DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-6 are amended be preliminary amendment on 11/25/2024 and presented for examination on merits.
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 .
Examiner's Instructions for filing Response to this Office Action
When the Applicant submits amendments regarding to the claims in response the Office Action, the Examiner would appreciate Applicant if a clean copy of the claims is provided to facilitate the prosecution which otherwise requires extra time for editing the marked-up claims from OCR.
Please submit two sets of claims:
Set #1 as in a typical filing which includes indicators for the status of claim and all marked amendments to the claims; and
Set #2 as an appendix to the Arguments/Remarks for a clean version of the claims which has all the markups removed for entry by the Examiner.
Claim Objections
Claims 1 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1 describes a method for tracing an agricultural product based on meta-universe, comprising five steps for generating system parameters, collecting agricultural product data, verifying uplinked agricultural product data, and etc. For example, Step 1 is generating, by a trusted node, system parameters, and generating, by a trusted third party, a node secret key, [in] an initialization phase of a system. Step 1 is not an initialization phase of a system. As such, The step 1 should be worded as: Step 1, generating, by a trusted node, system parameters, and generating, by a trusted third party, a node secret key [in] an initialization phase of a system,
Steps 2-5 of claim 1 follow the same language pattern of step 1, and should be corrected as suggested above.
Claim 1 recites “pasting, by an agricultural product producer, the traceability code” broadly. It appears that the traceability code is pasted to the product label. As such, the Examiner suggests changing the limitation to “pasting, by an agricultural product producer, the traceability code to a label of the agricultural product.”
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 1-6 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 pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
The rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) is/are determined by the following reasons:
Claim 1 recites, at the end of step 2, “after it is verified that there is no error” wherein the Applicant fails to particularly point out what is being verified with no error and what error condition the claim relates to. For example, the no-error condition could be the legitimacy or the authenticity of the uplinking application, or the combination of both.
Claim 1 recites two instances of “a virtual agricultural product” in step 3 unclearly or lacking sufficient antecedent basis. Furthermore, claim 1 recites “an agricultural product” in the preamble. It is unclear whether this instance of “an agricultural product” is the same as “a virtual agricultural product.”
Claims 2-6 each recite “the agricultural product” lacking sufficient antecedent basis for the reasons as discussed above.
Claim 1 recites a limitation for “the verification” in the clause “after the verification is successful” at step 3 unclearly or lacking sufficient antecedent basis. It is noted that step 2 verifies legitimacy and authenticity of the uplinking application whereas step 3 verifies uplinked agricultural product data. It is unclear what the limitation for “the verification” being successful refers to.
Claim 1 recites a limitation of “a virtual agricultural product of a meta-universe visualization platform starting to grow” unclearly in step 3, between the actions of triggering a growth function and updating a circulation trajectory of the agricultural product. It appears that a verb is missing for the limitation.
Claim 3 recites “PKf being the public key of the terminal data collecting apparatus” wherein there is no sufficient antecedent basis for the limitation for “the public key of the terminal data.”
Claim 5 recites a second instance of “a consumer” unclearly as compared to claim 1.
Claims 2-6 are also rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, because they depend from the rejected base claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-6 are allowable over prior art.
The following is an examiner's statement of reasons for allowance:
Claim 1 recites elements "collecting, by a terminal data collecting apparatus, agricultural product data in one period T, and generating an uplinking application; when a blockchain network receives the uplinking application, verifying legitimacy and authenticity of the uplinking application, and completing uplinking after it is verified that there is no error," “verifying uplinked agricultural product data, triggering a growth function of the agricultural product in a smart contract using the agricultural product data after the verification is successful, a virtual agricultural product of a meta-universe visualization platform starting to grow, and updating a circulation trajectory of the agricultural product after the agricultural product grows to mature,” “selling the agricultural product on a trading platform, generating, by the blockchain network, a traceability code after a consumer purchases the agricultural product successfully, pasting, by an agricultural product producer, the traceability code, and mailing the agricultural product to the consumer,” and “verifying legitimacy of identities and data of the meta-universe visualization platform and the consumer, and then determining a permission to open up a traceability process of the meta-universe visualization platform for viewing based on verified results.” These elements and features thereof, in combination with the other limitations in the claim, are not anticipated by, nor made obvious over the prior art of record.
