Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Objections
Claim 5 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 5 recites “the network applicant”. It appears that this should be “the network appliance”.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the claims are directed to a computer program per se. See MPEP §§ 706.03(a) subsection II, 2106.03.
Claims 19-20 recite a “machine readable medium”.
MPEP § 2106.03, subsection I states that:
“35 U.S.C. 101 enumerates four categories of subject matter that Congress deemed to be appropriate subject matter for a patent: processes, machines, manufactures and compositions of matter. As explained by the courts, these "four categories together describe the exclusive reach of patentable subject matter. If a claim covers material not found in any of the four statutory categories, that claim falls outside the plainly expressed scope of § 101 even if the subject matter is otherwise new and useful." In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 1354, 84 USPQ2d 1495, 1500 (Fed. Cir. 2007)… Non-limiting examples of claims that are not directed to any of the statutory categories include… Products that do not have a physical or tangible form, such as information (often referred to as "data per se") or a computer program per se (often referred to as "software per se") when claimed as a product without any structural recitations…[S]oftware expressed as code or a set of instructions detached from any medium is an idea without physical embodiment. See Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp., 550 U.S. 437, 449, 82 USPQ2d 1400, 1407 (2007); see also Benson, 409 U.S. 67, 175 USPQ2d 675 (An "idea" is not patent eligible).”
MPEP § 2106.03, subsection II also further instructs that:
“A claim whose BRI covers both statutory and non-statutory embodiments embraces subject matter that is not eligible for patent protection and therefore is directed to non-statutory subject matter. Such claims fail the first step (Step 1: NO) and should be rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101, for at least this reason.”
The disclosure states that “In an example, the instructions 682 provided via the memory 654, the storage 658, or the processor 652 may be embodied as a non-transitory, machine-readable medium 660 including code to direct the processor 652 to perform electronic operations in the Edge computing node 650. The processor 652 may access the non-transitory, machine-readable medium 660 over the interconnect 656. For instance, the non-transitory, machine-readable medium 660 may be embodied by devices described for the storage 658 or may include specific storage units such as storage devices and/or storage disks that include optical disks (e.g., digital versatile disk (DVD), compact disk (CD), CD-ROM, Blu-ray disk), flash drives, floppy disks, hard drives (e.g., SSDs), or any number of other hardware devices in which information is stored for any duration (e.g., for extended time periods, permanently, for brief instances, for temporarily buffering, and/or caching). The non-transitory, machine-readable medium 660 may include instructions to direct the processor 652 to perform a specific sequence or flow of actions, for example, as described with respect to the flowchart(s) and block diagram(s) of operations and functionality depicted above. As used herein, the terms “machine-readable medium” and “computer-readable medium” are interchangeable. As used herein, the term “non-transitory computer-readable medium” is expressly defined to include any type of computer readable storage device and/or storage disk and to exclude propagating signals and to exclude transmission media.” (paragraph 0092 as filed)
As such, the disclosure does not clearly define an unqualified “machine-readable medium”. Since the disclosure states that “The storage 658 may include instructions 682 in the form of software, firmware, or hardware commands to implement the techniques described herein” (paragraph 0091 as filed), Examiner finds that the “machine-readable medium” as claimed may be interpreted as encompassing transitory embodiments and therefore may be software per se. Therefore, in accordance with MPEP § 2106.03, the claims are rejected under 35 USC § 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter. (Step 1: NO)
MPEP § 2106.03, subsection II, also states that “[I]t is a best practice for the examiner to point out the BRI and recommend an amendment, if possible, that would narrow the claim to those embodiments that fall within a statutory category”. Examiner suggests that the claims be amended to recite a “non-transitory machine-readable medium” or “non-transitory computer-readable medium” commensurate with the disclosure.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20200412635 A1 to Jha et al. (“Jha”) in view of Applicant’s admitted prior art.
MPEP § 2129 instructs that "[a] statement by an applicant in the specification or made during prosecution identifying the work of another as "prior art" is an admission which can be relied upon for both anticipation and obviousness determinations, regardless of whether the admitted prior art would otherwise qualify as prior art under the statutory categories of 35 U.S.C. 102”, "[w]here the admitted prior art anticipates the claim but does not qualify as prior art under any of the paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102, the claim may be rejected as being anticipated by the admitted prior art without citing to 35 U.S.C. 102” and "Consequently, the examiner must determine whether the subject matter identified as "prior art" is applicant's own work, or the work of another. In the absence of another credible explanation, examiners should treat such subject matter as the work of another”. (Examiner’s emphasis added.)
