner rejecting claims 1-11 and 13-19 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)(l )(iv). AFFIRMED 6 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation