International Business Machines Corporation

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Jun 2, 2021

2019005484 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 2, 2021)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
14/630,001 02/24/2015 Lucas Brutschy YOR920140427US1 1050
48237 7590 06/02/2021
Harrington & Smith, Attorneys At Law, LLC
4 Research Drive
Suite 202
Shelton, CT 06484
EXAMINER
AMORIN, CARLOS E
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2498
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
06/02/2021 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@hspatent.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte LUCAS BRUTSCHY, PIETRO FERRARA, MARCO PISTOIA,
and OMER TRIPP
Appeal 2019-005484
Application 14/630,001
Technology Center 2400
Before JAMES R. HUGHES, ERIC S. FRAHM, and SCOTT E. BAIN,
Administrative Patent Judges.

BAIN, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
decision to reject claims 1–8. Claims 9–18 have been canceled. In the
Answer, the Examiner withdraws the rejection of claim 5, leaving claims 1–
4 and 6–8 before us on appeal. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM.

1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in
37 C.F.R. § 1.42(a). Appellant identifies the real party in interest as
International Business Machines Corporation. Appeal Br. 4.
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Application 14/630,001

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BACKGROUND
The Claimed Invention
The invention relates to maintaining user privacy of data in mobile or
cloud computing environments, and specifically, to “analysis of program
code accessing sensitive system resources having private data of a user.”
Spec. ¶ 1.
Claim 1, the sole independent claim, is illustrative of the invention
and the subject matter in dispute, and is reproduced below:
1. A method, comprising:
accessing a permission that is to be revoked for an
application, wherein the permission involves access to private
data of a user via an application programming interface of an
operating system;
determining, in the application, one or more program
points involving access to the private data of the user via the
application programming interface, wherein the determining
comprises performing constraint inference of the code in the
application to determine a plurality of constraints on paths
through the code;
for each selected one of the one or more program points,
rewriting code in the application to replace a source statement,
at the selected program point, that accesses the private data with
another statement that allocates a mock object or value based
on a type of an actual value returned by the source statement,
wherein the mock object or value does not expose the private
data of the user;
packaging the application with the rewritten code as an
output application able to be subsequently executed by the user;
and
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outputting the application with the rewritten code for use
by the user.

Appeal Br. 50 (Claims App.) (emphases added).

References
The references relied upon by the Examiner are:
Name Reference Date
Czajkowski et al.
(“Czajkowski”)
US 2005/0010922 A1 Jan. 13, 2005
Tillmann et al.
(“Tillmann”)
US 2007/0033442 A1 Feb. 8, 2007
Haik et al.
(“Haik”)
US 2015/0235043 A1 Aug. 20, 2015

The Rejections on Appeal
Claims 1–4, 6, and 7 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
unpatentable over Haik and Tillmann. Final Act. 4–11.2
Claim 8 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over
Haik, Tillmann, and Czajkowski. Final Act. 11.
DISCUSSION
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellant’s
arguments presented in this appeal. Arguments that Appellant could have
made but did not make in the Briefs are deemed to be waived. See 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(1)(iv). For the reasons discussed below, Appellant has not
persuaded us of error. We adopt as our own the findings and reasons set