In accordance therewith, in the instant case, Examiner finds that particular sections of the specification are the work of another. Those sections are shown in detail below in the rejection as they apply to the claims.
Regarding claim 1, Jha taught a network appliance computing device, comprising:
a processor; and memory to store instructions (“RSU” operating as a “central router/orchestrator”; consider paragraph 0047), which when executed by the processor, cause the network appliance computing device to:
access an interest packet received from a user device (“vehicle”), the interest packet including a function name of a function and a data payload; broadcast the interest packet to a plurality of compute nodes, wherein the plurality of compute nodes are configured to execute a respective instance of the function; (consider paragraph 0053, specifically “FIG. 7 illustrates a vehicular networking scenario in a sample embodiment where vehicles 700 communicate with road side units (RSUs) 710. In such a configuration, the content consumer sends their interest packet to RSUs 710 in the network in a unicast fashion with acknowledgement. The RSUs 710 act as a virtual agent for the vehicles 700 and perform the ICN functions to fetch the relevant content within the edge network.”) (consider further paragraphs 0057-0058, specifically “As illustrated, the RSUs 710 have content storage (CS) 712 for caching incoming data packets and maintain a routing table (Forwarding Information Base (FIB)) 714 to store the outgoing interfaces and a Pending Interest Table (PIT) 716 to keep track of the forwarded interests as in the example ICN of FIG. 1. The RSUs 710 as so configured function as a virtual agent for the vehicles 700 to perform ICN functions in the following manner…When a vehicle 700 wants to fetch a piece of content it sends an interest packet to an RSU 710 in a unicast communication channel with acknowledgement capability. The interest packet may include the vehicle's spatial information (speed, heading, location, etc.) to enable the RSU 710 to make context aware forwarding and routing decisions…the RSU 710 forwards the interest packet within the edge network 800 based on the context of the vehicle 700 (e.g., spatial information, lifespan of information, etc.) and the requested content. In some scenarios, the RSU 710 would multicast those interest packets to the vehicles 700 in its coverage using transmitters 718 as well.”) (consider paragraph 0058, specifically “When a vehicle 700 wants to fetch a piece of content it sends an interest packet to an RSU 710 in a unicast communication channel with acknowledgement capability. The interest packet may include the vehicle's spatial information (speed, heading, location, etc.) to enable the RSU 710 to make context aware forwarding and routing decisions…the RSU 710 forwards the interest packet within the edge network 800 based on the context of the vehicle 700 (e.g., spatial information, lifespan of information, etc.) and the requested content. In some scenarios, the RSU 710 would multicast those interest packets to the vehicles 700 in its coverage using transmitters 718 as well.”) (consider further paragraph 0060, specifically “The vehicle 700 and the RSU 710 may also include the lifespan of interest in the interest packets. In other words, the requested content may be identified as useful only within the lifespan of interest time period as, for example, that time period during which the vehicle 700 is in range for a broadcast”) (consider further paragraph 0067, specifically “If the lifespan of interest is not expired and content is not available, or the lifespan of information is expired, the RSU 710 would broadcast/multicast the interest packet to vehicles 700 in its coverage area to fetch the content.”)
receive a plurality of responses from the plurality of compute nodes, the plurality of responses including respective results of the execution of the respective instances of the function; analyze the plurality of responses to obtain a result; and transmit the result to the user device (consider paragraph 0061, “if the RSU 710 receives multiple contents for an interest packet, the RSU 710 may combine the contents before sending the contents to the vehicle 700. For example, in the case of vehicle requested LiDAR point cloud of an intersection, the RSU 710 may forward the interest packet and received point clouds from multiple sources. In such as case, the RSU 710 would combine the received point clouds before forwarding them to the vehicle 700.”)
Jhu may be interpreted as not expressly teaching analyze the plurality of responses using a consensus protocol to identify a consensus result; and transmit the consensus result to the user device, however, Jhu did teach analyzing the plurality of responses to obtain a result and transmitting the result to the user device as shown immediately above.
