DETAILED ACTION
Status of Claims
This is a Final Office Action in response to the arguments and/or amendments filed on 30 April 2026.
Claim(s) 23-25 is/are canceled. Claim(s) 15, 22, 27, 28 is/are amended.
Claim(s) 15-22 and 26-28 is/are currently pending and have been examined.
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 Objections
Claim 15 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 15 recites “for distribution medical data”, which appears to contain a typographical error and should recite either “for distributing medical data” or “for distribution of medical data.”
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112(a)
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.
Claims 15-22 and 26-27 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. Claims not listed below are rejected.
Amended claim 1 recites the non-original limitation: signing, by the second device, a verification result indicating that the medical data is own data of the patient using a blockchain account of the second device in the case where the verification data is accepted.” Applicant’s remarks identify [0045]-[0060] as support for the amendments at large. Of these disclosures, [0051] and [0052] appear to be the only potentially relevant portions.
[0051] The processing unit 10 of the first device 1 receives the inquiry (step S 103), and accepts verification of whether the medical data transmitted in step S102 is the own data (the authenticity) from the user on the screen displayed on the display unit 13 (step S 104). In a case where the verification is accepted, the processing unit 10 transmits a verification result to the second device 2 (step S 105).
[0052] The second device 2 receives the verification result (step S204), and updates "authorization trust" data indicating that authorization for the medical data (the determination of the authenticity) is obtained (step S205). The "authorization trust" is data indicating a result of the determination of the authenticity (such as a binary value of TRUE or FALSE). In a case where in step S 103, the verification is not attained by the first device 1 due to the own cognition problem of the patient or difficulty in the operation, the "authorization trust" may be updated on the basis of 20 the operation with respect to the second device 2 by the medical care provider. In this case, as the "authorization trust", for example, cognition level and disability level data signed by the blockchain account of the second device 2 of the medical care provider is added to the medical data. The processing unit 20 transmits an addition request for the medical data to the blockchain system 5 (step S206). The addition request includes a wallet address (the blockchain account) relevant to the individual identification data of the patient.
The disclosure at [0051] describes accepting verification related to “own data” sounding similar to the “verification … indicating that the medical data is own data of the patient” of the claim. However, beyond that the similarities appear to break down. First, neither disclosure clearly describes signing a verification result. The disclosure at [0052] does reference “cognition level and disability level data signed by the blockchain account”, and does not again refer to “cognition level and disability level data.” Second and more conclusively, the disclosure at [0052] describes the “level data signed by the blockchain account of the second device” in reference to “in a case where … the verification result is not attained.” Thus this disclosure clearly cannot support signing anything “in the case where the verification data is accepted.” Thus this disclosure does not support the identified limitation. The remainder of the originally filed disclosure similarly fails to support the identified limitation.
Because the claimed invention includes a non-original limitation which is not supported by the originally filed disclosure, one of ordinary skill in the art would not recognize applicant as possessing the claimed invention. Therefore the claim is rejected under the written description requirement.
Claim 27 is similarly rejected.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112(b)
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 15-22 and 26-28 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. Claims not listed below are rejected.
Claim 15 recites “the hash value being generation trust data and indicating the medical data is less likely to be falsified at a time point when generated.” It would be unclear to one of ordinary skill in the art how the identified limitation modifies the scope of the claim. Specifically it is not clear whether the “indication” has a functional relationship with the medical data or if it merely describes the meaning of information included. This ambiguity is further enhanced by the specification which references the “generation trust data”, but does not clearly describe how it works (e.g., [0048]) . One of ordinary skill in the art would understand hashing images, but they would not understand such operations to “indicate the [image] is less likely to be falsified at a time point when generated”, because one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that a fake image can be created and subsequently hashed, producing a hash which does not indicate anything meaningful regarding the falsity of the image. As such, the boundaries of the claim would be ambiguous to one of ordinary skill in the art, rendering the claim indefinite.
Claim 27 is similarly rejected.
