DETAILED ACTION
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 Office Action is in response to the communication filed on 12/6/2024.
Claims 1-11 are pending for consideration.
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 .
Specification
The lengthy specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 12/6/2024 and 5/11/2026 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 § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by OH et al. (US 20200403776) (hereinafter OH).
Regarding claim 1, OH discloses a method, to be performed by a computing device, for auditing for forgery of ledger information in a blockchain network (OH: paragraphs 0044-0049, “achieving distributed consensus based on decentralized Byzantine fault tolerance”), the method comprising:
clustering a plurality of ledger information from a plurality of node devices in the blockchain network for electronic notarization (OH: paragraphs 0047-0051 and 0164, “congress candidate nodes in a blockchain”);
verifying forgery of the plurality of ledger information by at least one audit node by identifying a discrepancy between the plurality of ledger information (OH: paragraphs 0164-0167, “Congress candidate nodes according to an embodiment of the present invention may check whether abnormalities are present in first transactions of REQUESTS respectively including the first transactions which request distributed consensus proposed by a client.”); and
generating a block for updating ledger information of the plurality of node devices on the basis of a result of the verifying forgery of the plurality of ledger information, wherein the plurality of node devices perform a neural consensus proof-based block generation process according to a preset condition (OH: Paragraphs 0094-0097, 0107-0109, 0117-0128, 0167, 0169, 0176-0197 and associated figures; “data regarding congress members, bitmaps of consensus nodes, data regarding quorum, etc., as examples”… “first bitmap information corresponding to the first transaction of the congress candidate nodes and second bitmap information including the results of determination of the consensus nodes may be generated, and the PREPARE message including the first bitmap information, the second bitmap information, and the second transaction may be generated”), and
wherein the neural consensus proof-based block generation process comprises: extracting an effective verification data from a new block data, obtaining neural consensus designation information of a next block generated on the basis of a random consensus proof process according to a verification processing of the effective verification data (OH: paragraphs 0050-0055, 0074-0088, 0094-0105, 0117-0128, 0167, 0169, 0176-0197 and associated figures; data regarding congress members, bitmaps of consensus nodes, data regarding quorum, etc., as examples), selectively operating a consensus node function unit on the basis of the neural consensus designation information of the next block, and generating another effectiveness verification data for the next block (OH: paragraphs 0050-0055, 0074-0088, 0094-0105, 0117-0128, 0167, 0169, 0176-0197 and associated figures; consensus nodes, congress candidate nodes, congress members, main/primary/node 0, node that performs multi-signature and propagates blocks, etc., as examples; determining which node this entity should currently act as, for example).
Regarding claim 11, claim 11 discloses a system claim that is substantially equivalent to the method of claim 1. Therefore, the arguments set forth above with respect to claim 1 are equally applicable to claim 11 and rejected for the same reasons.
Regarding claim 2, OH further discloses wherein the plurality of ledger information comprises an electronic notarization document, or a hash value extracted from the electronic notarization document (OH: paragraphs 0050-0055, 0074-0088, 0094-0105, 0117-0128, 0167, 0169, 0176-0197 and associated figures; proof of work, for example, based on hashing a certain number of times, determining if the result is below a threshold, and the like, as examples, where nonces, which are random, are repeatedly substituted and hashed (e.g., hash(nonce(1)), hash(nonce(2)), hash(nonce (2N-1)), hash(nonce(2N)), hash(nonce(2N+1)), etc., as examples).
Regarding claim 3, OH further discloses wherein the verifying the forgery of the plurality of ledger information comprises: determining that at least one of the plurality of ledger information is damaged when any ledger information among the plurality of ledger information is different from another ledger information among the plurality of ledger information (OH: paragraphs 0089-0091 and 0192-0200, “when a man-in-the middle attacker (intermediate transmission node) damages and transfers the DELEGATE REQUEST, whether the DELEGATE REQUEST has been damaged may be checked through message digest.”… “errors or faults occurring in the consensus procedure may be processed as follows. In DELEGATE REQUEST, PREPARE, and COMMIT phases, a timer may be set at each start point, and fault processing may be performed unless the next phase is initiated before the timer is terminated.”).
Regarding claim 4, OH further discloses wherein the at least one audit node proves an integrity of a distributed ledger by using another consensus algorithm that operates independently from the plurality of node devices (OH: paragraphs 0079-0082, 0131, 0152, 0153, 0184, 0191-0196, 0198- 0205, 0210, 0211, 0216, and associated figures, for example, “only when both of the results of integrity checks performed at steps S122 and S124 are successful, the DELEGATE REQUEST from the corresponding node may be accepted, whereas when at least one of the integrity checks at steps S122 and step S124 fails, the DELEGATE REQUEST from the corresponding node may not be accepted”… “in order to verify the validity of r generated by SERVER 0, each of SERVER 0, 1, and 2 may check whether the second bitmap information (delegate server bitmap) contains 2f+1 or more ‘1’s or whether at least one ‘1’ is indicated in each column of the first bitmap information (Proposed Transaction bitmap), and the number of these columns is 2f+1.”).