Applicant readily admits in the disclosure that use of a consensus protocol to identify a consensus result from a plurality of responses from a plurality of compute nodes and wherein a plurality of responses include respective results of the execution of the respective instances of the function was well known and used in the art. (consider paragraph 0020 of the specification, specifically “the results are returned to the client that issued the NFN interest packet”) (consider further paragraph 0021 of the specification, specifically “However, specific instances of named functions may differ in their security, performance, safety, reliability, or other properties based on how the named function is implemented by a given server. Additionally, variant versions of the same function may produce different results based on data precision of variables used in calculations, lack of testing, or other variances in hardware or software platforms at a server. As such, when a named function is accessed in an NFN and only one instance of the function is executed, there is no guarantee that the results of that particular execution are accurate or consistent with executions of other instances of the function that result from different named function calls”) (consider further paragraph 0022 of the specification, specifically “Blockchain technologies use various consensus protocols or consensus algorithms to ensure data validity. Consensus algorithms are used in computer science to find agreement on a single result among distributed processes or systems”) (consider further paragraph 0024 of the specification, specifically “In a blockchain that uses a PoW consensus algorithm, such as Bitcoin, multiple nodes in the blockchain network (referred to as miners) simultaneously attempt to solve a difficult mathematical problem. Because of the design of the problem, the answer has to be calculated using brute force. The nodes continue to test unique values (known as nonces) until a suitable value is found that solves the problem. The node that manages to solve the problem announces the proposed solution to the rest of the nodes in the blockchain network. All of the other nodes in the blockchain network review the proposed solution to verify its accuracy. If more than 51% of the nodes agree that the proposed solution is correct (e.g., consensus), then the block is added to the blockchain...”)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to modify the teachings of Jha such that the modification teaches each limitation as claimed. The teachings found in the prior art admitted by Applicant would have suggested to one skilled in the art that use of a consensus protocol to identify a consensus result from a plurality of responses including respective results of the execution of the respective instances of the function from a plurality of compute nodes for the well known express advantage to ensure validity and find agreement on a single result among distributed processes or systems outputting information would be beneficial to use in a system such as Jha and would have been motivated to modify the teachings of Jha such that the analyzed result sent to the user device could have used such a consensus protocol to achieve an improved system. Such would have within the knowledge generally available to one skilled in the art as being a well-known usage of such consensus protocols and one skilled in the art would have had a reasonable expectation of the modification being successful to arrive at the invention as claimed.
Regarding claim 2, the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art taught the network appliance computing device of claim 1.
Jha may be interpreted as not expressly teaching wherein the plurality of compute nodes are members of a blockchain network, however, Applicant readily admits that such limitations were well known and used in the art. (consider paragraph 0022 of the specification, specifically “Blockchain technologies use various consensus protocols or consensus algorithms to ensure data validity. Consensus algorithms are used in computer science to find agreement on a single result among distributed processes or systems.”) (consider further paragraph 0023 of the specification, specifically “In a blockchain that uses a PoW consensus algorithm, such as Bitcoin, multiple nodes in the blockchain network (referred to as miners) simultaneously attempt to solve a difficult mathematical problem. Because of the design of the problem, the answer has to be calculated using brute force…The node that manages to solve the problem announces the proposed solution to the rest of the nodes in the blockchain network. All of the other nodes in the blockchain network review the proposed solution to verify its accuracy.”)
The motivations regarding the obviousness of claim 1 also apply to claim 2, therefore, claim 2 is rejected under 35 USC § 103 as being unpatentable over the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art and the same rationale supporting the conclusion of obviousness.
Regarding claim 3, the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art taught the network appliance computing device of claim 2.
Jha may be interpreted as not expressly teaching wherein the network appliance computing device is a member of the blockchain network, however, Applicant readily admits that such limitations were well known and used in the art. (consider further paragraph 0023 of the specification, specifically “In a blockchain that uses a PoW consensus algorithm, such as Bitcoin, multiple nodes in the blockchain network (referred to as miners) simultaneously attempt to solve a difficult mathematical problem. Because of the design of the problem, the answer has to be calculated using brute force…The node that manages to solve the problem announces the proposed solution to the rest of the nodes in the blockchain network. All of the other nodes in the blockchain network review the proposed solution to verify its accuracy.”)
The motivations regarding the obviousness of claim 1 also apply to claim 3, therefore, claim 3 is rejected under 35 USC § 103 as being unpatentable over the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art and the same rationale supporting the conclusion of obviousness.
Regarding claim 4, the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art taught the network appliance computing device of claim 3.
Jha may be interpreted as not expressly teaching wherein the network appliance computing device adds the consensus result to a block in a blockchain managed by the blockchain network, however, Applicant readily admits that such limitations were well known and used in the art. (consider paragraph 0023 of the specification, specifically “All of the other nodes in the blockchain network review the proposed solution to verify its accuracy. They may perform this review by recalculating the problem with the proposed solution. If more than 51% of the nodes agree that the proposed solution is correct (e.g., consensus), then the block is added to the blockchain”)
The motivations regarding the obviousness of claim 1 also apply to claim 4, therefore, claim 4 is rejected under 35 USC § 103 as being unpatentable over the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art and the same rationale supporting the conclusion of obviousness.
