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
Applicant’s response filed 5/20/2026 was received and considered.
Claims 1-15 are pending.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 5/20/2026 have been considered but they are not fully persuasive.
Applicant’s remarks (§B, regarding claim objections) are persuasive in the view of the amendments.
Applicant’s remarks (§C, regarding rejections under 35 U.S.C. §101) are persuasive in the view of the amendments.
Applicant’s remarks (§D, regarding claim interpretation) are persuasive with respect to the claim limitations recited in claim 1 as “implemented on an FPGA” (“access control unit”, “quality filter unit”), but not persuasive with respect to “hardware security gate” (claim 1), “external agreement unit” (claim 5), “pre-processing unit” (claims 6, 7), “quality metric unit” (claim 9) and “real-world intake connector” (claim 10). Applicant argues that the limitations are “implemented on an FPGA”, signifying a “concrete structural arrangement” (remarks addressing “access control unit”, “hardware security gate”, “quality filter unit”, p. 7) and that:
“Regarding the other units such as the pre-processing unit and quality metric unit, the claims and specification describe their structural integration and interaction within the overall hardware architecture. The pre-processing unit interacts with an external directory and generates specific metadata stored in a data descriptor, while the real-world intake connector serves as a structural interface for receiving external data results. The quality filter unit is structurally connected to an agreement unit and an Al accelerator, forming a specific hardware data-processing pipeline. Because the present claims describe specific hardware-based components integrated into an FPGA architecture with defined structural interconnections and physical characteristics, the Applicant maintains that the limitations recite sufficient structure to avoid the application of 112(f)”
-remarks addressing “external agreement unit” (claim 5), “pre-processing unit” (claims 6, 7), “quality metric unit” (claim 9) and “real-world intake connector” (claim 10), p. 9.
The Examiner disagrees. The specification is devoid of adequate structure to perform the claimed functions, providing no specific hardware or algorithms for the claimed units/connector. There is no disclosure of any particular structure, either explicitly or inherently, that is sufficient to perform the claimed functions (“hardware security gate (9) for checking a hardware integrity of the device”, claim 1; “external agreement unit (11) is configured to define and store a smart contract”, claim 5; “a pre-processing unit (4) for pre-processing the data provided for decentralized machine learning according to the smart contract” (claim 6); “the pre-processing unit (4) is configured to retrieve a pointer of a pre-processing pipeline” (claim 7); “a real-world intake connector, configured to receive a real world result corresponding to the input, wherein the real-world result is stored with the corresponding input in an external directory (5)” (claim 10).
The specification describes an FPGA and describes that each element is “for” a function, but does not describe sufficient structure to achieve the function.
Claim Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The claims in this application are given their broadest reasonable interpretation using the plain meaning of the claim language in light of the specification as it would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim element (also commonly referred to as a claim limitation) is limited by the description in the specification when 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is invoked.
As explained in MPEP § 2181, subsection I, claim limitations that meet the following three-prong test will be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
(A) the claim limitation uses the term “means” or “step” or a term used as a substitute for “means” that is a generic placeholder (also called a nonce term or a non-structural term having no specific structural meaning) for performing the claimed function;
(B) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is modified by functional language, typically, but not always linked by the transition word “for” (e.g., “means for”) or another linking word or phrase, such as “configured to” or “so that”; and
(C) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is not modified by sufficient structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function.
Use of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim with functional language creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites sufficient structure, material, or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Absence of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is not to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is not interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites function without reciting sufficient structure, material or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Claim limitations in this application that use the word “means” (or “step”) are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action. Conversely, claim limitations in this application that do not use the word “means” (or “step”) are not being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action.
This application includes one or more claim limitations that do not use the word “means,” but are nonetheless being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because the claim limitation(s) uses a generic placeholder that is coupled with functional language without reciting sufficient structure to perform the recited function and the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier. Such claim limitation(s) is/are: “hardware security gate” (claim 1), “external agreement unit” (claim 5), “pre-processing unit” (claims 6, 7), “quality metric unit” (claim 9) and “real-world intake connector” (claim 10).
Because this/these claim limitation(s) is/are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, it/they is/are being interpreted to cover the corresponding structure described in the specification as performing the claimed function, and equivalents thereof.
If applicant does not intend to have this/these limitation(s) interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, applicant may: (1) amend the claim limitation(s) to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph (e.g., by reciting sufficient structure to perform the claimed function); or (2) present a sufficient showing that the claim limitation(s) recite(s) sufficient structure to perform the claimed function so as to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the enablement requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to enable one skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and/or use the invention.
Claim 15 is directed to:
“A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing program code, the program code comprising instructions that when executed by a computing system comprising a processor and an FPGA carry out the method of claim 11”.
Claim 11 is directed to:
“A method for a device to perform secure decentralized machine learning, wherein the method comprises: checking, by a hardware security gate (9), a hardware integrity of the device; controlling, by an access control unit (7), an access of a remote device to the device; and filtering, by a quality filter unit (8), data provided for decentralized machine learning, wherein one or more criteria and/or functions from a smart contract are used to perform the filtering, wherein the access control unit (7) and the quality filter unit (8) are implemented on an FPGA.”
Therefore, the scope of the claim, as written, requires an FPGA performing functions within a system comprising a processor and instructions to execute the same functions as the FPGA. The specification does not describe the interrelationship between a processor executing program code stored on a storage medium and actions performed by at least the access control unit (7) and the quality filter unit (8), “wherein the access control unit (7) and the quality filter unit (8) are implemented on an FPGA”, as that the actions of the access control unit (7) and the quality filter unit (8) appear to be programmed into hardware, such that a skilled artisan could have made and used the claimed invention.
