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 .
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 11/26/2024 & 05/21/2025 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claims 2-18 and 20-21 are objected to because of the following informalities: The examiner suggest amending the dependent claims limitation to start with a lowercase letter reciting “claim” instead of “Claim”. 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.
Claim 12 is 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.
Claim 12 recites the limitation "the identification information of the user" in line 3. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1, 19 and 22 are allowed.
Claims 2-18 and 20-21 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the claim objection & rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action.
Examiner’s Statement of Reasons for Allowance
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: After a fully conducted search and consideration, the prior art either taken alone or in combination neither anticipates nor render obvious to the claimed subject matter of the instant application. The closest prior art Phillips et al. (US Pub No. 2025/0045647) discloses n provides a secure ticketing API of a de-centralized application for an event host to issue a plurality of privacy restricted non-fungible tokens (pr-NFT) suitable for interfacing with a plurality of device nodes structured as a blockchain network, wherein the application comprises a machine-readable medium having instructions stored thereon for execution by a processor to perform a method comprising the steps of: [0020] accessing a plurality of device nodes structured as a blockchain network; [0021] creating a smart contract for an event to facilitate the minting and validation of one or more privacy restricted non-fungible tokens (pr-NFT), wherein each minted pr-NFT is assigned a privacy restricted unique barcode identifier and digital artwork, in the metadata of the smart contract, and wherein the pr-NFT serves as a ticket to attend the event; transferring the pr-NFT to a blockchain wallet of the event attendant (e.g., from a blockchain wallet of the event host); unmasking the privacy restricted unique barcode identifier of the pr-NFT at the event to reveal the barcode identifier by extracting the assigned unique barcode identifier from the metadata and displaying the assigned unique barcode identifier to the event attendant (e.g., in the blockchain wallet of the event attendant); authenticating the pr-NFT in the smart contract to authorize access to the event upon (1) scanning the revealed barcode identifier and (2) ensuring the smart contract metadata of the pr-NFT reflects the status that no prior scanning of said revealed barcode identifier has occurred; authorizing access to the event; and updating the metadata of the smart contract after authentication has occurred to (1) reveal the digital artwork of the pr-NFT to the event attendant and (2) to reflect the status in the smart contract metadata of the pr-NFT that scanning of the revealed barcode identifier and authentication of the pr-NFT have occurred, such that the plurality of the pr-NFTs serve as secure tickets for the event. (Phillips, page 2, paragraphs 0019-0034) which is equivalent to independent claim limitations “determining, by the one or more processors, whether a code displayed on a terminal of a user and recognized by a reader provided at an event venue of an event is valid by executing the smart contract related to the event, wherein the smart contract includes instructions to: determine whether the code is valid, based on first ticket information including information corresponding to each of one or more first non-fungible tokens (NFTs) minted in association with the event;” the other relevant prior arts QUIGLEY et al. (US Pub No. 2026/0057373) discloses the environment 8000 may include several components for implementing the techniques described herein. The tokenization platform 100 may include a redemption system 404 (also shown in FIG. 4) for redeeming an NFT ticket, interfacing between a point-of-sale system 8008 and one or more distributed ledgers 3120, interacting with one or more redemption smart contracts 8032, providing NFT redemption services to the user devices 8002, interfacing with other components of the tokenization platform 100 to configure various services related to NFT tickets, and/or the like. For example, the redemption system 404 of the tokenization platform 100 may provide functionality to communicate with the point-of-sale system 8008 to reserve a block of seats for NFT tickets, cause the tokenization platform 100 to configure the minting smart contract 3130 to mint the NFT tickets for the reserved block of seats, cause the minting of the NFT tickets, cause the tokenization platform 100 to configure one or more sales smart contracts 8024 controlling the sale of the NFT tickets, invoke a redemption smart contract 8032 to redeem the NFT tickets, interface with the point-of-sale system 8008 to provide event admission to a user who redeemed an NFT ticket, and/or the like. In embodiments, various systems of the tokenization platform 100 may configure the various smart contracts stored on the distributed ledgers 3120 to provide functionality in support of the NFT tickets as described herein. For example, a configuration subsystem (described elsewhere herein) and/or the ledger management system 104 may configure one or more user interface smart contracts 3122 to provide a user interface for viewing tokenized tickets 8022 (which include NFT tickets 8022A), viewing digital packs 3144 that contain tokenized tickets 8022, and viewing other tokens 8046 related to NFT tickets 8022A), and interacting with the various tokens (e.g., redeeming NFT tickets 