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 .
Election/Restrictions
Claims 1-4 are elected on 11/06/2025 for examination on merits. Claims 5-9 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to the nonelected groups, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse.
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
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1 recites a limitation “at least one engine profit-optimization engine” which appears to contain an extra word “engine”. In light of the Specification, a profit optimization method for one or more miners, comprising: providing, by a site optimization processor, operational policies at least one profit-optimization engine. See paragraph 0020.
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 1-4 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 a limitation “its status information” unclearly or lacking sufficient antecedent basis.
Claims 2-4 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.
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 set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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.
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 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.
Claims 1-4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over PAL (US 20240413974 A1; Note the date of reference reaches back to the date of provisional application US 63471668 filed 06/07/2023) in view of Archer (US 20240419230 A1; Note the Examiner replies on US Provisional Application US 63521082 for the date of reference 06/14/2023).
As per claim 1, PAL teaches Miner Profit Optimizer (MPO) (par. 0055: the central management server 104 that captures the BTC price, BTC Difficulty, and BTC Subsidy information from system parameter space using information sources 401a-401n that provide BTC trending information across network 107 … [making] adjustments for ROI/profitability per mining system),
comprising:
a site optimization processor (SOP) communicatively connected to at least one engine profit-optimization engine via an input-output module (PAL, par. 0062-0065: the computer system 500 includes a hardware processor 504 coupled with input and output devices; par. 0070-0072: Computer system 500 also includes a communication interface 518 coupled to bus 502. Communication interface 518 provides a two-way data communication coupling to a network link 520 that is connected to a local network 522. For example, communication interface 51. Note that the AutoTune 106 module that resides in the central management server 104 is mapped to the site optimization processor); and
a [memory] module comprising miners status information, wherein the SOP concurrently calculates and broadcasts updated breakeven efficiency and operational policy to the at least one engine based on its status information (PAL, the Abstract: dynamically calculating an optimal operational efficiency configuration of a plurality of digital currency mining systems based on trending information (which is mapped to the status information) related to the digital currency and extrinsic factors affecting the plurality of digital currency mining; PAL’s dynamically calculating means the information is updated for optimal efficiency; par. 0055-0056: AutoTune 106 obtains the extrinsic information from system parameter space and the mining systems data set to calculate and map the curve and find the optimal point 302 that maximizes system operational efficiency under the current extrinsic conditions and configures each system to the appropriate optimal settings using the HMS 201a-201n for each mining system 101a-101n. AutoTune 106 or the central management server 104 captures the BTC price, BTC Difficulty, and BTC Subsidy information from system parameter space using information sources 401a-401n that provide BTC trending information across network 107, e.g., the Internet, intranet, extranet, etc. AutoTune 106 calculates the system efficiency/profit for the data set that is prepared by AutoTune 106, central management server 104, a service provider server, etc., at different System Throughput (TH) and mining system efficiency points; see also par. 0046: store performance information locally 204 and can track performance trends in order to discover anomalous behavior. Regarding the aspect of the broadcasting, PAL discloses sending system performance information via communication interface 518 in a feedback loop; par. 0069-0072. PAL further discloses a policy to achieve energy efficiency when the bitcoin mining system 101a is running at a lower throughput, for example, and adjust the configurations for improving efficiency during runtime without any disruption in operation; par. 0022-0023).
However, PAL does not explicitly disclose a memory module comprising miners status information. This aspect of the claim is identified as a further difference.
In a related art, Archer teaches:
a memory module comprising miners status information (Archer, par. 0116-0018: memory 130b can store information with respect to containers 110, 112; receive status inputs including an operational status and/or an operational cost of each of the power sources, and power consumption metrics of the primary group of power consumers; par. 0129-0130: the status inputs can include a mining profit generated by the cryptocurrency miners (e.g., expressed in dollars per unit of electrical energy). The mining profit can be a function of a current market price of the cryptocurrency, a hash rate of the employed cryptocurrency miners, a mining difficulty metric)
PAL and Archer are analogous art to the claimed invention in the same field of endeavor as the claimed invention, or reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor, which may be in a different field. Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify PAL’s system with Archer’s teachings of storing miners status information in a local memory. For this combination, the motivation would have been to improve the level of accessibility of status information with a local memory.
As per claim 2, the references above teach the MPO of claim 1, wherein the SOP is communicatively connected to a plurality of engines via a grid encompassing the plurality of engines (Archer, par. 0129: the grid 206B that connects to generator metrics; the power availability and power price associated with electricity grid 206B, the power availability and power price associated with renewable energy source 206A, generator metrics and gas metrics from power generation modules of the electrical power generation system 208, and a miner status for each of the cryptocurrency miners of the interruptible computing load container 120; see also par. 0035-0036 for an electricity grid powering the cryptocurrency mining system by an electrical power generation system).
PAL and Archer are analogous art to the claimed invention in the same field of endeavor as the claimed invention, or reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor, which may be in a different field. Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify PAL’s system with Archer’s teachings of central management server or SOP communicating to individual systems via a grid for balancing the distribution of power. For this combination, the motivation would have been to improve the power balancing for profitability.
As per claim 3, the references above teach the MPO of claim 2. And Archer also teaches:
wherein the grid facilitates communication between the internal and the MPO (Archer, par. 0028-0029: the metrics of power consumption system is the grid. Archer discloses the first computing units in the grid communicate with a network for providing cloud services to remote client computers, measuring and/or receiving metrics of the power production system and metrics of a power consumption system, the power consumption system including a plurality of computing units including at least a set of first computing units and a set of second computing units, the first computing units in communication with a network for providing cloud services to remote client computers).
PAL and Archer are analogous art to the claimed invention in the same field of endeavor as the claimed invention, or reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor, which may be in a different field. Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify PAL’s system with Archer’s teachings of the metrics used for communicating grid information between the internal and the MPO. For this combination, the motivation would have been to improve communication between the individual mining systems and the central server at the mining site.
As per claim 4, the references above teach the MPO of claim 2, and PAL also teaches:
wherein the SOP is configured to: obtain at least one of (Note that optional limitations are recited herein):
bidding data, financial information, real-time cryptocurrency market status, and profitability calculations (PAL, par. 0023-0024 and 0048: profitability calculations - HMS 201a calculates the proper values to be written to the control registers given the configuration parameters and configures hardware 203 by writing the values to the appropriate control registers; calculating the highest possible hash rate for the target power level and determining the corresponding configuration parameters for the ASIC(s)).
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 03/04/2026