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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-9 are pending.
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.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 2/10/2026 and are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
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.
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Claim 8 is directed an apparatus that when interpreted in light of the specification may read on software alone which is non-statutory. In order to comply, the claimed systems must explicitly comprise hardware (e.g. a processor, memory) so they may not be reasonably be interpreted as software alone.
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 1-9 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.
Claim 1 recites, “f + 1, 2f + 1, and 3f + 1” in the last line of the first limitation and is the first reference among several references to “f” However, f is undefined in the claim (e.g. Is it a natural number? Any number, including decimals/negatives/imaginaries?) and thus the reader of the claim is left in doubt of what the metes and bounds of the claim are.
Claim 1 recites, “a latest weak voting evidence.” However, the term “weak” is a relative term (i.e. what distinguishes “weak” from “strong” is not clear when reading the claim) and the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree to define “weak” and thus one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
Claim 1 recites the limitation "the same branched chain" in the second to last line of the claim. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim as the claim has no previous recitation of even a “chain.”
Claims 8 and 9 are rejected in by a similar rationale to that set forth in claim 1’s rejection.
Claims 2-6 are rejected due to their dependence on rejected base claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-9 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, and 35 U.S.C. 101 set forth in this Office action. See below discussion for the nearest prior art of record, particularly US Pub. No. 2021/0314216.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
US Pub. No. 2023/0066169 - The method involves performing an operation corresponding to a success probability (p) a number of times corresponding to a share value thereof by each of nodes forming a blockchain. A message is sent for being selected as consensus nodes by nodes having at least one share corresponding to the operation which is successful. The distributed consensus is performed by the consensus nodes, which are nodes having consensus shares selected from among the shares corresponding to the operation which is successful. The nodes forming the blockchain include major shareholder nodes for processing transactions.
US Pat. 11,343,313 - The apparatus comprises a storage that is arranged to store a list of unavailable blockchain peers, which does not be a lead peer of a blockchain consensus protocol. A processor arranges to generate a pre-prepare message, which contains a new block of a blockchain, and append commit messages received in a commit stage of a previous block to the blockchain to the pre-prepare message. The commit messages identify an unavailable blockchain peer from the list that is now available. A network interface broadcasts the pre-prepare message with the new block, and an appended commit messages to a group of blockchain peers.
US Pub. No. 2021/0334177 -The method involves sending a proposed value to a set of replica devices from a client device, and receiving a safe vote on the proposed value from one of the replica devices. A determination is made that a number of received safe votes for the proposed values meets or exceeds a quorum threshold. The proposed value is selected based on the determination. A period of time is set (350) within which to receive additional votes from the replica device. The selected value is committed for a single view of a flexible BFT protocol based on a period of elapsing without receiving the additional votes.
US Pub. No. 2021/0279255 - The committing method involves receiving a proposal for committing to a log a block of client requests from one of replicas, and sending a vote on the proposed block to all of the replicas. A timer is set to a delay that is twice a maximum transmission delay between any two compute nodes on a computer network, and the timer is started. The proposed block is committed to the log if each replica is a prompt replica that responds to messages on the computer network within the delay of the timer, after the timer elapses and if there is neither an equivocation during the timer delay nor a stalling condition.
US Pub. No. 2021/0314216 - The method involves executing the current round of consensus, and counting the consensus votes of consensus proposals, by target consensus node. The first set is traversed to execute migration of consensus proposals with the same consensus vote greater than or equal to f+1 and less than 2f+1 to the second set. The fourth set is traversed to execute migration of consensus proposals with the same consensus opinions greater than or equal to 2f+1 to the second set. The second set is merged into the first set, and the third set is merged into the fourth set to execute the next round of consensus until the N consensuses are stored in the first set proposal, by the target consensus node. The N consensus proposals include 2f+1 identical consensus votes. The consensus result is determined based on the consensus votes of the N consensus proposals counted in the last round of consensus, by the target consensus node.
US Pub. No. 2018/0349039 - The device has a processing module that employs first value for the source name included within the proposal message as a persistent value for the source name and the requesting computing device of the persistent value for the source name notified, when the proposal message response of the threshold number of proposal message responses that is received from the DS unit of multiple DS units indicates that no other proposal messages has been received by the DS unit of multiple DS units. A third value is employed for the source name based on the threshold number of proposal message responses from multiple DS units as the persistent value for the source name and the requesting computing device of the persistent value for the source name is notified, when the proposal message response of the threshold number of proposal message responses that is received from the DS unit of multiple DS units indicates that other proposal message has been received by the DS unit of multiple DS units.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to THOMAS J DAILEY whose telephone number is (571)270-1246. The examiner can normally be reached 9:30am-6:00pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Umar Cheema can be reached on 571-270-3037. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/THOMAS J DAILEY/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2458
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