2 As noted above, the Examiner has withdrawn the rejection of claim 5.
Ans. 11.
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forth in the rejections and in the Examiner’s Answer. We provide the
following for highlighting and emphasis.
Obviousness Rejection of Claims 1–4, 6, and 7
Appellant argues the Examiner erred in finding the prior art teaches or
suggests “rewriting code in the application to replace a source
statement . . . wherein the mock object or value does not expose the private
data of the user,” as recited in claim 1. Appeal Br. 23–24, 27. Appellant
further argues the Examiner erred in finding the prior art teaches or suggests
“performing constraint inference of the code in the application to determine
a plurality of constraints on paths through the code,” as recited in claim 1.
Reply Br. 3; see also Appeal Br. 23–24, 27.
Specifically, Appellant argues that “[t]here are two major differences
between the currently claimed subject matter and the proposed
combination.” Reply Br. 2. First, Appellant contends “Haik does not
disclose what is alleged since Haik provides mock data to an app whereas
the current invention changes the code of the app for it itself to produce
mock data.” Reply Br. 2 (emphasis in original); Appeal Br. 23. Second,
Appellant contends “Tillmann does not disclose what is alleged since
Tillmann performs symbolic execution to identify path constraints of the
implementation rather than performing constraint inference of the code as
claimed.” Reply Br. 2 (emphasis in original); Appeal Br. 29. Appellant also
argues the Examiner erred in finding a rationale to combine Haik and
Tillmann. Reply Br. 2; Appeal Br. 18.
Appellant’s arguments, however, do not persuade us of error.
We first address the “rewriting code in the application” limitation of
claim 1. As the Examiner finds, Haik discloses adding code to an
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application. Ans. 12. The Examiner further finds, and we agree, that Haik
(at ¶ 19) discloses “deployment mock data configuration interface may be
populated with a variety of data types for which the use may selectively . . .
specify mock data to substitute for user data.” Ans. 12 (emphasis added).
The Examiner finds, and we agree, this description in Haik teaches or
suggests that the deployment mock data configuration interface is added to
the existing installation interface of the event planner application. Id. By
integrating the new deployment mock data configuration interface code,
Haik alters the code of the event planner application to incorporate the
additional functionality, instead of merely providing fetched user data by
default. Ans. 13. As the Examiner finds “[s]tated differently, the rewriting
of the event planner app installation code by integrating the new deployment
mock data configuration interface code would allow for the effective
substitution of user data with mock data.” Ans. 13–14 (emphases added).
Accordingly, the Examiner did not err in finding Haik teaches or suggests
“rewriting code in the application to replace a source statement,” as recited
in claim 1.
Turning next to the “constraint interference” limitation of claim 1, the
Examiner finds Tillmann teaches or suggests a technique to identify
executable code paths that can lead to “exceptions/error.” Ans. 19. As the
Examiner finds, Tillmann is directed to identifying any type of constraint
associated with a “negative consequence.” Ans. 20, 34; Tillmann ¶¶ 54–56.
Tillmann teaches identifying or analyzing relationships between certain
execution paths and their respective consequences (e.g., good/bad; no
flagged exception/flagged exception). Ans. 20, 34; Tillmann ¶ 135.
Specifically, as the Examiner finds, “[f]irst, Tillmann at its abstract . . .
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discloses the use of symbolic execution ‘to obtain path constraints for a
implementation under test.’” Ans. 34 (emphasis in original); Tillmann ¶¶ 7,
19, 54. Second, as the Examiner finds, the idea of identifying such
executable path constraints “is shown at Tillmann, ¶ 56, which teaches how
different types of execution paths can be discovered: paths that either
terminate successfully (e.g., no assertion of the parameterized unit test is
violated, and no exception is thrown) or paths that lead to failure of an
assertion (i.e., a violation of an explicit assertion, or a mismatch between the
actually thrown exception and the expected exception).” Ans. 20.
We are not persuaded of error in the Examiner’s findings. Appellant’s
arguments imply some narrower construction of the term “constraint
interference,” but that term is not defined in Appellant’s Specification.
Appellant’s Specification, rather, describes analyses of execution paths just
as in Tillmann. For example, in one embodiment, the Specification
describes process steps (including step 510) to infer constraints over values
produced by Application Program Interface calls guarded by given
permissions. Spec. ¶ 43. The constraints are to avoid throw statements or
bad program locations. Id. The Specification further describes (at ¶¶ 44–49)
collecting (i.e., identifying) sufficient constraints to avoid “bad executions”
when executing undesirable/bad paths in the code. A path is “bad” if the
path leads to a bad location, i.e., a program point where (i) an exception is
thrown or (ii) a well-known error handling method is involved. Spec. ¶ 49;
see also Ans. 19. Giving “constraint inference” its broadest reasonable
interpretation, as we must, In re Am. Acad. of Sci. Tech Ctr., 367 F.3d 1359,
1364 (Fed. Cir. 2004), we discern no error in the Examiner’s determination
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that the exception/error identification techniques in Tillmann teach or
suggest “constraint inference” as recited in claim 1.
Finally, we discern no error in the Examiner’s rationale in combining
the references. The references (like Appellant’s claimed invention) are
directed to analysis of program code accessing sensitive system resources
having private data of a user, and the Examiner identifies specific
suggestions to combine within the references. Final Act. 7 (citing Haik ¶¶ 6,
21, 28; Tillmann ¶¶ 80, 133); DyStar Textilfarben GmbH & Co. Deutschland
KG v. C.H. Patrick Co., 464 F.3d 1356, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (rationale to
combine references may be found within the references themselves).
Appellant does not identify any error in the Examiner’s findings regarding
the combination.
The Examiner finds, and we agree, that it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill to
modify the mock object substitution technique as taught by
Haik, by determining various path constraints as taught by
Tillmann to determine whether the mock objects to be used will
lead to exceptions and maximize the functionality of the
application’s execution path [and]
. . .
modify the mock object substitution technique as taught by
Haik as modified by Tillmann, by grouping the constraints
based on their weighted values, as taught by Czajkowski. The
motivation is to maximize the path utilization by distinguishing
the input value applied to the constraint.