Regarding claim 5, the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art taught the network appliance computing device of claim 1.
Jha taught wherein to broadcast the interest packet to the plurality of compute nodes, the network applicant is configured to use named functioned networking (NFN) to multicast the interest packet to the plurality of compute nodes. (again, consider paragraph 0047, “East-west optimizations are handled by a central router/orchestrator where the routing optimization methods described above are used for east-west routing of named data networking (NFN) function interest and executions. A mobile edge computing (MEC) orchestration context is used for predictive routing where orchestration is based on knowledge of the Functions as a Service (FaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS) execution plan.”) (again, consider paragraph 0058, specifically “When a vehicle 700 wants to fetch a piece of content it sends an interest packet to an RSU 710 in a unicast communication channel with acknowledgement capability. The interest packet may include the vehicle's spatial information (speed, heading, location, etc.) to enable the RSU 710 to make context aware forwarding and routing decisions…the RSU 710 forwards the interest packet within the edge network 800 based on the context of the vehicle 700 (e.g., spatial information, lifespan of information, etc.) and the requested content. In some scenarios, the RSU 710 would multicast those interest packets to the vehicles 700 in its coverage using transmitters 718 as well.”) (consider further paragraph 0060, specifically “The vehicle 700 and the RSU 710 may also include the lifespan of interest in the interest packets. In other words, the requested content may be identified as useful only within the lifespan of interest time period as, for example, that time period during which the vehicle 700 is in range for a broadcast”) (again, consider further paragraph 0067, specifically “If the lifespan of interest is not expired and content is not available, or the lifespan of information is expired, the RSU 710 would broadcast/multicast the interest packet to vehicles 700 in its coverage area to fetch the content.”)
Regarding claim 6, the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art taught the network appliance computing device of claim 1.
Jha taught wherein the interest packet includes a latency-based service level objective. (consider paragraph 0060, “The vehicle 700 and the RSU 710 may also include the lifespan of interest in the interest packets. In other words, the requested content may be identified as useful only within the lifespan of interest time period as, for example, that time period during which the vehicle 700 is in range for a broadcast. The RSU 710 and edge network 800 would handle the interest packets with some predefined priority levels. For example, the temporal information would have higher priority than spatial information.”)
Regarding claim 7, the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art taught the network appliance computing device of claim 6.
Jha taught wherein the interest packet includes a deviation-based service level objective. (consider paragraphs 0053-0056, specifically “The RSUs 710 act as a virtual agent for the vehicles 700 and perform the ICN functions to fetch the relevant content within the edge network. These RSUs 710 avoid flooding the network with interest packets and reduce latency for a better user experience by performing the following: 1. Context aware caching based on location, lifespan of information, and other temporal aspects, vehicle density, etc.; 2. Context aware routing based on the edge and number of hops; and 3. Priority based interest packet forwarding including interest packet merging and splitting or multipathing.”) (consider further paragraph 0058, specifically “When a vehicle 700 wants to fetch a piece of content it sends an interest packet to an RSU 710 in a unicast communication channel with acknowledgement capability. The interest packet may include the vehicle's spatial information (speed, heading, location, etc.) to enable the RSU 710 to make context aware forwarding and routing decisions… the RSU 710 forwards the interest packet within the edge network 800 based on the context of the vehicle 700 (e.g., spatial information, lifespan of information, etc.) and the requested content. In some scenarios, the RSU 710 would multicast those interest packets to the vehicles 700 in its coverage using transmitters 718 as well”)
Regarding claim 8, the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art taught the network appliance computing device of claim 6.
Jha taught wherein the network appliance computing device is to determine a number of compute nodes to broadcast the interest packet to, based on the latency-based service level objective. (again, consider paragraph 0060, “The vehicle 700 and the RSU 710 may also include the lifespan of interest in the interest packets. In other words, the requested content may be identified as useful only within the lifespan of interest time period as, for example, that time period during which the vehicle 700 is in range for a broadcast. The RSU 710 and edge network 800 would handle the interest packets with some predefined priority levels. For example, the temporal information would have higher priority than spatial information.”) (consider further paragraph 0058, specifically “When a vehicle 700 wants to fetch a piece of content it sends an interest packet to an RSU 710 in a unicast communication channel with acknowledgement capability. The interest packet may include the vehicle's spatial information (speed, heading, location, etc.) to enable the RSU 710 to make context aware forwarding and routing decisions… the RSU 710 forwards the interest packet within the edge network 800 based on the context of the vehicle 700 (e.g., spatial information, lifespan of information, etc.) and the requested content. In some scenarios, the RSU 710 would multicast those interest packets to the vehicles 700 in its coverage using transmitters 718 as well”)
Regarding claim 9, the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art taught the network appliance computing device of claim 1.
