Prosecution Insights
Last updated: May 29, 2026
Application No. 18/626,068

MULTISIGNATURE VERIFICATION FOR DECENTRALIZED NETWORK OPERATIONS

Final Rejection §103
Filed
Apr 03, 2024
Examiner
SHAAWAT, MAYASA A.
Art Unit
2433
Tech Center
2400 — Computer Networks
Assignee
Unit 410 LLC
OA Round
2 (Final)
87%
Grant Probability
Favorable
3-4
OA Rounds
5m
Est. Remaining
99%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 87% — above average
87%
Career Allowance Rate
144 granted / 166 resolved
+28.7% vs TC avg
Strong +23% interview lift
Without
With
+23.2%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
2y 7m
Avg Prosecution
22 currently pending
Career history
197
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§103
93.1%
+53.1% vs TC avg
§102
3.6%
-36.4% vs TC avg
§112
1.8%
-38.2% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 166 resolved cases

Office Action

§103
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 . Response to Amendment Claims 21-40 are currently pending and have been considered below. Claims 21, 24 and 33 are independent claims. Response to Arguments Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 21-40 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument. 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. Claims 21-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gutta(US Publication No. 2023/0038529 A1) and in view O’Hare(US Publication No. 2015/0317487 A1) in further view of Trevethan(US Patent No. 12034865 B2) and in further view of Chen(US Publication No. 20240020116 A1) and in further view of Awadallah(US Publication No. 20220413874 A1). Regarding Claim 21: Gutta discloses A system for executing network operations by verifying keys related to messages, the system comprising: one or more processors and one or more memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, perform operations comprising(Gutta, [0007], including one or more processors and memory storing instructions that are executable by a data processing apparatus to cause a data processing apparatus to perform operations described here, such as those described above.): generating, via a second model, based on the instruction precursor, a first message and a second message(Gutta, [0020], other components of computer system 102 or other components of system 100. As an example, while one or more operations are described herein as being performed by components of the computer system 102, those operations may, in some embodiments, be performed by components of the set of client computing devices 104. Various instructions, messages, or other sets of values may be communicated between components of the system 100 via a network 150….); Gutta does not disclose: in connection with sending the first message to a first user and the second message to a second user, obtaining a first signed message corresponding to the first message via a first user device of the first user and a second signed message corresponding to the second message via a second user device of the second user and in connection with a cryptographic verification of the first signed message and the second signed message indicating that the first signed message is sent by the first user device and that the second signed message is sent by the second user device O’Hare discloses: in connection with sending the first message to a first user and the second message to a second user, obtaining a first signed message corresponding to the first message via a first user device of the first user and a second signed message corresponding to the second message via a second user device of the second user(O’Hare, [0263], The vendor receives the signed form in step 1915, and then the vendor will generate an invoice or other contract related to the purchase to be made in step 1920. This contract is sent back to the user with a request for a signature in step 1925. The vendor also sends an authentication request for this contract transaction to the trust engine 110 in step 1930 including a hash of the contract which will be signed by both parties. To allow the contract to be digitally signed by both parties, the vendor also includes authentication data for itself so that the vendor's signature upon the contract can later be verified if necessary.); and in connection with a cryptographic verification of the first signed message and the second signed message indicating that the first signed message is sent by the first user device and that the second signed message is sent by the second user device(O’Hare,[0273], if an application 2000 has a need for a cryptographic operation, such as signing a document, the application 2000 makes a function call to the appropriate CAPI 2010 function. CAPI 2010 in turn will execute this function, making use of the resources which are made available to it by the SPM's 2015, 2020 and the cryptographic SPM 2030. In the case of a digital signature function, the cryptographic SPM 2030 will generate an appropriate request which will be sent to the trust engine 110 across the communication link 125. [0275], This cryptographic SPM 2030 makes a number of operations available to the user system 105 or a vendor system 120 which might not otherwise be available. These functions include without limitation: encryption and decryption of documents; issuance of digital certificates; digital signing of documents; verification of digital signatures), Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta’s self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta’s systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that messages sent to different users can be individually signed and returned from their respective devices for identity-specific verification as taught by O’Hare, in order to confirm that each signed message is attributable to the correct user device before carrying out the automated operation. The motivation is to ensure that each user-specific message is authenticated to the proper originating device through cryptographic verification, thereby preventing misattribution or unauthorized approvals. Gutta in view of O’Hare do not disclose: based on the cryptographic verification satisfying a threshold number of valid signatures Trevethan discloses: based on the cryptographic verification satisfying a threshold number of valid signatures(Trevethan, Col. 1, lines 33-35, allowing a threshold number of members of a group to generate a valid cryptographic signature on behalf of that group. Col. 2, Lines 43-47,A threshold subset of the participants are required to collectively sign in order to spend the output. Advantageously, a digital signature scheme is described that allows a valid signature). Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta in view of O’Hare’s self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta in view of O’Hare’s systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that network operations are not executed until a required threshold number of authenticated user signatures has been verified as taught by Trevethan, in order to ensure that protocol-driven network actions are not triggered unless sufficient parties have authorized the operation. The motivation is to ensure the secure, consensus-based execution of network operations and to prevent unauthorized or unilateral activation of automated processes. generating via a first model, based on textual instruction precursor, a set of transformed instructions for a network operation, the set of transformed instructions comprising application programming interface (API) instructions transformed from the textual instruction precursor(Chen, [0028], training a machine learning model used for generating computer code based on natural language input using training data comprising the outputted at least one identified docstring in association with the at least a portion of the one or more computer code samples. [0035], system for generating computer code from natural language input, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure. [0030], identifying at least one of the one or more candidate docstrings that provides an intent of the at least a portion of the one or more computer code samples, and/or outputting, via a user interface, the at least one identified docstring with the at least a portion of the one or more computer code samples.); Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that network operations are not executed until a required threshold number of authenticated user signatures has been verified as taught by Chen, in order to enhance executions of network operations based on user-provided textual input. The motivation is to ensure that generated instructions are not merely abstract code outputs but are capable of interacting with networked applications through well-defined interfaces. causing an execution of the network operation using the API instructions, used to generate the first message and the second message (Awadallah, [0026], a representative system architecture 100 according to some aspects of the present disclosure. In this architecture, the natural language (NL) to API conversion happens on a user device 102. The user device 102 receives one or more NL utterances via user interface 106. NL utterances can comprise a phrase, a sentence, or other NL input. The NL input can come in the form of text, speech, or other NL input, [0030], The NL to API conversion 108 can be implemented via hardware, such as in a neural network chip, which is designed to execute a trained machine learning mode), transformed from the textual instruction precursor (Awadallah, [0035], an exemplary system for generating computer code from natural language input, in accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.) Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that network operations are not executed until a required threshold number of authenticated user signatures has been verified as taught by Awadallah, in order to enable automated performance of backend or network-based services in response to user input. The motivation is to ensure that transformed instructions derived from textual input are not only generated but also utilized to trigger and generates responses and executes corresponding actions. Regarding Claim 22: The system of claim 21, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan and in further view of Chen and in further view of Awadallah disclose the operations further comprising: in connection with detecting an event related to the textual instruction precursor, providing the event to a heuristic model to determine a failure likelihood associated with the event(Gutta, [0018], Some embodiments may obtain a natural language document that is stored in one or more formats and identify clauses or other text sections using a first set of artificial intelligence (AI) learning models (or “learning models”), such as deep learning models or other machine learning models. Some embodiments may then use a second set of learning models (e.g., a second set of deep learning models) to identify one or more entities and protocol operation types based on the identified text section); and sending the failure likelihood to the first user device(Gutta, [0060], The validation criteria may include a default criterion or a criterion that is specific to a user or a type of user (e.g., a user associated with a specific organization).). Claims 23 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gutta(US Publication No. 2023/0038529 A1) in view O’Hare(US Publication No. 2015/0317487 A1) in further view of Trevethan(US Patent No. 12034865 B2) in further view of Chen(US Publication No. 20240020116 A1) and in further view of Awadallah(US Publication No. 20220413874 A1) and in further view of Gancarz(US Publication No. 2020/0028675 A1). Regarding Claim 23: The system of claim 21 Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan in further view of Chen and in further view of Awadallah and in further view of Gancarz disclose and the cryptographic verification comprises a verification of the first digital signature based on the first public key(O’Hare, [0105], the cryptographic handling module 625 may perform data comparisons, data parsing, data splitting, data separating, data hashing, data encryption or decryption, digital signature verification or creation, digital certificate generation, storage, or requests, cryptographic key generation… the cryptographic handling module 625 may perform public-key encryption, symmetric-key encryption, or both. In addition to the foregoing). the first signed message comprises a first digital signature(O’Hare, [0161], the trust engine 110 performs power of attorney-like functions. For example, the trust engine 110 may digitally sign the message on behalf of a third party) Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan in further view of Chen and in further view of Awadallah do not disclose: the operations further comprising providing a first public key associated with the first user to an airgap device that is not connected to a network used to execute the network operation, wherein the cryptographic verification is performed by the airgap device Gancarz discloses: the operations further comprising providing a first public key associated with the first user to an airgap device that is not connected to a network used to execute the network operation, wherein(Gancarz, [0005], an air-gapped machine is typically a fully separate hardware system, which