Patent Application 18201126 - SECURE FILE SYNCHRONIZATION TOOL

Title: SECURE FILE SYNCHRONIZATION TOOL

Application Information

Invention Title: SECURE FILE SYNCHRONIZATION TOOL
Application Number: 18201126
Submission Date: 2025-04-10T00:00:00.000Z
Effective Filing Date: 2023-05-23T00:00:00.000Z
Filing Date: 2023-05-23T00:00:00.000Z
National Class: 707
National Sub-Class: 610000
Examiner Employee Number: 83768
Art Unit: 2161
Tech Center: 2100

Rejection Summary

102 Rejections: 0
103 Rejections: 1

Cited Patents

The following patents were cited in the rejection:

US 7363330🔗

Office Action Text

DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
2. The Action is responsive to Applicant’s amendment, filed on December 17, 2024.
3. It is acknowledged that as a result of the amendment, claims 1-5, and 8 have been amended. Claim 6 has been cancelled and Claim 9 has been added.
4. Claims 1-5 and 6-9 are pending.

Response to Arguments
5. Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-5 and 6-8 have been considered but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection necessitated by Applicant’s amendment of the claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
6. In view of the amendments the 35 USC § 101 has been withdrawn. The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior office action.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
7. Claim 7 recites the limitation "a sync button" in line 4. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 1 recites “a sync button”. The Examiner wants clarification if there are supposed to be two different buttons or it refers to the same one recited before.

Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
8. In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.

9. Claim(s) 1-5 and 7-9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sherman et al (US 6,505,214), in view of Smith (US 9,773,051).
As per Claim 1, Sherman discloses:
A computer implemented method for secure file synchronization, comprising: receiving a primary path from a user; (columns 7-8, lines 60-67 and 1-10, respectively, “Another predetermined user activity might include viewing the file list in a certain file directory, such as a "My Documents" file directory. Viewing this file list would trigger relatively immediate retrieval and subsequent synchronization of the file list.” And see Figures 8A-8B) receiving a secondary path from the user; (Col. 13, lines 1-16, “FIG. 8A, and operation 400 receives the user selection. If the expanded flag is already set as determined at decision operation 402, the subfolders of that folder are retrieved from the folder database by operation 404 for user-interface (UI) display.” And See figures 8A-8B, “parent” “children” being the secondary path as claimed)
determining differences between (a) primary folders and primary files at the primary path and (b) secondary folders and secondary files at the secondary path; (See Figures 5-7, folder 1 (primary folder), folder 1.1 (secondary folder))
generating a set of actions that synchronize folders and files in the primary path and the secondary path based on the differences; (Col. 2, lines 21-37, “information to be synchronized is ascertained through actions of the user that implicitly indicate the user's interest in that information, thereby allowing for the intuitive "assumption" that the user would want that information synchronized...” and Col. 9, lines 44-61, FIG. 5, “…the Level.sub.1 Service Hierarchy Folder 200 corresponds to the top-level folder, and Folders 202, 204 and 206 correspond to the immediate subfolders that will be synchronized. If the only expanded flag set was for the Service Hierarchy Folder 200, the H/PC would synchronize Folders 202, 204 and 206, but would not synchronize folders at subsequent levels (i.e., Level.sub.3, Level.sub.4, etc.).“)
interacting with the user to edit the set of actions; (col. 16, lines 1-5, “a user may be provided with a GUI screen or other UI methodology to explicitly select subfolders that are to be excluded from the synchronization process.” Figures 4-7)
implementing each action in the edited the set of actions. (Col. 15-16, lines 54-67 and 1-5, “Referring now to FIG. 11, predetermined user actions for a particular subfolder on the device are monitored by monitor module 500. These "predetermined user actions" may include explicit or implicit designation by the user... a user may be provided with a GUI screen or other UI methodology to explicitly select subfolders that are to be excluded from the synchronization process” and Figure 8B, delete action).