Claim 15 recites “adding, by the second device, the signed verification data to the medical data as an authorization trust data of the medical data.” Claim 15 further subsequently recites “storing, by the second device, the medical data with the generation trust data and the authorization trust data in the storage.” Thus the claims requires 1) adding authorization trust data to the medical data, and 2) storing the medical data “with” authorization trust data. Because 1 means that the medical data already includes authorization trust data, it is unclear and ambiguous whether 2) simple refers to the previously added authorization trust data or whether it refers to a separate instance of the authorization trust data stored with the medical data but not as part of the medical data. The specification does not appear to indicate which interpretation is correct. As such, the meaning of the claim would be ambiguous to one of ordinary skill in the art, rendering the claim indefinite.
Claim 27 is similarly rejected.
Claim 15 recites “minting, by a smart contract of a blockchain system, a plurality of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) including an address for accessing the stored medical data for a blockchain account of the patient in the blockchain system, up to a predetermined limit.” The meaning of the limitation would be unclear to one of ordinary skill in the art, rendering the claim indefinite.
The claim initially appears to describe a positive step of “minting … a plurality of non-fungible tokens.” But that positive step is subsequently described as “up to a predetermined limit.” It is not clear whether the full limitation requires minting at least one plurality of NFTs up to a predetermined limit of NFTs or whether the limitation requires minting between zero and a predetermined limit of NFTs. The only portion of the specification apparently relevant to this issue ([0079]) does not indicate which interpretation is correct. As such, the meaning of the claim would be ambiguous to one of ordinary skill in the art, rendering the claim indefinite.
Claims 27 and 28 are similarly rejected.
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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 28 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Warnick et al. (US 12260440 B1).
Regarding Claim 28: Warnick discloses a non-transitory computer readable medium storing a program that cases a computer which is a node in a blockchain system, as a smart contract (By using a blockchain infrastructure that enables the functionality of smart contracts, the methods and systems described herein allow a persistent, replicated, public, and automated database for transactions that involve NFTs. See at least Column 7, Lines 20-24), to execute processing of:
the smart contract being called when an addition request for storing medical data relevant to a medical examination of a patient in a storage is broadcast (a smart contract refers to computer programming code executed by a distributed ledger system. For instance, smart contracts may refer to distributed programs, or distributed applications that can be used to perform the transactions and recordation in the blockchain infrastructure. See at least Column 25, Lines 24-29. Also: the blockchain 120 may be a public or private ledger of all transactions that have been executed in one or more contexts (e.g., negotiable instrument transactions, digital currency transactions, access determinations, instances of providing access, reviews, etc.). The blockchain 120 may grow as completed blocks are added with a new set of transactions by the NFT management system 104. See at least Column 7, Lines 45-52);
minting a plurality of NFTs including an address for accessing the medical data on the storage including a measurement result by a measurement device measuring vitals of the patient, identification data of the measurement device, a hash value of the medical data as generation trust data and signed verification data by a blockchain account of a device that is used in a medical institute of a diagnosis destination of the patient, (an NFT management system can track incoming digital health data, perform one or more analysis operations using the digital health data, and automatically mint one or more NFTs based on the digital health data, which may include the results of the analysis operations. See at least Column 3, Lines 40-45. Also: smart contracts may refer to distributed programs, or distributed applications that can be used to perform the transactions and recordation in the blockchain infrastructure. See at least Column 25, Lines 26-29. Also: NFT associated content 160 can be stored in an off-chain storage 162. The location of the off-chain storage 162 at the time the NFT 116 was minted can be specifically referred to in the NFT record 150. For example, the NFT record 150 can include a URL link to the NFT associated content 160. See at least Column 9, Lines 48-53. Also: The third party application 504 may ask the user 102 to input biometric data including height, weight, fitness goals, or the like. See at least Column 14, Lines 61-63. Also: as illustrated in FIG. 9, the NFT management system 104 may receive digital health data from a health institution, such as a doctor's office, a laboratory, a clinic, a hospital, or the like. For example, a user 102 may be due for their regular check-up at a doctor's office and undergo a medical exam 