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 .
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 1-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. Claim 1 does not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter. The claim is directed to “software per se” as the claims recite “A system for changing a working shard of an account in a blockchain network on a network affiliated node”. There are no hardware elements, such as a processor or memory associated with the system. The “network affiliate node” is not associated with and part of the system as changing a working shard happens on the “network affiliated node”
Claims 2-12 are rejected under software per se due to its dependence on claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 13-16, 18 and 20-22 are allowed.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
The closest prior art, A. Bugday, A. Ozsoy and H. Sever, "Securing Blockchain Shards By Using Learning Based Reputation and Verifiable Random Functions," teaches assigning nodes in the network to the shards and calculates the reputation score of the nodes to determine it is not a malicious actor by using a trust value and calculating a loss value for each node. The random function uses the seed value and private key as input and outputs hash value and verifies it to make sure that the hash is computed properly.
Krol et al. (Shard Scheduler: object placement and migration in sharded account-based blockchains) teaches that the shard scheduler that reduces the number of costly cross-shard transactions , ensures balanced load distribution and maximizes the number of processed transaction for the blockchain while reducing the number of costly cross-shard transactions by half while ensuring equal load and increasing the throughput. It distinguishes whether the transactions write only to one shard or multiple shards. Shard scheduler observers system load and interactions between accounts to place and migrate accounts across shards to maximize the throughput and teaches the concepts of the shards in which miners are divided into group called shards.
Kramer et al. (WO 2019/207503) discloses balancing of transaction across shards, allocates transactions to different shards based on an transaction ID. , perform a transaction validation process in which it maintains of node, and shard they are members of and the transaction allocated to each shard to the nodes are a member of. F. ENRIQUE et al., "Smart Contracts on the Move" references moving the contracts when operating the move protocol as opposed to moving the nodes of the shard on the blockchain network.
Although the prior art teaches portions of the claim limitations, it fails to disclose or render obvious,
“the node is a node affiliated with an origin working shard of a first moving account, and communicates with a first home shard-affiliated node of the first moving account and a first destination working shard-affiliated node of the first moving account to perform a working shard change procedure for the first moving account, and the node comprises: a working shard change detection unit that detects whether a working shard of the first moving account is changed; and a working shard change request unit that requests a working shard change for the first moving account to the first destination working shard-affiliated node.”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from theexaminer should be directed to Chirag R Patel whose telephone number is (571)272-7966. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday to Friday from 9:00AM to 6:00PM. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, theexaminer's supervisor, Glenton Burgess, can be reached on 571-272-3949. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceedingis assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Chirag R Patel/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2454
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