However, Sherman do not specifically implements based “in response to the selection of a sync button by the user”
Smith recites the above limitation as follows: (Claim 25, “…wherein the memory further stores computer-executable instructions of: a user preference module configured to allow a user of the client device to customize the sync request manager to generate a request for syncing on demand or automatically upon receiving a trigger from the offline change detector module.”).

Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date to incorporate the teachings of Smith specifically a selection by the user into the method of Alizadeh-Shabdiz to take advantage on applying a statistical technique to measure a special space according to user’s needs. The modification would have been obvious because one of the ordinary skills in the art would implement providing control to the user according to need.

As per Claim 2, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further Sherman discloses: the step of interacting comprising: displaying the set of actions in an interactive dialog; interacting with the user to select one or more of the actions; (Col 7, lines 50-67, “For example, a predetermined user activity can be expanding an e-mail folder to view its subfolders. The user's expansion of the part of the folder hierarchy descending from a given folder implicitly reveals the user's interest in the subfolders of this folder.” And see Figures 4-7) receiving, from the dialog, a delete selected actions command; (Figure 8B, delete action) and deleting the one or more selected actions from the set of actions. (Col. 15-16, lines 54-67 and 1-5, “Referring now to FIG. 11, predetermined user actions for a particular subfolder on the device are monitored by monitor module 500. These "predetermined user actions" may include explicit or implicit designation by the user... a user may be provided with a GUI screen or other UI methodology to explicitly select subfolders that are to be excluded from the synchronization process” and Figure 8B, delete action)

As per Claim 3, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further Sherman discloses: the step of generating the set of actions comprising: adding an action to create a folder in the secondary path to the set of actions when the primary path includes the folder that is not in the secondary path; (Col 8, lines 4-21, “As an example, during an offline session, a user may create a subfolder of a folder that has not been previously expanded…”) adding an action to copy a file from a folder of the primary path to a corresponding folder of the secondary path to the set of actions when the file is not in the corresponding folder of the secondary path; (Col. 2, lines 3-20, “One solution might be to require users to explicitly designate each and every category of information to be synchronized. In this way, not "all" information would be synchronized…” user can explicitly designate to sync a folder or create a hierarchy) adding an action to delete a folder from the secondary path to the set of actions when the folder is in the secondary path and not in the primary path; (Col. 15-16, lines 54-67 and 1-5, “Referring now to FIG. 11, predetermined user actions for a particular subfolder on the device are monitored by monitor module 500. These "predetermined user actions" may include explicit or implicit designation by the user... a user may be provided with a GUI screen or other UI methodology to explicitly select subfolders that are to be excluded from the synchronization process” and Figure 8B, delete action) adding an action to delete a file from a folder of the secondary path to the set of actions when the file is in the folder of the secondary path and not in the corresponding folder of the primary path; (Col. 15-16, lines 54-67 and 1-5, “Referring now to FIG. 11, predetermined user actions for a particular subfolder on the device are monitored by monitor module 500. These "predetermined user actions" may include explicit or implicit designation by the user... a user may be provided with a GUI screen or other UI methodology to explicitly select subfolders that are to be excluded from the synchronization process” and Figure 8B, delete action)
and adding an action to replace a file in a folder of the secondary path with a corresponding file in a folder of the primary path to the set of actions when the file in the folder of the secondary path is older than the corresponding file in the folder of the primary path. (Col. 15-16, lines 54-67 and 1-5, “Referring now to FIG. 11, predetermined user actions for a particular subfolder on the device are monitored by monitor module 500. These "predetermined user actions" may include explicit or implicit designation by the user... a user may be provided with a GUI screen or other UI methodology to explicitly select subfolders that are to be excluded from the synchronization process” and Figure 8B, delete action and see Figures 9-11 )