requires operating and maintaining two systems, which is inconvenient, especially in case of so-called electronic wallets, where in addition to the electronic device or a computer program functioning as the wallet, a user must carry a separate air-gapped transaction signing device): the cryptographic verification is performed by the airgap device(Gancarz, [0020], a system and method for signing transactions over a virtual air gap, using air-gapped private keys.); Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan’s self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan’s systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that cryptographic verification of user signatures may be performed on an isolated, air-gapped device using a public key supplied to that device, as taught by Gancarz, in order to protect private keys, reduce attack surface, and validate signatures in a secure environment separate from the networked execution platform. The motivation is to enhance the integrity of multisignature verification by performing signature validation on a hardened, non-networked device, thereby preventing tampering, interception, or spoofing of signature-verification operations. Claims 24-32 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gutta(US Publication No. 2023/0038529 A1) in view O’Hare(US Publication No. 2015/0317487 A1) in further view of Awadallah(US Publication No. 20220413874 A1). Regarding Claim 24: Gutta discloses: A method comprising: generating via a first model, based on an instruction precursor, a set of transformed instructions for a network operation(Gutta,[0025], the program instructions 168 may be generated by the computer system 102 based on a natural language document, for example, uploaded by the client computing device 104 a or obtained from the document features database 138. Executing a transaction, resource allocation, exchange, or other interaction between different entities with a smart contract may include executing (or “calling”) a Turing-complete block-chain-based smart contract to execute the exchange or record data ); generating, via a second model, based on the instruction precursor, a first message and a second message(Gutta, [0020], other components of computer system 102 or other components of system 100. As an example, while one or more operations are described herein as being performed by components of the computer system 102, those operations may, in some embodiments, be performed by components of the set of client computing devices 104. Various instructions, messages, or other sets of values may be communicated between components of the system 100 via a network 150….); Gutta does not disclose: sending the first message to a first user and the second message to a second user, in connection with sending the first message to the first user and the second message to the second user, obtaining a first signed message corresponding to the first message via a first user device of the first user and a second signed message corresponding to the second message via a second user device of the second user and in connection with a cryptographic verification of the first signed message and the second signed message indicating that the first signed message is sent by the first user device and that the second signed message is sent by the second user device, causing an execution of the network operation using the set of transformed instructions based on the cryptographic verification satisfying a threshold number of valid signatures O’Hare discloses: sending the first message to a first user and the second message to a second user, in connection with sending the first message to the first user and the second message to the second user, obtaining a first signed message corresponding to the first message via a first user device of the first user and a second signed message corresponding to the second message via a second user device of the second user(O’Hare, [0263], The vendor receives the signed form in step 1915, and then the vendor will generate an invoice or other contract related to the purchase to be made in step 1920. This contract is sent back to the user with a request for a signature in step 1925. The vendor also sends an authentication request for this contract transaction to the trust engine 110 in step 1930 including a hash of the contract which will be signed by both parties. To allow the contract to be digitally signed by both parties, the vendor also includes authentication data for itself so that the vendor's signature upon the contract can later be verified if necessary.); and in connection with a cryptographic verification of the first signed message and the second signed message indicating that the first signed message is sent by the first user device and that the second signed message is sent by the second user device, based on the cryptographic verification satisfying a threshold number of valid signatures(O’Hare,[0273], if an application 2000 has a need for a cryptographic operation, such as signing a document, the application 2000 makes a function call to the appropriate CAPI 2010 function. CAPI 2010 in turn will execute this function, making use of the resources which are made available to it by the SPM's 2015, 2020 and the cryptographic SPM 2030. In the case of a digital signature function, the cryptographic SPM 2030 will generate an appropriate request which will be sent to the trust engine 110 across the communication link 125. [0275], This cryptographic SPM 2030 makes a number of operations available to the user system 105 or a vendor system 120 which might not otherwise be available. These functions include without limitation: encryption and decryption of documents; issuance of digital certificates; digital signing of documents; verification of digital signatures). Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta’s self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta’s systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that messages sent to different users can be individually signed and returned from their respective devices for identity-specific verification as taught by O’Hare, in order to confirm that each signed message is attributable to the correct user device before carrying out the automated operation. The motivation is to ensure that each user-specific message is authenticated to the proper originating device through cryptographic verification, thereby preventing misattribution or unauthorized approvals. Gutta in view of O’Hare do not disclose: causing an execution of the network operation using the API instructions, used to generate the first message and the second message Awadallah discloses: causing an execution of the network operation using the API instructions, used to generate the first message and the second message (Awadallah, [0026], a representative system architecture 100 according to some aspects of the present disclosure. In this architecture, the natural language (NL) to API conversion happens on a user device 102. The user device 102 receives one or more NL utterances via user interface 106. NL utterances can comprise a phrase, a sentence, or other NL input. The NL input can come in the form of text, speech, or other NL input, [0030], The NL to API conversion 108 can be implemented via hardware, such as in a neural network chip, which is designed to execute a trained machine learning mode), Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta in view of O’Hare self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta in view of O’Hare systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that network operations are not executed until a required threshold number of authenticated user signatures has been verified as taught by Awadallah, in order to enable automated performance of backend or network-based services in response to user input. The motivation is to ensure that transformed instructions derived from textual input are not only generated but also utilized to trigger and generates responses and executes corresponding actions. Regarding Claim 25: The method of claim 24, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Awadallah disclose wherein generating the first message and the second message comprises: segmenting, via the first model, the instruction precursor into a sequence of values by using one or more character sequences as delimiters(Gutta, [0039], program code generation and deployment operations include obtaining, by a natural language processing (NLP) computer system, an unstructured natural language document including text sections including sequences of textual elements. The textual elements may include, for example, words, phrases, or symbols.); and generating, via the second model, based on the sequence of values, a natural language message that is included in both the first message and the second message(Gutta, [0032], the operation characteristics are provided to a program code determination subsystem 250. The program code determination subsystem 250 may, for example, select a code template based on the operation characteristics. In some embodiments, each protocol operation characteristic maps to a corresponding code template. For example, it may be determined that a natural language rule is associated with a first protocol operation characteristic and, in response, a first code template may be selected based on an association between the first code template and the first protocol operation characteristic. In some embodiments, a code template for a natural language rule is selected based on a combination of protocol operation characteristics associated with the rule.). Regarding Claim 26: The method of claim 24, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Awadallah disclose further comprising: obtaining a data table mapping one or more segments of the first message to a set of text definitions of the one or more segments(Gutta, [0033], The code template may include, for example, one or more functions that is mapped to a set of protocol operation characteristics determined, for example, using the operation characterization subsystem 240); and providing the set of text definitions to the first user device(Gutta, [0042], In a vector representing the unstructured natural language document, each dimension of the vector may correspond to a separate term. The definition of term depends on the application). Regarding Claim 27: The method of claim 24, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Awadallah disclose further comprising: Gutta in view of O’Hare disclose detecting a set of events based on the instruction precursor or a natural language message that is included in both the first message and the second message(Gutta, [0030], the data extraction subsystem 230 extracts additional values based on the document features or document feature values described here. For example, the data extraction subsystem 230 may determine one or more natural language rules of a document written in a text section based on the document features and document feature values.); determining a plurality of likelihoods based on the set of events(Gutta, [0053], The discounted price may, for example, be provided in a listing of discounted purchase prices for the item or used as a basis for charging a purchaser the discounted amount. As a further example, referring to Table 2, which includes rows that specify increased charges (or “upcharges”) for associated events, the content of the table may be incorporated into a set of program instructions that are executable to apply the specified conditions to purchases prices for the items); and determining a score based on the plurality of likelihoods, wherein sending the first message comprises sending the score to the first user device(Gutta, [0059], some embodiments may then provide each sequence that has a priority score that satisfies a priority score threshold to a second deep learning model to determine a document feature value associated with a document feature). Regarding Claim 28: The method of claim 24, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Awadallah disclose wherein: a plurality of users comprises the first user and the second user(O’Hare, [0247], Because such an insurance system allows someone to effectively buy a higher confidence rating from the trust engine 110, both vendors and users may wish to prevent the use of user side insurance in certain transactions.); a plurality of messages comprises the first message and the second message(O’Hare, [0249], In addition to sending a message to the user in step 1820, the transaction engine 205 may also send a message to the vendor in step 1830 which indicates that a pending authentication is currently below the required trust level. The message may also offer various options on how to proceed to the vendor.); sending the first message and the second message comprises sending a respective message of the plurality of messages to a respective user of the plurality of users(O’Hare, [0249], In addition to sending a message to the user in step 1820, the transaction engine 205 may also send a message to the vendor in step 1830 which indicates that a pending authentication is currently below the required trust level); obtaining the first signed message and the second signed message comprises obtaining a plurality of signed messages, wherein each respective signed message of the plurality of signed messages comprises a respective digital signature of a plurality of digital signatures(O’Hare, [0056], As shown in FIG. 11, during the authentication steps, the user and vendor may advantageously agree on a message, such as, for example, a contract. During signing, the signing process 1100 advantageously ensures that the contract signed by the user is identical to the contract supplied by the vendor. Therefore, according to one embodiment, during authentication, the vendor and the user include a hash of their respective copies of the message or contract, in the data transmitted to the authentication engine 215. By employing only a hash of a message or contract, the trust engine 110); and the threshold number of valid signatures is equal to a count of the plurality of users(O’Hare, [0275], issuance of digital certificates; digital signing of documents; verification of digital signatures; and such other operations as will be apparent to those of skill in the art.). Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta’s self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta’s systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that all participating users must provide valid, authenticated signatures before the system proceeds with execution of the generated protocol as taught by O’Hare, in order to confirm that each message corresponds to the correct user device and that all intended participants have approved the operation. The motivation is to ensure complete, device-verified consensus among all authorized users before executing any network operation, thereby preventing unilateral or unauthorized execution of multi-party actions. Regarding Claim 29: The method of claim 24, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Awadallah disclose wherein: a plurality of users comprises the first user and the second user(O’Hare, [0247], Because such an insurance system allows someone to effectively buy a higher confidence rating from the trust engine 110, both vendors and users may wish to prevent the use of user side insurance in certain transactions.); a plurality of messages comprises the first message and the second message(O’Hare, [0249], In addition to sending a message to the user in step 1820, the transaction engine 205 may also send a message to the vendor in step 1830 which indicates that a pending authentication is currently below the required trust level. The message may also offer various options on how to proceed to the vendor.); sending the first message and the second message comprises sending a respective message of the plurality of messages to a respective user of the plurality of users(O’Hare, [0249], In addition to sending a message to the user in step 1820, the transaction engine 205 may also send a message to the vendor in step 1830 which indicates that a pending authentication is currently below the required trust level); obtaining the first signed message and the second signed message comprises obtaining a plurality of signed messages, wherein each respective signed message of the plurality of signed messages comprises a respective digital signature of a plurality of digital signatures(O’Hare, [0056], As shown in FIG. 11, during the authentication steps, the user and vendor may advantageously agree on a message, such as, for example, a contract. During signing, the signing process 1100 advantageously ensures that the contract signed by the user is identical to the contract supplied by the vendor. Therefore, according to one embodiment, during authentication, the vendor and the user include a hash of their respective copies of the message or contract, in the data transmitted to the authentication engine 215. By employing only a hash of a message or contract, the trust engine 110); and the threshold number of valid signatures is less than a count of all of the plurality of users(O’Hare, [0275], issuance of digital certificates; digital signing of documents; verification of digital signatures; and such other operations as will be apparent to those of skill in the art.). Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta’s self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta’s systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that execution of the protocol may proceed once a sufficient subset of authenticated user signatures has been verified—rather than requiring approval from all users as taught by O’Hare, in order to allow network operations to continue efficiently when a majority or quorum of authorized users have validated the operation. The motivation is to ensure timely and practical execution of multi-party operations by permitting a threshold of verified signatures that is less than unanimous consent, while still maintaining device-verified authorization from the necessary users. Regarding Claim 30: The method of claim 24, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Awadallah disclose wherein executing the network operation comprises making an API call(Gutta, [0082], Computer implemented instructions, commands, and the like are not limited to executable code and can be implemented in the form of data that causes functionality to be invoked, e.g., in the form of arguments of a function or API call.). Regarding Claim 31: The method of claim 24, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Awadallah disclose wherein the cryptographic verification comprises a comparison of a user identifier retrieved from the first signed message and an expected user identifier(O’Hare, [0064], According to one embodiment, the authentication data includes data designed to uniquely identify a user of the cryptographic system 100. For example, the authentication data may include a user identification number, one or more biometrics, and a series of questions and answers generated by the trust engine 110 or the user). Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta’s self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta’s systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that messages sent to different users can be individually signed and returned from their respective devices for identity-specific verification as taught by O’Hare, in order to ensure that the message was actually signed by the correct authorized user before any network operation is permitted to proceed. The motivation is to ensure that automated network operations proceed only when the signer’s identity is authenticated through matching identifiers, thereby preventing impersonation, spoofed signatures, or unauthorized execution and improving the security and integrity of the verification workflow. Regarding Claim 32: The method of claim 24, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Awadallah disclose wherein using the first model comprises selecting the first model based on a decentralized network identifier(Gutta, [0016], Such contexts may include determining which nodes in a decentralized computing environment have authority to execute an operation, indicating data-access permission for an entity, determining an amount of a digital asset that may be transferred in exchange for computing resources, or the like.). Claims 33-40 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gutta(US Publication No. 2023/0038529 A1) in view O’Hare(US Publication No. 2015/0317487 A1) in further view of Trevethan(US Patent No. 12034865 B2) and in further view of Ernest(US Publication No. 2017/0109955 A1) Regarding Claim 33: Gutta discloses: One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause operations comprising: generating via a first model, based on an instruction precursor, a set of transformed instructions for a network operation(Gutta, [0007], including one or more processors and memory storing instructions that are executable by a data processing apparatus to cause a data processing apparatus to perform operations described here, such as those described above.); generating, via a second model, based on the instruction precursor, a first message and a second message wherein the first message and the second message comprise a string of options that includes a portion associated with a first option of a set of voting options of a distributed script(Gutta, [0020], other components of computer system 102 or other components of system 100. As an example, while one or more operations are described herein as being performed by components of the computer system 102, those operations may, in some embodiments, be performed by components of the set of client computing devices 104. Various instructions, messages, or other sets of values may be communicated between components of the system 100 via a network 150….); Gutta does not disclose: in connection with sending the first message to a first user and the second message to a second user, obtaining a first signed message corresponding to the first message via a first user device of the first user and a second signed message corresponding to the second message via a second user device of the second user, and in connection with a cryptographic verification of the first signed message and the second signed message indicating that the first signed message is sent by the first user device and that the second signed message is sent by the second user device O’Hare discloses: in connection with sending the first message to a first user and the second message to a second user, obtaining a first signed message corresponding to the first message via a first user device of the first user and a second signed message corresponding to the second message via a second user device of the second user (O’Hare, [0263], The vendor receives the signed form in step 1915, and then the vendor will generate an invoice or other contract related to the purchase to be made in step 1920. This contract is sent back to the user with a request for a signature in step 1925. The vendor also sends an authentication request for this contract transaction to the trust engine 110 in step 1930 including a hash of the contract which will be signed by both parties. To allow the contract to be digitally signed by both parties, the vendor also includes authentication data for itself so that the vendor's signature upon the contract can later be verified if necessary.); and in connection with a cryptographic verification of the first signed message and the second signed message indicating that the first signed message is sent by the first user device and that the second signed message is sent by the second user device(O’Hare,[0273], if an application 2000 has a need for a cryptographic operation, such as signing a document, the application 2000 makes a function call to the appropriate CAPI 2010 function. CAPI 2010 in turn will execute this function, making use of the resources which are made available to it by the SPM's 2015, 2020 and the cryptographic SPM 2030. In the case of a digital signature function, the cryptographic SPM 2030 will generate an appropriate request which will be sent to the trust engine 110 across the communication link 125. [0275], This cryptographic SPM 2030 makes a number of operations available to the user system 105 or a vendor system 120 which might not otherwise be available. These functions include without limitation: encryption and decryption of documents; issuance of digital certificates; digital signing of documents; verification of digital signatures), Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta’s self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta’s systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that messages sent to different users can be individually signed and returned from their respective devices for identity-specific verification as taught by O’Hare, in order to confirm that each signed message is attributable to the correct user device before carrying out the automated operation. The motivation is to ensure that each user-specific message is authenticated to the proper originating device through cryptographic verification, thereby preventing misattribution or unauthorized approvals. Gutta in view of O’Hare do not disclose: causing an execution of the network operation using the set of transformed instructions based on (i) the cryptographic verification satisfying a threshold number of valid signatures Treventhan discloses: causing an execution of the network operation using the set of transformed instructions based on the cryptographic verification satisfying a threshold number of valid signatures(Trevethan, Col. 1, lines 33-35, allowing a threshold number of members of a group to generate a valid cryptographic signature on behalf of that group. Col. 2, Lines 43-47,A threshold subset of the participants are required to collectively sign in order to spend the output. Advantageously, a digital signature scheme is described that allows a valid signature). Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta in view of O’Hare’s self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta in view of O’Hare’s systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that network operations are not executed until a required threshold number of authenticated user signatures has been verified as taught by Trevethan, in order to ensure that protocol-driven network actions are not triggered unless sufficient parties have authorized the operation. The motivation is to ensure the secure, consensus-based execution of network operations and to prevent unauthorized or unilateral activation of automated processes. Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan do not disclose: wherein the first message and the second message comprise a string of options that includes a portion associated with a first option of a set of voting options of a distributed script wherein the first signed message and the second signed message comprise an indication of the first option and (ii) a count of votes for the first option indicated by the first signed message and the second signed message Ernest discloses: wherein the first message and the second message comprise a string of options that includes a portion associated with a first option of a set of voting options of a distributed script (Ernest, [0017], Election Definition Record on the block chain database 6 and thereby define a new election on the voting system, by defining Voter Identifier Server public keys and IP addresses, Registrar Server public keys and IP addresses, candidate names, party affiliation, criteria for voting for each office, and defining any other data an election might conceivably entail. [0005], the block chain database includes data records associated with a particular election, including: (1) one or more contest records storing fields, names, and/or other criteria for a contest in a particular election); wherein the first signed message and the second signed message comprise an indication of the first option(Erenst, [0018], The voter client 4 is configured to publish a decision on an election contest to the block chain database 6, after first receiving authorization within the system as described above… [0005], a voting client for electronically providing data for voter eligibility and voter decisions for the contests in the election; a voter identifier server for confirming or denying voter eligibility; ) and (ii) a count of votes for the first option indicated by the first signed message and the second signed message (Erenst, [0005], where the voter decisions are cryptographically signed with a public voter key disassociated from the personal identification information provided by a voter client. [0024], When the Voter Client 4 has been approved by a quorum of Registrar Servers 5, it is able to publish decisions to the block chain database 6 cryptographically signed by its Voter Key 8 at block 17.) Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan’s self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan’s systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that network operations are not executed until a required threshold number of authenticated user signatures has been verified as taught by Trevethan, in order to ensure voter selections are clearly defined and machine-readable , as in conventional electronic voting and data exchange systems. The motivation is to improve clarity, interoperability and consistency in representation selectable options within distributed systems. Regarding Claim 34: The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 33, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan in further view of Ernest disclose wherein the first user device is a mobile computing device(Gutta, [0077], computer system 500 may include or be a combination of a cloud-computing system, a data center, a server rack, a server, a virtual server, a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a server device, a client device, a mobile telephone). Regarding Claim 35: The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 33, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan in further view of Ernest disclose wherein the first signed message indicates a date of signing(O’Hare, [0266], The trust engine 110 signs the hash of the contract with the user's private key, and sends this signed hash to the vendor in step 1960, signing the complete message on its own behalf, i.e., including a hash of the complete message (including the user's signature)). Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta’s self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta’s systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that each signed message includes a date of signing to provide temporal context for authentication and verification as taught by O’Hare, in order to enable the system to validate when the signature was produced and ensure that outdated or previously revoked approvals are not relied upon during protocol execution. The motivation is to ensure accurate auditability, temporal integrity of signatures, and prevention of replay or stale-signature attacks within a multisignature workflow. Regarding Claim 36: The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 33, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan in further view of Ernest disclose the operations further comprising generating the string of options based on the set of voting options of the distributed script (Ernest, [0017], candidate names, party affiliation, criteria for voting for each office, and defining any other data an election might conceivably entail. The criteria may also define how many Vote Identifier Servers… [0005], The block chain database includes data records associated with a particular election, including: (1) one or more contest records storing fields, names, and/or other criteria for a contest in a particular election;). Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art to modify Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan’s self-executing protocol generation from natural language text by enhancing Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan’s systems for discerning information from text documents to ensure that network operations are not executed until a required threshold number of authenticated user signatures has been verified as taught by Trevethan, in order to ensure voter selections are clearly defined and machine-readable , as in conventional electronic voting and data exchange systems. The motivation is to improve clarity, interoperability and consistency in representation selectable options within distributed systems. Regarding Claim 37: The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 33, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan in further view of Ernest disclose the operations further comprising: detecting a set of numeric values based on the instruction precursor(Gutta, [0005], a set of vectors is determined based on a count of n-grams of the document, and a first set of numeric values is determined based on the document, using a first set of neural networks); and determining an extremum of the set of numeric values, wherein sending the first message comprises sending the extremum to the first user device(Gutta, [0005], a document is obtained, a set of vectors is determined based on a count of n-grams