8022A, unboxing digital packs 3144 to obtain NFT tickets 8022A, etc.). Additionally or alternatively, a configuration subsystem and/or the ledger management system 104 may configure one or more sales smart contracts 8024 to control sales of the NFT tickets 8022A (e.g., to share resale profits with an original seller of the NFT ticket, as described in more detail below). Additionally or alternatively, a configuration subsystem and/or the ledger management system 104 may configure one or more unboxing smart contracts 3126 with unboxing recipes that provide a chance of obtaining an NFT ticket 8022A when a digital pack 3144 is unboxed (e.g., as described elsewhere herein). Additionally or alternatively, a configuration subsystem and/or the ledger management system 104 may configure one or more crafting smart contracts 3128 with crafting recipes for “levelling up” an NFT ticket (e.g., from a more common, lower-level NFT ticket to a less common, higher-level, more exclusive NFT ticket) or from a non-ticket NFT to a ticket NFT (e.g., as a reward for crafting NFTs to a certain level, the crafting user may be awarded an NFT ticket). In these examples, the crafting framework described elsewhere in the disclosure may be used to facilitate such crafting of NFT tickets. Additionally or alternatively, a configuration subsystem and/or the ledger management system 104 may configure one or more minting smart contracts 3130 to mint (and/or batch pre-mint) NFT tickets, which may include assigning particular attributes such as specific seats to specific NFT tickets, as described in more detail below. Additionally or alternatively, a configuration subsystem and/or the ledger management system 104 may configure one or more redemption smart contracts 8032 to redeem NFT tickets, which may include burning the NFT ticket, updating one or more attributes of the NFT ticket, or otherwise indicating that the NFT ticket has been (at least partially) used. Additionally or alternatively, a configuration subsystem and/or the ledger management system 104 may configure one or more asset storage smart contracts 3134 to store one or more NFT tickets, such as pre-minted pools of NFT tickets, ahead of selling the NFT tickets in order to prevent a rush of transactions when the NFT tickets go on sale, as described elsewhere herein. (QUIGLEY, paragraphs 0936-0937), Richter (US Patent No. 11,954,676) discloses minting NFTs from user specific events. Minting NFTs from user specific events may include receiving user data and classifying the user data to a plurality of user specific events. Further, minting may include selecting a user specific event of the plurality of user specific events. Moreover, minting may include recording the selected user specific event of the plurality of user specific events to an immutable sequential listing, where recording the selected user specific event comprises minting the selected user specific event into an NFT for storage on the immutable sequential listing. (Richter, Abstract), Ravinathan et al. (US Pub No. 2024/0104560) discloses techniques for digitization of payment cards for Web 3.0 (“Web3”) and metaverse transactions. The described systems and techniques allow for the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to represent a payment token for making a payment inside a Web3 and Metaverse environment. Indeed, the described systems and techniques provide a financial NFT enabled representation of a payment card account as a token in a blockchain network, which can then be used to facilitate Web3 payments with real-time fiat to crypto exchanges. (Ravinathan, Abstract), and Pranger et al. (US Pub No. 2023/0360029) discloses system and methods discussed herein can generate one or more non-fungible tokens (NFTs) associated with event spaces. The disclosed system can receive a one or more assets associated with a physical entity and create one or more asset NFTs individually associated with a respective one of the plurality of assets. The disclosed system can generate one or more tickets. The disclosed system can create ticket NFTs individually associated with a respective asset of the assets and based on the respective asset. The ticket NFTs can be for a particular event at the physical entity. The disclosed system can determine whether to grant access to a particular asset at the physical entity during the particular event based on analyzing a particular ticket NFT of the ticket NFTs that are associated with the particular asset. (Pranger, Abstract), however, the prior art taken alone or in combination fails to teach or suggest “determine whether the code is valid, based on first ticket information including information corresponding to each of one or more first non-fungible tokens (NFTs) minted in association with the event and encrypted information, upon obtaining the encrypted information corresponding to the code from the reader that recognizes the code, and wherein the encrypted information is information encrypted by the terminal, based on at least one of identification information of a second non-fungible token or an address of the smart contract, wherein the second non-fungible token is one of the one or more first non-fungible token” (as recited in claims 1, 19 & 21). Claims are allowed in light of the above claim limitations when in combination with the remaining claim limitations.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHAQUEAL D WADE whose telephone number is (571)270-0357. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:00-5:00.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Catherine Thiaw can be reached at 571-270-1138. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/SHAQUEAL D WADE-WRIGHT/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2407
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