Obviousness

Based on the provided patent text for US9135418, the analysis of obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103 must rely on the prior art explicitly referenced or described within the document.

Identified Prior Art:

1. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/179,513 (hereinafter "the '513 application"): This application, filed on July 9, 2011, is explicitly incorporated by reference in its entirety into US9135418. The '513 application is described as:

   • An "MDM solution" that allows IT administrators to "provision devices, manage inventory, control network access, require minimum security settings, set policies and protect corporate data."
   • Disclosing an "electronic storefront" or "application repository" that permits an enterprise to "manage and distribute content developed by the enterprise or by another party," including applications to a wide variety of devices and operating systems.

2. General Knowledge of "Application Wrapping": The US9135418 patent specification extensively describes "application wrapping" as a known process in the art, without attributing it to a specific reference, implying it's general technical knowledge existing before the priority date of October 10, 2011. Key aspects of application wrapping described include:

   • Being an "automated process that augments an application with new capabilities" without needing source code modification.
   • Replacing "references to system services with references to implementations provided by a library that applies the needed mechanisms and policies."
   • Inserting "secure references... into the code of an application to replace non-secure references."
   • Invoking "additional logic prior to and at the end of executing an application" and adding "monitoring and instrumentation capabilities."
   • Providing "enhanced application management, including application security," by enabling "the injection of management layers onto the compiled applications, with no need for source code or developer-implemented application changes."

Limitation of Analysis:
The provided patent text for US9135418 does not include its claims. Therefore, this obviousness analysis will address the inventive concepts as broadly described in the specification, rather than a claim-by-claim analysis.

Obviousness Combination:

Combination: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/179,513 in combination with the general knowledge of "application wrapping."

Reasoning for Obviousness:

A person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) in the field of mobile device management and application security, as of the priority date of US9135418 (October 10, 2011), would have been motivated to combine the teachings of the '513 application with the known techniques of application wrapping to achieve the secure application features described in US9135418.

1. MDM and Policy Enforcement (from '513 application): The '513 application clearly establishes a system for mobile device management, focusing on an enterprise's ability to "set policies and protect corporate data" across distributed applications. It provides the overarching goal and the mechanism for distributing applications (an "application repository").

2. Achieving Security and Management without Source Code (from Application Wrapping): The general knowledge of "application wrapping" directly addresses a key challenge for enterprise MDM: how to augment and secure applications, especially third-party applications, without access to their source code. Application wrapping is described as an automated process capable of injecting "management layers" and "security" features by replacing or inserting references and adding logic at various points in an application's execution.

3. Motivation to Combine:

   • Meeting MDM Security Objectives: Given that the '513 application already teaches an MDM solution focused on "requir[ing] minimum security settings" and "protect[ing] corporate data", a PHOSITA would readily recognize application wrapping as an effective, efficient, and known method to implement these security settings directly within the applications distributed by the MDM's application repository. The ability of wrapping to apply "needed mechanisms and policies" and "enhanced application management, including application security" aligns perfectly with the objectives of the '513 application.
   • Enforcing Policies without Developer Involvement: Enterprises often distribute applications from various developers. The '513 application's storefront would distribute such applications. The fact that "application wrapping" requires "no source code needs to be modified" and "no need for source code or developer-implemented application changes" would be a strong motivation for a PHOSITA to combine these technologies. It allows the enterprise to enforce its security and management policies consistently across all distributed applications, regardless of whether they developed them or have access to their source code.
   • Implementing Specific Security Features: The core features described in US9135418, such as modifying application behavior with "intercepts" (secure byte codes or references), imposing "secure and unpredictable namespace[s]" for interprocess communication, and enforcing various policy-based controls (e.g., encryption, location-based restrictions, authentication), are all natural extensions or specific implementations of what application wrapping is described as capable of doing. For instance, replacing "references to system services with references to implementations provided by a library that applies the needed mechanisms and policies" directly enables control over IPC, data storage (encryption), and other application behaviors to conform to enterprise policies. The concept of creating a "secure partition" for these wrapped applications is also a logical step to further isolate and protect enterprise data, directly addressing the '513 application's goal of "protect[ing] corporate data."

Therefore, the general inventive concepts of creating secure applications by modifying compiled applications without source code access, injecting intercepts to alter behavior based on policies, creating secure namespaces for interprocess communication, and deploying them within secure partitions, as described in US9135418, would have been obvious to a PHOSITA who combined the well-known principles of "application wrapping" with the enterprise MDM and application distribution system described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/179,513.