of the document, and a first set of numeric values is determined based on the document, using a first set of neural networks. A text section of the natural language document may be selected using a second set of neural networks). Regarding Claim 38: The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 33, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan in further view of Ernest disclose the operations further comprising: detecting an event indicating a numeric value based on the instruction precursor(Gutta, [0005], a set of vectors is determined based on a count of n-grams of the document, and a first set of numeric values is determined based on the document, using a first set of neural networks); determining an event type associated with the event(Gutta, [0053], The discounted price may, for example, be provided in a listing of discounted purchase prices for the item or used as a basis for charging a purchaser the discounted amount. As a further example, referring to Table 2, which includes rows that specify increased charges (or “upcharges”) for associated events, the content of the table may be incorporated into a set of program instructions that are executable to apply the specified conditions to purchases prices for the items); determining a count of events of the event type associated with the first user(Gutta, [0053], The discounted price may, for example, be provided in a listing of discounted purchase prices for the item or used as a basis for charging a purchaser the discounted amount. As a further example, referring to Table 2, which includes rows that specify increased charges (or “upcharges”) for associated events, the content of the table may be incorporated into a set of program instructions that are executable to apply the specified conditions to purchases prices for the items); and determining a score based on the numeric value and the count of events, wherein sending the first message comprises sending the score to the first user device(Gutta, [0059], some embodiments may then provide each sequence that has a priority score that satisfies a priority score threshold to a second deep learning model to determine a document feature value associated with a document feature). Regarding Claim 39: The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 33, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan in further view of Ernest disclose the operations further comprising: obtaining a first natural language identifier associated with the first user, the first natural language identifier indicating a first language(Gutta, [0003], Natural language processing includes techniques usable for deriving meaning and actionable information from natural language documents. Applications often employ natural language processing techniques to perform document processing tasks such as translation or code quantification.); and configuring the second model based on the first natural language identifier, wherein the first message comprises text written in the first language(Gutta, [0059], some embodiments may then provide each sequence that has a priority score that satisfies a priority score threshold to a second deep learning model to determine a document feature value associated with a document feature). Regarding Claim 40: The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 39, Gutta in view of O’Hare in further view of Trevethan in further view of Ernest disclose the operations further comprising: obtaining a second natural language identifier associated with the second user, the second natural language identifier indicating a second language different from the first language; and configuring the second model based on the second natural language identifier(Gutta, [0016], existing smart contracts are often be coded in an ad-hoc manner and may be decoupled from any existing natural language text. Such an arrangement may result in a mismatch between what is written on a natural language document representing an agreement between entities and the interactions encoded into a smart contract that controls the agreement between the entities.), wherein generating the second message comprises using a third model configured with the second natural language identifier(Gutta, [0026], Documents may include, for example, PDF documents, Microsoft Word™ documents, hypertext markup language documents, documents written in other markup languages, plain text documents, or the like. The set of input data 210 may include data obtained from documents uploaded by a user via a client computing device. Alternatively, or in addition, the set of input data 210 may include documents pulled from other document-storing sources such as external servers, government databases, private databases, or the like. Alternatively, or in addition, the set of input data 210 may include data obtained via a set of application program interfaces (APIs), for example, where documents or other data may be obtained via a POST web message), wherein the second message comprises a second natural language message comprising text written in the second language(Gutta, [0016], existing smart contracts are often be coded in an ad-hoc manner and may be decoupled from any existing natural language text. Such an arrangement may result in a mismatch between what is written on a natural language document representing an agreement between entities and the interactions encoded into a smart contract that controls the agreement between the entities.). Conclusion Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MAYASA SHAAWAT whose telephone number is (571)272-3939. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F, 8 AM TO 5 PM. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, JEFFREY PWU can be reached on (571)272-6789. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300. 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. Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see https://ppair-my.uspto.gov/pair/PrivatePair. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000. /MAYASA A. SHAAWAT/Examiner, Art Unit 2433 /JEFFREY C PWU/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2433
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Prosecution Timeline

Apr 03, 2024
Application Filed
Dec 10, 2025
Non-Final Rejection mailed — §103
Jan 03, 2026
Interview Requested
Jan 15, 2026
Applicant Interview (Telephonic)
Jan 20, 2026
Examiner Interview Summary
Jan 20, 2026
Response Filed
Apr 30, 2026
Final Rejection mailed — §103 (current)

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3-4
Expected OA Rounds
87%
Grant Probability
99%
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2y 7m (~5m remaining)
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