DETAILED ACTION
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 11 is objected to because of the following informalities: claim 11 recites “transaction1002” and “message1004)”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 12 is objected to because of the following informalities: claim 12 recites “messages1004)”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites: a first entity…the first entity being configured to… Claim 1 appears to be an apparatus claim, but it does not recite any corresponding structure of the apparatus in the body of the claim. Claims 2-18 also do not recite any corresponding structure for the “first entity” apparatus.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claim(s) 1, 3, 4, 16 and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bradley et al. (US 2017/0289134) in view of Wang et al. (US 2021/0136042).
Regarding claims 1 and 19, Bradley et al. disclose a first entity (Figure 1A, either of servers 101, 115, 127) and a method for decentralized session management (Paragraph 16, distributed session management), the first entity being configured to:
receive a first transaction indicating information of a first session-management-related message (Figure 6, access request 601 to server 115; Paragraph 104, The access request made by the client compute device 139 can be a request to access [first session management] at least some data, locally-hosted resources and/or services at the SP server 115);
send the first transaction to one or more other first entities (Paragraph 91, the IdP server 101 and each of the SP servers 115 and 127 can exchange [includes sending] messages and indications of transactions [includes first transaction] or operations made to the distributed consensus database instances 103, 125 and 137, such that the distributed database instances can converge; Figure 6 and paragraph 109, transaction exchange among servers to manipulate data in order to achieve consensus);
receive one or more second transactions from the one or more other first entities (Paragraph 91, the IdP server 101 and each of the SP servers 115 and 127 can exchange [includes receiving] messages and indications of transactions [includes second transaction] or operations made to the distributed consensus database instances 103, 125 and 137, such that the distributed database instances can converge), wherein each second transaction indicates information of a second session-management-related message (Paragraph 31, transactions to manipulate data, including storing, modifying, and/or deleting data; Paragraph 102, devices exchange transaction information; Figure 6, related to session management of client computing device’s access request 601);
compose a first transaction set, wherein the first transaction set includes the first transaction and/or one or more second transactions (Paragraph 18, The distributed consensus database can support multiple transactions related sessions between client compute devices and servers, user authentication and/or user authorization process executed on the set of SP servers; Paragraph 35, digital ledger of database transactions and share them among the servers in the distributed consensus system 100; Paragraph 91, exchange messages and indications of transactions [produces set of transactions]); and
perform a distributed consensus protocol, together with the one or more other first entities (Figure 6, servers [first entities] achieve consensus in a distributed database a step 611).
Bradley et al. do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Wang et al.: performing the distributed consensus protocol to obtain a consensus result indicating whether the first entity is entitled to propose the first transaction set or whether one of the other first entities is entitled to propose a second transaction set (Wang et al., Paragraph 47, each full DLN node independently executes a certain consensus protocol…and generates a Transaction Set…which contains a set of newly generated but not confirmed transactions. The DLN node that is the first to generate a Transaction Set meeting the requirement provided by the DLS is declared the winner. In other words, only the winner [entitled] out of the consensus protocol generates the new Transaction Set and sends it to the P2P network for validation)).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention of Bradley et al. with the cited disclosure from Wang et al. in order to continuously form and maintain a complete and consistent ledger at each node (Wang et al., Paragraph 43).
Regarding claim 3, Wang et al. disclose wherein, if the consensus result indicates that the first entity is entitled to propose the first transaction set (Paragraph 47, winner out of the consensus protocol), the first entity is configured to: send the first transaction set (Paragraph 48, the winner…generates and sends the Transaction Set to the P2P network) together with a verifiable evidence of the consensus result as an accepted transaction set to the one or more other first entities (Paragraph 49, a DLN…receives the Transaction Set and validates it according to the same consensus protocol. At each DLN, the validated Transaction Set may be appended to the current ledger, which implies that all transactions contained in the Transaction Set are now confirmed).
Regarding claim 4, Wang et al. disclose wherein performing the distributed consensus protocol comprises determining a winner first entity among the first entity and the one or more other first entities, wherein the winner first entity is entitled to propose its first transaction set or second transaction set, respectively (Paragraph 47, each full DLN node independently executes a certain consensus protocol…and generates a Transaction Set…which contains a set of newly generated but not confirmed transactions. The DLN node that is the first to generate a Transaction Set meeting the requirement provided by the DLS is declared the winner. In other words, only the winner [entitled] out of the consensus protocol generates the new Transaction Set and sends it to the P2P network for validation).
Regarding claim 16, Bradley et al. disclose wherein the first entity is a network resource node (Figures 1 and 6, servers 101, 115 and 127 performing distributed session management for distributed consensus database) and/or is configured with a session management function, SMF.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 5-15, 17 and 18 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: regarding claim 2 (with further dependent claims 5-10), the prior art does not disclose or adequately suggest discarding the first transaction set when the consensus result is that the first entity is not entitled to propose the first transaction set and receiving the second transaction set from the other first entity that is entitled to propose the second transaction set; regarding claim 11 (with further dependent claims 12-15), the prior art does not disclose or adequately suggest that the first/second transaction is a first/second state transaction indicating state information of a first/second reply message; regarding claim 17 (with further dependent claim 18), the prior art does not disclose or adequately suggest that the first/second transaction is a first/second SMF deployment transaction indicating a first/second SMF deployment message.
Conclusion
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/OTIS L THOMPSON, JR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2477
May 7, 2026
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