Regarding claim 5, OH further discloses wherein the another consensus algorithm comprises Proof of Work (PoW), Proof of Stake (PoS), Delegate Proof of Stake (DPos), Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT), or random consensus algorithms based on neural consensus proof (OH: paragraphs 0044, 0079-0082, 0131, 0152, 0153, 0184, 0191-0196, 0198- 0205, 0210, 0211, 0216, and associated figures, node failures can result in starting a block agreement, such as empty agreement or a further block, network failures, determining consensus in the presence of failures, etc., timeouts of various lengths, for example; “achieving distributed consensus based on decentralized Byzantine fault tolerance”).
Regarding claim 6, OH further discloses when external data for electronic notarization is generated, the external data is provided to the blockchain network and the at least one audit node, respectively, the blockchain network updates ledger information of the plurality of node devices with ledger information including the external data by using the neural consensus proof-based block generation process, and the at least one audit node updates audit ledger information of the at least one audit node with audit ledger information including the external data by using the another consensus algorithm (OH: Paragraphs 0094-0097, 0107-0109, 0117-0128, 0167, 0169, 0176-0197 and associated figures; “data regarding congress members, bitmaps of consensus nodes, data regarding quorum, etc., as examples”… “first bitmap information corresponding to the first transaction of the congress candidate nodes and second bitmap information including the results of determination of the consensus nodes may be generated, and the PREPARE message including the first bitmap information, the second bitmap information, and the second transaction may be generated”).
Regarding claim 7, OH further discloses wherein the verifying forgery of the plurality of ledger information comprises: comparing the plurality of ledger information with audit ledger information whose integrity is proven by the another consensus algorithm, and determining ledger information identical with the audit ledger information among the plurality of ledger information as a first ledger information whose integrity is proven (OH: paragraphs 0099-0102, 0125, 0158, 0188 and 0224-0229, “the first hash value as to whether the first and second hash values are identical to each other, thus checking the validity of the PREPARE message”… “when the second hash value is identical to the first hash value, each of the consensus forgnodes may generate the COMMIT message by generating a signature value including the first hash value and a secret value prestored in the corresponding consensus node, by including the signature value in the PREPARE message, and by adding the electronic signature based on the signature value to the PREPARE message”).
Regarding claim 8, OH further discloses wherein the verifying forgery of the plurality of ledger information comprises: determining audit ledger information, whose integrity is proven by the another consensus algorithm, as a first ledger information whose integrity is proven (OH: paragraphs 0094-0097, 0107-0109, 0117-0128, 0167, 0169, 0176-0197 and associated figures; “data regarding congress members, bitmaps of consensus nodes, data regarding quorum, etc., as examples”… “first bitmap information corresponding to the first transaction of the congress candidate nodes and second bitmap information including the results of determination of the consensus nodes may be generated, and the PREPARE message including the first bitmap information, the second bitmap information, and the second transaction may be generated”).
Regarding claim 9, OH further discloses wherein the at least one audit node belongs to a network separated from the blockchain network (OH: Paragraphs 0051-0052, 0094-0097, 0107-0109, 0117-0128, 0167, 0169, 0176-0197 and associated figures; “the congress is fixed by adding congress information for block 403 to committed blocks. In addition, a method of selecting and managing congress members separately from blocks may also be used.”… “achieving distributed consensus based on decentralized Byzantine fault tolerance”).
Regarding claim 10, OH further discloses wherein the effective verification data comprises consensus process verification data corresponding to the random consensus proof process, and the neural consensus designation information of the next block comprises nonce information for verifying participation qualification of neural consensus corresponding to the next block (OH: paragraphs 0079-0082, 0131, 0152, 0153, 0184, 0191-0196, 0198- 0205, 0210, 0211, 0216, and associated figures, for example, “only when both of the results of integrity checks performed at steps S122 and S124 are successful, the DELEGATE REQUEST from the corresponding node may be accepted, whereas when at least one of the integrity checks at steps S122 and step S124 fails, the DELEGATE REQUEST from the corresponding node may not be accepted”… “in order to verify the validity of r generated by SERVER 0, each of SERVER 0, 1, and 2 may check whether the second bitmap information (delegate server bitmap) contains 2f+1 or more ‘1’s or whether at least one ‘1’ is indicated in each column of the first bitmap information (Proposed Transaction bitmap), and the number of these columns is 2f+1.”).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TRANG T DOAN whose telephone number is (571)272-0740. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 7-4 ET.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Lynn D Feild can be reached on (571)272-2092. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/TRANG T DOAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2431
Prosecution Insights