DETAILED ACTION
Status of Claims
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
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.
This action is in reply to the response and/or arguments filed for Application 18/817,376 filed on 28 August 2024.
Claims 1-10 of Group I have been elected in the response.
Claims 11-13 of Group II have been not been elected in the response and have been withdrawn.
Claims 1-10 are currently pending and have been examined.
Information Disclosure Statement
The Information Disclosure Statement filed 26 December 2024 has been considered. An initialed copy of the Form 1449 are enclosed herewith.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. In the instant case, representative claim 1 is directed towards allowing consumers to receive contribution profits for future transactions generated through review writing of products and/or services. Claim 1 is directed to the abstract idea of utilizing rules and/or instructions for performing the existing commercial practice (e.g., sales activity) and/or concept of tracking and compensating ownership review information in an automatic manner, which is grouped under the certain methods of organizing human activity – fundamental economic principles, practices or concepts; sales activity; following set of instructions; commercial interactions; managing interactions between people (including social activities, teachings, following rules or instructions) grouping, in prong one of step 2A.
Claim 1 recites:
“receiving, by a platform server via a social network, a search request for goods or services to be traded;
loading, by the platform server, a review NFT for the goods or services to be traded;
loading, by the platform server, an order system connected to the review NFT;
receiving, by the platform server, a purchase request via the loaded order system;
upon the receipt of the purchase request, identifying, by the platform server, an owner of the review NFT and tracking information of the owner of the review NFT;
providing, by the platform server, the owner of the review NFT with a pre-set reward for the review NFT; and
minting, by the platform server, the review NFT on a blockchain network”.
Based on the underlined elements above, abstract ideas and/or concepts are identified. Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because, when analyzed under prong two of step 2A, the additional elements of the claim such as a “non-fungible token”, “platform server”, “blockchain network”, represent the use of a computer-related devices as a tool (intermediary) to perform an abstract idea and/or does no more than generally
When analyzed under step 2B, the claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception itself. Viewed as a whole, the combination of elements recited in the claims merely describe the concept of utilizing rules and/or instructions for performing the existing commercial practice (e.g., sales activity) and/or concept of tracking and compensating ownership review information in an automatic manner using computer-related technology (e.g., computer). Therefore, the use of these additional elements does no more than employ a computer as a tool to automate and/or implement the abstract idea, which cannot provide significantly more than the abstract idea itself (MPEP 2106.05(I)(A)(f) & (h)). Hence, claim 1 is not patent eligible.
Dependent claims 2-10 add further details and contain limitations that narrow the scope of the invention. However, these details do not result in significantly more than the abstract idea itself. As explained in the December 16, 2014 Interim Eligibility Guidance from the USPTO (in reference to the BuySAFE, Inc. v. Google, Inc. decision), further narrowing the details of an abstract idea does not change the § 101 analysis since a more narrow abstract idea does not make it any less abstract.
The step(s) recited are a further refinement of methods of organizing human activity – – fundamental economic principles, practices or concepts; sales activity; following set of instructions; commercial or legal interactions (agreements in the form of contracts; business relations); managing interactions between people (including social activities, teachings, following rules or instructions), because it merely describes intermediate steps and/or rules/instructions of the process.
Viewed individually and in combination, these additional elements do not provide meaningful limitations to transform the abstract idea such that the claims amount to significantly more than the abstraction itself.
Accordingly, the present pending claims are not patent eligible and are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter.
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 may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jakobsson et al., US 12,335,395 B2 (“Jakobsson”), in view O’Brien et al., US 2018/0349968 A1, further in view of Guinard et al., US 2021/0067342 A1 (“Guinard”).
Re Claim 1: (Original) Jakobsson discloses a management method for a review non-fungible token (NFT), performed by a computing apparatus, the management method comprising:
receiving, by a platform server via a social network, a search request for goods or services to be traded; (C5 L1-4, teaching a search performed on metadata elements associated with a product “processor is … configured to transmit the reference to the content file based on a result from a search”; C8 L56, teaching searching by content users for specific content “content users can search databases to find specific content”; C29 L30-32, teaching an NFT associated with a purchase “certifying party may be a car manufacturer, who generates an NFT and associates it with the purchase and/or lease of a car”)
Regarding the limitation feature(s) comprising:
loading, by the platform server, a review NFT for the goods or services to be traded;
loading, by the platform server, an order system connected to the review NFT;
receiving, by the platform server, a purchase request via the loaded order system;
upon the receipt of the purchase request, identifying, by the platform server, an owner of the review NFT and tracking information of the owner of the review NFT;
O’Brien makes these teachings in a related endeavor (FIG. 2 [205, 206] teaching a product review; ¶[0015] teaching a review associated with a purchase; ¶[0020] teaching an order system “supplier system may comprise … an order management system”; ¶¶[0045, 0048] teaching product content reviews generated and recorded in a secure and trackable distributed transaction ledger). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings of O’Brien with the invention of Jakobsson as disclosed above, for the motivation of seeing other customers' experiences with different products.