It is noted that the first closest prior art (US 20220366515 A1; hereinafter “Behr”) teaches a method for tracing an agricultural product based on a meta-universe platform shown in FIG. 1, the Farmer Connect Ecosystem; which is described in par. 0061-0062. Behr discloses the use of blockchain network for tracking the agricultural product such as green coffee and a data uplinking/uploading phase wherein a terminal data collecting apparatus such as a mobile phone is used for uploading agricultural product data; see par. 0043-0048 and 0072: agricultural data or products upload and retrieval via agriculture are traded phone, email, and chat; In Behr, the phone is a terminal data collecting apparatus. Behr, discloses that, for large/sophisticated participants, the data can flow directly into and out of their ERP, which is mapped to the uplinking application; see par. 0072-0073. Behr also discloses the abstraction of a future representation of physical goods enables a trace to a product that does not yet exist; par. 0057-0067: a Farmer Application that embeds a Self-Sovereign Identity solution built on top of Hyperledger Indy/Aries … farmers begin to control their personal data and can permission it to be shared with trading partners, banks, NGOs and others offering them services, including where their coffee beans are grown; par. 0035-0037. Data upload and retrieval is secure and permissioned for coffee growing and packaging. Integration with the blockchain means trace information updates automatically; par. 0043-0045. See also par. 0034-0035: The “Thank My Farmer” app also presents sustainability projects in coffee communities and an opportunity for consumers to support them. The “Thank My Farmer” app allows coffee drinkers to trace their coffee to understand its quality and origin, and even support the farmer who grew the beans. The aim is humanizing each coffee drinker's relationship with their daily cup; par. 0044-0049: Farmer Connect system enables supply to meet demand for growing and selling farmer’s coffee with blockchain enabled agriculture products that include smart contracting, traceability, responsible sourcing metrics, logistics and inventory. However, Behr does not disclose a phase of traceability of the agricultural product for verifying legitimacy of identities and data of the meta-universe visualization platform and the consumer, and then determining a permission to open up a traceability process of the meta-universe visualization platform for viewing based on verified results, nor does Behr disclose generating, by a trusted node, system parameters, and generating, by a trusted third party, a node secret key as specified in step 1.
It is noted that the second closest prior art Tatge (US 10491608 B1) discloses the aspects of collecting and processing raw farming data and associated metadata that describes characteristics of the collected set of raw farming data or generated certified farming dataset. See col. 3, lines 5-16. Tatge discloses agronomic product transactions that can be communicated to and/or obtained by the plurality of network nodes, so that the transactions are stored on the distributed ledger wherein distributed ledger technologies are used to track the provenance of electronic agricultural datasets based on associated transactions; col. 1, lines 33-55. While Tatge teaches digitally signing (e.g., with a digital signature) a generated transaction with a private key, which can be associated with an entity or customer, Tatge fails to disclose generating, by a trusted node, system parameters and generating, by a trusted third party, a node secret key in an initialization phase of a system. Furthermore, Tatge is silent about verifying legitimacy of identities and data of the meta-universe visualization platform and the consumer, nor does Tatge disclose determining a permission to open up a traceability process of the meta-universe visualization platform for viewing based on verified results.
It is noted that the third closest prior art Pasha (US 20240265446 A1) discloses a system for blockchain-enabled documentation of trade transactions wherein the system includes buyer and seller devices for transaction execution and the blockchain is used to provide a secure, verifiable record-keeping system for agricultural trade documents. It is noted that the US PROVISIONAL APPLICATION 63/442941 (filed on 02/02/2023) is relied upon for the date of reference. While Pasha discloses generating a blockchain certificate for each event recorded on the blockchain platform, and utilizing the blockchain platform to provide a verifiable and permanent record-keeping system, thereby enhancing the security and authenticity of the agricultural trade documents (par. 0022-0023), Pasha’s the unique hash is not used for a traceability process of the meta-universe visualization platform in which the traceability code may be pasted to the product by an agricultural product producer and mailed to the consumer. Furthermore, Pasha is silent about generating, by a trusted node, system parameters for initialization of the system, and generating, by a trusted third party, a node secret key.
Therefore, claim 1 is allowable over the prior art. Claims 2-6 are allowed by virtue of their dependencies on claim 1 as they each further limit the scope of the claimed invention.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled "Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance."
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure as the prior art additionally discloses certain parts of the claim features (See “PTO-892 Notice of Reference Cited”).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DON ZHAO whose telephone number is (571)272.9953. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday to Friday, 7:30 A.M to 5:00 P.M EST.
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/Don G Zhao/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2493 03/31/2026
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