As per Claim 4, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further Sherman discloses: the step of generating the set of actions comprising: adding an action to create a folder in the secondary path to the set of actions when the primary path includes the folder that is not in the secondary path; (Col. 15-16, lines 54-67 and 1-5, “Referring now to FIG. 11, predetermined user actions for a particular subfolder on the device are monitored by monitor module 500. These "predetermined user actions" may include explicit or implicit designation by the user... a user may be provided with a GUI screen or other UI methodology to explicitly select subfolders that are to be excluded from the synchronization process” and Figure 8B, delete action) adding an action to create a folder in the primary path to the set of actions when the secondary path includes the folder that is not in the primary path; adding an action to copy a file from a folder of the primary path to a corresponding folder of the secondary path to the set of actions when the file is not in the corresponding folder of the secondary path; (Col. 15-16, lines 54-67 and 1-5, “Referring now to FIG. 11, predetermined user actions for a particular subfolder on the device are monitored by monitor module 500. These "predetermined user actions" may include explicit or implicit designation by the user... a user may be provided with a GUI screen or other UI methodology to explicitly select subfolders that are to be excluded from the synchronization process” and Figure 8B, delete action)
adding an action to copy a file from a folder of the secondary path to a corresponding folder of the primary path to the set of actions when the file is not in the corresponding folder of the primary path; (Col. 15-16, lines 54-67 and 1-5, “Referring now to FIG. 11, predetermined user actions for a particular subfolder on the device are monitored by monitor module 500. These "predetermined user actions" may include explicit or implicit designation by the user... a user may be provided with a GUI screen or other UI methodology to explicitly select subfolders that are to be excluded from the synchronization process” and Figure 8B, delete action adding an action to replace a file in a folder of the secondary path with a corresponding file in a folder of the primary path to the set of actions when the file in the folder of the secondary path is older than the corresponding file in the folder of the primary path; (Col. 15-16, lines 54-67 and 1-5, “Referring now to FIG. 11, predetermined user actions for a particular subfolder on the device are monitored by monitor module 500. These "predetermined user actions" may include explicit or implicit designation by the user... a user may be provided with a GUI screen or other UI methodology to explicitly select subfolders that are to be excluded from the synchronization process” and Figure 8B, delete action) and adding an action to replace a file in a folder of the primary path with a corresponding file in a folder of the secondary path to the set of actions when the file in the folder of the primary path is older than the corresponding file in the folder of the secondary path. (Col. 15-16, lines 54-67 and 1-5, “Referring now to FIG. 11, predetermined user actions for a particular subfolder on the device are monitored by monitor module 500. These "predetermined user actions" may include explicit or implicit designation by the user... a user may be provided with a GUI screen or other UI methodology to explicitly select subfolders that are to be excluded from the synchronization process” and Figure 8B, delete action)

As per Claim 5, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further Sherman discloses: determining differences comprising determining differences recursively to include files in sub-folders of the primary path and files in sub-folders of the secondary path. (Col. 9, lines 29-43, “An "expanded flag" is set, as described hereinafter, in the H/PC folder database for each folder whose subfolder list is to be synchronized, and it is this "expanded flag" that is monitored by monitor operation 252 in FIG. 6. The presence of an asserted expanded flag on a top-level folder is detected by monitor operation 252. The flag can be "set" to any binary value, code, or other indicator, and in one embodiment, the "flag" is a binary value, which is set to a predetermined state when synchronization is to take place.” And Columns 9-10, lines 62-67 and 1-20, respectively, “Each of the subfolders in that particular branch are recursively synchronized by module 260. For example, if at decision operation 258 it is determined that "expanded" flag is set on Folder-1202 of FIG. 5, the Level.sub.3 Folders 208, 210 and 212 that are immediate subfolders of Folder-1202 will be synchronized. The recursive process continues down the branch associated with Folder-1202 to Level.sub.4, and further, if necessary, to synchronize all subfolders of the folders having an expanded flag set.” And see Figures 6-8).