Regarding the limitation feature(s) comprising:
providing, by the platform server, the owner of the review NFT with a pre-set reward for the review NFT;
This teaching is made by Guinard in a related endeavor (¶[0147] teaching monetizing use of an NFT connected event or transaction “in order to monetize one of the disclosed embodiments, a fee parameter may be added to or included in one or more operations”; ¶[0149] teaching a fee for reading metadata associated with an NFT “ fee parameter 1010 (such as an amount of cryptocurrency a user is transferring) may be included in their request to have one or more globally unique product identifiers generated and/or reading or updating metadata”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings of Guinard with the invention of Jakobsson as disclosed above, for the motivation of compensating owners of creative works.
Jakobsson further discloses:
minting, by the platform server, the review NFT on a blockchain network. (C23 L35-42 teaching NFT minting “content creator application 1250 may enable the content creator computer system to mint NFTs by writing smart contracts to blockchains”).
Re Claim 2: (Original) Jakobsson in view of O’Brien in view of Guinard discloses the management method of claim 1. Regarding the limitation feature comprising:
loading a preliminary review NFT before purchasing the goods or services to be traded.
O’Brien makes these teachings in a related endeavor (FIG. 2 [205, 206] teaching a product review; ¶[0015] teaching a review associated with a purchase; ¶[0020] teaching an order system “supplier system may comprise … an order management system”; ¶¶[0045, 0048] teaching product content reviews generated and recorded in a secure and trackable distributed transaction ledger). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings of O’Brien with the invention of Jakobsson as disclosed above, for the motivation of seeing other customers' experiences with different products.
Re Claim 3: (Original) Jakobsson in view of O’Brien in view of Guinard discloses the management method of claim 2. Regarding the limitation feature comprising:
wherein the preliminary review NFT includes physical attribute data and benefit data of the goods or services to be traded.
Guinard makes this teaching in a related endeavor (¶[0134] teaching description information associated with a product or item “In general, product metadata may include private
descriptions (which may be accessed by one or more designated recipients), public description (which may be accessed by an arbitrary recipient), or any other information pertaining to this product. For example, the metadata may include: a product manufacturer, a product description, a product size, one or more pictures, one or more manuals, nutritional facts, an expiration date, a temperature or environmental limitations, additional information …”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings of Guinard with the invention of Jakobsson as disclosed above, for the motivation of providing product data/information of interest to a user.
Re Claim 4: (Original) Jakobsson in view of O’Brien in view of Guinard discloses the management method of claim 2.
loading a middle review NFT after execution of the purchase request of the goods or services to be traded is completed.
Re Claim 5: (Original) Jakobsson in view of O’Brien in view of Guinard discloses the management method of claim 4. Regarding the limitation feature comprising:
wherein the middle review NFT includes characteristic data for the goods or services to be traded.
O’Brien makes these teachings in a related endeavor (FIG. 2 [205, 206] teaching a product review; ¶[0015] teaching a review associated with a purchase; ¶[0020] teaching an order system “supplier system may comprise … an order management system”; ¶¶[0045, 0048] teaching product content reviews generated and recorded in a secure and trackable distributed transaction ledger). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings of O’Brien with the invention of Jakobsson as disclosed above, for the motivation of seeing other customers' experiences with different products.
Re Claim 6: (Original) Jakobsson in view of O’Brien in view of Guinard discloses the management method of claim 4. Regarding the limitation feature comprising:
loading a subsequent review NFT after an additional purchasing for a same goods or services is made.