Jha may be interpreted as not expressly teaching wherein the consensus protocol is a majority protocol, however, Applicant readily admits that such limitations were well known and used in the art. (again, consider further paragraph 0022 of the specification, specifically “Blockchain technologies use various consensus protocols or consensus algorithms to ensure data validity. Consensus algorithms are used in computer science to find agreement on a single result among distributed processes or systems”) (again, consider further paragraph 0024 of the specification, specifically “In a blockchain that uses a PoW consensus algorithm, such as Bitcoin, multiple nodes in the blockchain network (referred to as miners) simultaneously attempt to solve a difficult mathematical problem. Because of the design of the problem, the answer has to be calculated using brute force. The nodes continue to test unique values (known as nonces) until a suitable value is found that solves the problem. The node that manages to solve the problem announces the proposed solution to the rest of the nodes in the blockchain network. All of the other nodes in the blockchain network review the proposed solution to verify its accuracy. If more than 51% of the nodes agree that the proposed solution is correct (e.g., consensus), then the block is added to the blockchain...”)
The motivations regarding the obviousness of claim 1 also apply to claim 9, therefore, claim 9 is rejected under 35 USC § 103 as being unpatentable over the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art and the same rationale supporting the conclusion of obviousness.
Regarding claim 10, the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art taught the network appliance computing device of claim 1.
Jha may be interpreted as not expressly teaching wherein the consensus result indicates a percentage of compute nodes that formed the consensus result, however, Applicant readily admits that such limitations were well known and used in the art. (again, consider further paragraph 0024 of the specification, specifically “In a blockchain that uses a PoW consensus algorithm, such as Bitcoin, multiple nodes in the blockchain network (referred to as miners) simultaneously attempt to solve a difficult mathematical problem. Because of the design of the problem, the answer has to be calculated using brute force. The nodes continue to test unique values (known as nonces) until a suitable value is found that solves the problem. The node that manages to solve the problem announces the proposed solution to the rest of the nodes in the blockchain network. All of the other nodes in the blockchain network review the proposed solution to verify its accuracy. If more than 51% of the nodes agree that the proposed solution is correct (e.g., consensus), then the block is added to the blockchain...”)
Regarding claim 11, the combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art taught the network appliance computing device of claim 1.
Jha may be interpreted as not expressly teaching wherein the consensus result indicates that a consensus was not reached, however, Applicant readily admits that such limitations were well known and used in the art. (again, consider further paragraph 0024 of the specification, specifically “In a blockchain that uses a PoW consensus algorithm, such as Bitcoin, multiple nodes in the blockchain network (referred to as miners) simultaneously attempt to solve a difficult mathematical problem. Because of the design of the problem, the answer has to be calculated using brute force. The nodes continue to test unique values (known as nonces) until a suitable value is found that solves the problem. The node that manages to solve the problem announces the proposed solution to the rest of the nodes in the blockchain network. All of the other nodes in the blockchain network review the proposed solution to verify its accuracy. If more than 51% of the nodes agree that the proposed solution is correct (e.g., consensus), then the block is added to the blockchain...”) (it may be reasonably inferred that consensus is not reached when not more than 51% of the nodes agree that the proposed solution is correct (ie. <=50%))
Claims 12-18 recite a method that contain substantially the same limitations as recited in claim(s) 1-7 respectively and are also rejected under 35 USC § 103 as being unpatentable over the same combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art and the same rationale supporting the conclusion of obviousness.
Claims 19-20 recite at least one machine-readable medium including instructions to cause a network appliance computing device to perform substantially the same limitations as recited in claim(s) 1-2 respectively and are also rejected under 35 USC § 103 as being unpatentable over the same combined teachings of Jha and Applicant’s admitted prior art and the same rationale supporting the conclusion of obviousness.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. The cited prior art is directed to blockchain/distributed ledger technologies and associated consensus algorithms along with named function networking and collection and analysis of function instance results from interest packets.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to G. C. Neurauter, Jr. whose telephone number is (571)272-3918. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9am-5pm Eastern Time.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Tonia Dollinger, can be reached at 571-272-4170. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/G. C. Neurauter, Jr./Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2459
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