As per Claim 7, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further Sherman discloses: the interacting comprising: generating an interactive dialog having: a delete selected button; (See Figures 4-8B and Co9l. 14, lines 1-8, “…hereinafter referred to as the "delete flag." The delete flag provides an indication as to what subfolders were present in the device list at the outset of synchronization. As will become more apparent from the ensuing description, this flag is used to ultimately direct the client to delete a particular subfolder that has been deleted from the server since the last connection”) a sync button; and a selectable list of the set of actions; (See Figures 4-8B, and column 12, lines 46-67, where selectable, displayed expansion, allows synchronization ) wherein activation of the delete selected button deletes selected ones of the actions from the selectable list and activation of the sync button triggers the implementing. (Col. 13, lines 1-17, “FIG. 9 is described in connection with the e-mail folder hierarchy embodiment. To initiate the operations, the user selects an unopened expansion icon for a folder, such as the unopened expansion icon 354A of FIG. 8A, and operation 400 receives the user selection. If the expanded flag is already set as determined at decision operation 402, the subfolders of that folder are retrieved from the folder database by operation 404 for user-interface (UI) display.”).

As per Claim 8, the rejection of Claim 7 is incorporated and further Sherman discloses: the implementing comprising interpreting each of the actions remaining in the selectable list and performing the action on one or both of the primary path and the secondary path. (Col. 15-16, lines 54-67 and 1-5, “Referring now to FIG. 11, predetermined user actions for a particular subfolder on the device are monitored by monitor module 500. These "predetermined user actions" may include explicit or implicit designation by the user... a user may be provided with a GUI screen or other UI methodology to explicitly select subfolders that are to be excluded from the synchronization process” and Figure 8B, delete action).

As per Claim 9, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further Sherman discloses: wherein the action is one of: create a folder in the secondary path, copy a file from a folder of the primary path to a corresponding folder of the secondary path, delete a folder from the secondary path, delete a file from a folder of the secondary path, and replace a file in a folder of the secondary path with a corresponding file in a folder of the primary path create a folder in the secondary path, create a folder in the primary path, copy a file from a folder of the primary path to a corresponding folder of the secondary path, copy a file from a folder of the secondary path to a corresponding folder of the primary path, replace a file in a folder of the secondary path with a corresponding file in a folder of the primary path, and replace a file in a folder of the primary path with a corresponding file in a folder of the secondary path. (Col. 8, lines 14-21, “…a user may create a subfolder of a folder that has not been previously expanded.” Being the secondary path, and see also Column. 11, lines 11-25, “Where the expanded flag is set on the Level.sub.1 folder, the immediate "children" of that "parent" folder are synchronized by the operation flow path starting at operation 310. The logical operation 310 sets n=1, and operation 312 synchronizes the Level.sub.(1-n) subfolders of the Level.sub.n folder. Where n=1, this results in synchronizing the Level.sub.2 subfolders of the Level.sub.1 folder. For example, referring briefly to FIG. 5…”).

Conclusion
10. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure.
Ellman; Nancy (US-7363330-B1) Work Monitor with File Synchronization relates to in the first panel of the File Sync Setup Wizard, the user can specify if they want to automatically send files to a folder and enter the path for the folder or if the user wants to select a folder each time the user transfers files.
Levi; Moshe (US-20070208803-A1) Method and System for Email and PIM Synchronization and Updating, relates to Inbox and their subfolders are synced.
Bergner; Emil (US-20160070717-A1), SYNCHRONIZATION AND STRATEGIC STORAGE OF MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF A FILE, relates to the sync engine begins executing automatically when the respective computing device is powered on. In some other implementations, the sync engine begins executing automatically when a user using the computing device logs in to the database system 16 or when the user opens a file stored in a sync folder.
11. THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
12. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANGELICA RUIZ whose telephone number is (571)270-3158. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Pierre M Vital can be reached on (571) 272-4215. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ANGELICA RUIZ/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2162 April 5, 2025