Final Act. 7, 12.

Similarly, the Examiner finds, and we agree, that:

Haik teaches the integration of the deployment mock data
configuration interface into an installation interface for an
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application such that mock data may be allocated as a
substitution to actual user data. However, it would be desirable
to insert such the deployment mock data configuration interface
in a location of executable code that would not cause a crash/
error/exception. For this reason, the Tillmann technique of
determining good/bad path constraints at program points is
necessitated.

Ans. 35–36.

For the foregoing reasons, we are unpersuaded of error regarding the
Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 as unpatentable over Haik and Tillmann.
Appellant’s arguments regarding claims 2–4, 7, and 8 are redundant to those
of claim 1, and do not persuade us of error. Accordingly, we sustain the
Examiner’s rejection of claims 1–4, 7, and 8.
Obviousness Rejection of Claim 8
Dependent claim 8 recites “assigning a good constraint a first weight
and assigning a bad constraint a different, second weight, and partitioning
the constraints into clusters according to a conflict relation.” Appeal Br. 51.
Appellant argues the Examiner relies on Czakowski for assigning different
weights to good and bad constraints but, according to Appellant, Czakowski
merely “discusses sorting constraints based on weights.” Id. at 47. We
disagree.
As the Examiner finds, Czakowski’s abstract discloses “sorting a set
of constraints based on weights associated with each constraint, the
constraints being capable of being satisfied based on values selected for
corresponding associated parameters, selecting a constraint that is
unsatisfied and that has the greatest weight.” Ans. 46 (emphasis added).
We agree with the Examiner’s finding that the foregoing passage suggests
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that a differential weighting is made between constraints, and that Tillmann
teaches good constraints and bad constraints. Id. Appellant’s argument
relying solely on Czakowski, therefore, does not persuade us of error. See In
re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 426 (CCPA 1981) (“one cannot show non-
obviousness by attacking references individually where . . . the rejections are
based on combinations of references”). Moreover, we agree with the
Examiner’s rationale for combining the references for the same reasons
discussed above.
Accordingly, we are not persuaded the Examiner erred in rejecting
claim 8 as unpatentable over Haik, Tillmann, and Czajokowski. We sustain
the rejection of claim 8.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the Examiner’s decision to reject
claims 1–4 and 6–8.
DECISION SUMMARY
In summary:
Claim(s)
Rejected
35 U.S.C.
§
Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1–4, 6–8 103 Haik, Tillmann 1–4, 6, 7
8 103 Haik, Tillmann,
Czajkowski
8
Overall
Outcome
1–4, 6–8

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)(1)(iv).
AFFIRMED