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 1-10 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 applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Regarding claims 1-10 (claims 2-10 inherit the deficiency from claim 1 and claim 8 inherits the deficiency from claim 5), the limitations “hardware security gate” (claim 1), “external agreement unit” (claim 5), “pre-processing unit” (claims 6, 7), “quality metric unit” (claim 9) and “real-world intake connector” (claim 10) invoke 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The specification: (2) (pp. 21-22) describes checking “hardware integrity to establish a root of trust”, (4) (p. 16, regarding the limitation “external agreement unit … configured to define and store a smart contract”) describes “wherein the external agreement unit is configured to store a legal agreement, for example a swarm contractual agreement”, (5) (p. 14) describes “the pre-processing unit 4 is configured to retrieve a pointer of a pre-processing pipeline from one or more preregistered pre-processing pipelines from the smart data based on the class of the data, wherein the pre-processing pipeline is implemented to pre-process the data”, (6) (p. 11, p. 24) describes “quality measure within the quality metrics might be a certain number of genes being minimally recognized within the data, e.g. more than 12,000 in any given and included blood sample” and “generate quality metrics of the data based on the metadata of the data” and (7) (pp. 19-20) describes “RWIC is implemented on the FPGA and is configured to retrieve a classification of the practitioner and feeds this information back into the training lifecycle”. However, the specification does not describe specific algorithms used to achieve the claimed functions. Therefore, the written description fails to disclose the corresponding structure, material, or acts for performing the entire claimed function and to clearly link the structure, material, or acts to the function. Therefore, the claim is indefinite and is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, second paragraph.
Applicant may:
(a) Amend the claim so that the claim limitation will no longer be interpreted as a limitation under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph;
(b) Amend the written description of the specification such that it expressly recites what structure, material, or acts perform the entire claimed function, without introducing any new matter (35 U.S.C. 132(a)); or
(c) Amend the written description of the specification such that it clearly links the structure, material, or acts disclosed therein to the function recited in the claim, without introducing any new matter (35 U.S.C. 132(a)).
If applicant is of the opinion that the written description of the specification already implicitly or inherently discloses the corresponding structure, material, or acts and clearly links them to the function so that one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize what structure, material, or acts perform the claimed function, applicant should clarify the record by either:
(a) Amending the written description of the specification such that it expressly recites the corresponding structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function and clearly links or associates the structure, material, or acts to the claimed function, without introducing any new matter (35 U.S.C. 132(a)); or
(b) Stating on the record what the corresponding structure, material, or acts, which are implicitly or inherently set forth in the written description of the specification, perform the claimed function. For more information, see 37 CFR 1.75(d) and MPEP §§ 608.01(o) and 2181.
Potential Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 11-14 are allowed.
Regarding claim 11, the prior art:
US 2022017648 A1 (Rodriguez et al.) discloses a device for decentralized machine learning (application circuitry includes hardware accelerators, such as for deep learning, ¶242), the device comprising: an access control unit (7) for controlling an access of a remote device to the device (device attestation function embedded in FPGA, ¶233 to generate a device identifier, ¶233; CDI extends to VM operating on device, ¶126 and can be used to attest to a trusted environment for a workload, ¶205; note that the CDI can be used to allow access to an environment, ¶211), a hardware security gate (9) for checking a hardware integrity of the device (upon boot, the device computes a RoT using DICE, including on an FPGA, ¶193; boot process for the compute platform includes Boot Guard technology to verify and execute the system BIOS/firmware, ¶111 and compute a device secret, ¶114, including using a physical unclonable function (PUF), ¶117, ¶121), wherein the access control unit (7) is implemented on an FPGA (¶233).
US 20230100152 A1 (Lal et al.) Lal, in an analogous art to Rodriguez (federated learning), teaches that it was known to include a quality filter unit (pre-filter circuitry, ¶61) in FPGA-based (¶24, ¶30) federated learning accelerators to remove noise and identify relevant data for training (¶61).
US 20250378436 A1 (Lochrane; Taylor William Paul) teaches “architecture enables dynamic workload orchestration where AI-driven resource management agents determine whether a given smart contract is executed at the edge, fog, or cloud layer, based on network latency, jurisdictional rules, or operational urgency” (¶85).
US 20210234668 A1 (MANAMOHAN; SATHYANARAYANAN et al.) teaches “Still other examples include locations that should be targeted such that edge nodes in certain geolocations are targeted. The smart contracts 44 may include rules, which each edge node 10 follows, that direct the nodes to inspect transactions and/or blocks to determine whether it should apply a management operation contained in the transaction and/or block” (¶45).
However, the prior art - individually, or in a reasonable combination – fails to teach filtering, by a quality filter unit, data provided for decentralized machine learning, wherein one or more criteria and/or functions from a smart contract are used to perform the filtering, wherein the access control unit and the quality filter unit are implemented on an FPGA, in combination with the claim as a whole.
Claims 12-14 inherit the allowable subject matter.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
“LightChain: a lightweight blockchain system for industrial internet of things” (Liu, Yinqiu, et al.) teaches filtering in a IoT blockchain to cope with storage constraints (p. 3573, §III).
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 MICHAEL J SIMITOSKI whose telephone number is (571)272-3841. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday, 7:00-3:00.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Carl Colin can be reached at 571-272-3862. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Michael Simitoski/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2493
June 25, 2026
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