904 for life insurance or health insurance purposes. As such, the doctor may record the necessary health data and store it in their network as digital health data of the user 102. In some embodiments, the user 102 may fill out an application requesting health data or answering a questionnaire regarding their current health status. The application may be entered into the NFT management system 104 and received by the analysis engine for analysis. See at least Column 19, Line 57 through Column 20 Line 3. Examiner’s note: The contents of the NFT are considered non-functional descriptive material, and are given limited patentable weight) to a blockchain account of the patient, up to a predetermined limit (a user may choose to wear a health tracking device to track their digital health data through an application on a user device (e.g., phone, tablet, computer). In another embodiment, the user may visit a medical institution (e.g., a doctor's office, a laboratory, a clinic) for a health checkup. During the visit, the user may receive digital health data (e.g., medications taken by the user, dates of doctors” visits, current treatments, particular physical conditions, or the like) that they may want to store in a tamper proof and secure means. As such, the user may be interested in generating an NFT containing the digital health data created from the visit. As a way to facilitate self-ownership of personal data, the medical institution may, on behalf of the user, signal to the NFT management system to mint the NFT containing the digital health data acquired by the most recent visit to the medical institution. See at least Column 3, Lines 52-67. Also: Creation or minting of an NFT 116 involves confirmation of the NFT 116 as an asset on the blockchain, and the owner's account balance is updated to include that asset. See at least Column 7, Lin es 1-3. Also: The intended scarcity of the NFT 116 is set by the creator. A creator may intend to make each NFT 116 completely unique to create scarcity or produce several thousand replicas (each replica having its own unique, non-fungible identifier, similar to an artist print marked as 1/10). Every NFT 116 has an owner of public record that can be verified. In embodiments, NFT creators can retain ownership rights over their own work, and claim resale royalties directly. Thus, the owner of the NFT 116 may have financial arrangements or royalty arrangements that are dictated within the smart contracts of the NFT record. See at least Column 6, Lines 57-67).
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s Argument Regarding 112(b) Rejections of claims 15-28: Applicant has amended claims 15, 27, and 28 to alter this phrasing and respectfully submits that the amendments resolve the alleged lack of clarity.
Examiner’s Response: Applicant's arguments filed 30 April 2026 have been fully considered but they do not resolve the clarity of the limitation at issue. The rejections have been updated as indicated above.
Applicant’s Argument Regarding 101 Rejections of claims 15-28: Applicant is unaware of any decisions or opinion describing how minting tokens is considered a mental process or other abstract idea. Applicant submits that organizing such information in the recited configuration cannot practically be performed in the human mind … The features listed in the Office action include minting tokens … these details and features cannot practically be performed in within the mind of an individual.
Examiner’s Response: Applicant's arguments filed 30 April 2026 have been fully considered and they are persuasive. The rejection under 101 is withdrawn.
Applicant’s Argument Regarding 102 Rejection of Claim 28: Applicant has amended claim 28 to recite features including generation trust data and storing this data along with the medical data.
Examiner’s Response: Applicant's arguments filed 30 April 2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Examiner notes that the claim recites “generation trust data”, i.e. information, rather than “generating trust data.” The claim as amended simply further describes a type of data included, which is non-functional descriptive material, and as such is given limited patentable weight. As such, Warnick continues to the disclose the claimed invention.
Applicant’s Argument Regarding 103 Rejections of claims 15-17, 20, and 22-27: Applicant has amended claims 15 and 27 to include features including “computing, by the first device, a hash value of the medical data including a measurement result by a measurement device measuring vitals of the patient” … These features are not demonstrated in either Warnick or Sarel.
Examiner’s Response: Applicant's arguments filed 30 April 2026 have been fully considered and they are persuasive. The rejections under 103 are withdrawn.
Additional Considerations
The prior art made of record and not relied upon that is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure can be found in the PTO-892 of the prior office action dated 30 April 2026.
Conclusion
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 Bion A Shelden whose telephone number is (571)270-0515. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, 12pm-10pm EST.
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, Kambiz Abdi can be reached at (571) 272-6702. 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.
/Bion A Shelden/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3685 2026-07-17
Prosecution Insights