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. 11/968,258 01/02/2008 George Meldrum Blue GB920060114US1 8614 58139 7590 12/09/2014 IBM CORP. (WSM) c/o WINSTEAD P.C. P.O. BOX 131851 DALLAS, TX 75313 ART UNIT 2431 EXAMINER CHAI, LONGBIT PAPER NUMBER MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/09/2014 PAPER 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. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte GEORGE MELDRUM BLUE, JOHN JAMES RALPH SCOTT, JAMIE PETER SQUIBB, and PHILIP GRAHAM WILLOUGHBY Appeal 2012-002116 Technology Center 2400 Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, STANLEY M. WEINBERG, and LINZY T. McCARTNEY, Administrative Patent Judges. McCARTNEY, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants 1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. 134(a) from a rejection of claims 2 15 and 18 23. Claims 1, 16, and 17 have been canceled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. 6(b). We REVERSE. 1 According to Appellants, International Business Machines Corporation is the real party in interest. (App. Br. 1.)
STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants invention relates to the field of protection of sensitive data in programs. In particular, it relates to restricting access to sensitive data in programs. (Spec. 1.) Claim 2 illustrates the claimed subject matter: 2. A method for protecting data in program code, comprising: a programming interface providing a capability of allocating a protected region of memory which can only be accessed by authorized code; storing sensitive data present in program code in the protected region of memory; and marking parts of code in a program as authorized or not authorized to access the sensitive data, and determining if that part of a program which is executing is authorized to access protected data by reference to the marking. REJECTIONS Claims 2, 3, 6, 7, 9 13, 18, 19, 21, and 22 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(b) as being anticipated by McKee (US 6,745,307 B2; June 1, 2004). Claims 4, 5, 8, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over McKee and Chow (US 6,779,114 B1; Aug. 17, 2004). Claims 14, 15, and 23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over McKee and Yamaguchi (US 2008/0059473 A1; March 6, 2008). 2
ISSUE The following issue is dispositive of this appeal: Does McKee disclose marking parts of code in a program as authorized or not authorized to access the sensitive data, and determining if that part of a program which is executing is authorized to access protected data by reference to the marking as recited in claim 2? ANALYSIS The Examiner found McKee disclosed assigning a privilege level to a currently executing process and using the privilege level to determine whether the process is authorized to access sensitive data. (See Ans. 4 5, 12.) The Examiner also found setting a privilege level of an execut[ing] routine... constitutes marking parts of code in a program. (Id. at 12.) Appellants argue the cited portions of McKee do not disclose the marking step recited in claim 2. (See App. Br. 4 7.) Appellants contend that [w]hile the privilege level may be used... to determine if the executing process may access a memory page, it is not marked in parts of the code in a program. (Reply Br. 3 4.) We agree with Appellants. Claim 2 recites both code and a program which is executing, which indicates the recited code and executing program are not the same. Yet the Examiner equated McKee s executing process with the claimed code. (See Ans. 4 5, 12.) The Examiner has not provided sufficient evidence or reasoning to support the finding that setting a privilege level of a currently executing process discloses marking parts of code in a program as recited in claim 2. We therefore do not sustain the rejection of claim 2. Because claims 3 15 and 18 23 either recite a similar 3
limitation or depend from a claim that does, we also do not sustain the rejection of these claims. 18 23. DECISION For the above reasons, we reverse the rejection of claims 2 15 and REVERSED kme 4