O’Brien makes these teachings in a related endeavor (FIG. 2 [205, 206] teaching a product review; ¶[0015] teaching a review associated with a purchase; ¶[0017] teaching the updating of reviews “the control circuit 112 may further be configured to update a distributed database based on user submitted reviews”; ¶[0020] teaching an order system “supplier system may comprise … an order management system”; ¶[0026] teaching product review content “price”; ¶¶[0045, 0048] teaching product content reviews generated and recorded in a secure and trackable distributed transaction ledger). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings of O’Brien with the invention of Jakobsson as disclosed above, for the motivation of seeing other customers' experiences with different products.
Re Claim 7: (Original) Jakobsson in view of O’Brien in view of Guinard discloses the management method of claim 6. Regarding the limitation feature comprising:
wherein the subsequent review NFT includes an amount of consumption and price data for the goods or services to be trade in the additional purchasing.
O’Brien makes these teachings in a related endeavor (FIG. 2 [205, 206] teaching a product review; ¶[0015] teaching a review associated with a purchase; ¶[0017] teaching the updating of reviews “the control circuit 112 may further be configured to update a distributed database based on user submitted reviews”; ¶[0020] teaching an order system “supplier system may comprise … an order management system”; ¶[0026] teaching product review content “price”; ¶¶[0045, 0048] teaching product content reviews generated and recorded in a secure and trackable distributed transaction ledger). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teachings of O’Brien with the invention of Jakobsson as disclosed above, for the motivation of seeing other customers' experiences with different products.
Re Claim 8: (Original) Jakobsson in view of O’Brien in view of Guinard discloses the management method of claim 6. Jakobsson further discloses:
sequentially loading, by the platform server, in order of generation time of each review NFT including the preliminary review NFT, the middle review NFT, and the subsequent review NFT; and
connecting, by the platform server, the sequentially loaded review NFTs to each other through a side-chain on the blockchain network.
(C23 L35-42 teaching NFT minting “content creator application 1250 may enable the content creator computer system to mint NFTs by writing smart contracts to blockchains”).
Re Claim 9: (Original) Jakobsson in view of O’Brien in view of Guinard discloses the management method of claim 1. Jakobsson further discloses:
determining, by the platform server, whether the purchase request has been canceled;
upon the purchase request cancellation determination, blocking, by the platform server, a connection to the review NFT on the blockchain network.
(C60 L21-25 teaching uploading preferences and policies “In accordance with some embodiments, preferences may be pre-set by scriptwriters for previous uploads and remain constant for later uploads. After the uploading and configuration of policies are completed …”)
Re Claim 10: (Original) Jakobsson in view of O’Brien in view of Guinard discloses the management method of claim 9. Jakobsson further discloses:
re-establishing, by the platform server, the connection between the review NFT and the platform server when receiving a request to repurchase a same good or service after the cancellation of the purchase request on the blockchain network.
(C23 L35-42 teaching NFT minting “content creator application 1250 may enable the content creator computer system to mint NFTs by writing smart contracts to blockchains”).
Re Claims 11 - 13: (Withdrawn)
Conclusion
The prior art(s) made of record and not relied upon is/are considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
KHANDELWAL et al. (US 2022/0229883 A1) discloses a system and method for protecting, managing and monetizing creative works using blockchain. Khandelwal discloses a system and method for protecting, managing and monetizing creative works using blockchain including storing the creative works on a blockchain to timestamp the creative work and then validating the creative work. The validated creative work is then minted as a validated NFT which can then be monetized.
Vijayan (US 11,348,099 B2) discloses a SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR IMPLEMENTING BLOCKCHAIN-BASED CONTENT ENGAGEMENT PLATFORMS UTILIZING MEDIA WALLETS. Systems and methods are described for implementing blockchain-based content engagement platforms. In several embodiments, the content engagement platform includes a registry service which enables verified content creators to
mint Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). In many embodiments, media wallet applications enable users to securely store NFTs and/or other tokens on their devices. In a number of embodiments, the media wallet applications collect data concerning media consumed by users and aggregate the media consumption data in a permissioned analytics blockchain. The manner in which the media consumption data is stored can enable users to control permission to access their personal data. In one embodiment, a media wallet is provided that can securely store NFTs, display a user interface
through which user instructions concerning data access permissions are received, and cause media consumption data to be written to at least one immutable ledger in conjunction with a set of data access permissions.
Claims 1-10 are rejected.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Clifford Madamba whose telephone number is 571-270-1239. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Thu 7:30-5:00 EST Alternate Fridays.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ryan Donlon, can be reached at 571-272-3602. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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 http://pair -
direct.uspto.gov. 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.
/CLIFFORD B MADAMBA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3692