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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 4/21/2025 was filed after the mailing date of the application on 4/21/2025. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-4, 8, 13-15 and 19 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1, 5-7, 9-12, 16-18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mahajan (US Patent Pub. 2020/0160289) in view of Liepert (US Patent Pub. 2022/0109577).
As per claims 1, 12 and 20: Mahajan discloses a consensus method for a blockchain, the method being performed by a blockchain node in a blockchain network, and comprising (see abstract):
obtaining, based on recorded proposal waiting parameters corresponding to blockchain nodes, a proposal waiting parameter corresponding to a current proposal node in the blockchain nodes (Paragraph 17; These transactions take some time to execute and be confirmed (a period of waiting time to ensure that the transaction was valid and won't be reversed). As a result of this blockchain latency, user experience is negatively impacted by having users wait for long periods of time for the blockchain to be updated);
determining, based on the proposal waiting parameter corresponding to the current proposal node, proposal waiting duration corresponding to the current proposal node (claim 11; determining whether the transaction can be retried comprises: determining a number of times the transaction has previously been tried; and when the number of times the transaction has previously been tried exceeds a predetermined threshold, determining that the transaction cannot be retried); and
However Mahajan does not specifically disclose adjusting, in response to a proposal message initiated by the current proposal node is not received within the proposal waiting duration at a proposal stage of the current proposal node, the proposal waiting parameter corresponding to the current proposal node to reduce the proposal waiting duration corresponding to the current proposal node (See Liepert; Paragraph 93; a timeout value is defined. Further, an authentication writing period WP is defined as the time between two consecutive authentication writings. The authentication writing period WP must be always lower than the timeout value, so that the software instances have a way of knowing if there has been too much time since the last authentication writing: if the timeout value is one hour and the last authentication block was written more than one hour ago, this ledger is allegedly not alive).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains, having the teachings of Mahajan in view of Liepert in it’s entirety, to modify the technique of Mahajan for performing lazy updates of transactions to a blockchain by adopting Liepert's teaching for verifying the state of a distributed ledger. The motivation would have been to improve a consensus method for a blockchain.
As per claims 5 and 16: The combination of Mahajan in view of Liepert discloses the consensus method for the blockchain according to claim 1, wherein the proposal waiting parameter comprises a duration parameter; and the determining, based on the proposal waiting parameter corresponding to the current proposal node, proposal waiting duration corresponding to the current proposal node comprises:
determining a duration parameter corresponding to the current proposal node as the proposal waiting duration corresponding to the current proposal node (Paragraph 108; the verification of the distributed ledger is extended until this previous entry, even despite no more authentication blocks have been written since then. This technique may be extended by interleaved verification of participating trustworthy nodes. Provided there is at least always one trustworthy participating node running this technique, the verification threshold can be extended).
As per claims 6 and 17: The combination of Mahajan in view of Liepert discloses the consensus method for the blockchain according to claim 1, wherein the adjusting, in response to a proposal message initiated by the current proposal node is not received within the proposal waiting duration, the proposal waiting parameter corresponding to the current proposal node comprises:
reducing, based on a first set step length in response to the proposal message initiated by the current proposal node is not received within the proposal waiting duration, a value of the proposal waiting parameter corresponding to the current proposal node until the value reaches a minimum value (claim 11; determining whether the transaction can be retried comprises: determining a number of times the transaction has previously been tried; and when the number of times the transaction has previously been tried exceeds a predetermined threshold, determining that the transaction cannot be retried).
As per claims 7 and 18: The combination of Mahajan in view of Liepert discloses the consensus method for the blockchain according to claim 1, wherein the method further comprises:
adjusting, in response to the proposal message initiated by the current proposal node is received within the proposal waiting duration, the proposal waiting parameter corresponding to the current proposal node to maintain or increase the proposal waiting duration corresponding to the current proposal node (See Liepert; Paragraph 93; a timeout value is defined. Further, an authentication writing period WP is defined as the time between two consecutive authentication writings. The authentication writing period WP must be always lower than the timeout value, so that the software instances have a way of knowing if there has been too much time since the last authentication writing: if the timeout value is one hour and the last authentication block was written more than one hour ago, this ledger is allegedly not alive).
As per claim 9: The combination of Mahajan in view of Liepert discloses the consensus method for the blockchain according to claim 7, wherein the adjusting, in response to the proposal message initiated by the current proposal node is received within the proposal waiting duration, the proposal waiting parameter corresponding to the current proposal node comprises (See Liepert; Paragraph 93):
adjusting, in response to the proposal message initiated by the current proposal node is received within the proposal waiting duration and consensus with a block targeted by the proposal message is successful, the proposal waiting parameter corresponding to the current proposal node (See Liepert; Paragraph 93; a timeout value is defined. Further, an authentication writing period WP is defined as the time between two consecutive authentication writings. The authentication writing period WP must be always lower than the timeout value, so that the software instances have a way of knowing if there has been too much time since the last authentication writing: if the timeout value is one hour and the last authentication block was written more than one hour ago, this ledger is allegedly not alive).
As per claim 10: The combination of Mahajan in view of Liepert discloses the consensus method for the blockchain according to claim 1, wherein before the obtaining, based on recorded proposal waiting parameters corresponding to blockchain nodes, a proposal waiting parameter corresponding to a current proposal node, the method further comprises:
generating a proposal waiting parameter table, the proposal waiting parameter table comprising default proposal waiting parameters set for the blockchain nodes in the blockchain network (Paragraph 26; Seller(s) 205 can also communicate with a lazy updating system 220 via communications network 215a (e.g., using web services) regarding goods/assets listed for sale in an auction setting. In several embodiments, the blockchain-based goods marketplace 250 is integrated with the lazy updating system 220 (e.g., as an integrated e-commerce auction platform for blockchain-based goods/assets).).
As per claim 11: The combination of Mahajan in view of Liepert discloses the consensus method for a blockchain according to claim 1, wherein the method further comprises:
synchronizing with, from the other blockchain nodes if the blockchain node recovers from an abnormal state to a normal state, proposal waiting parameters corresponding to the blockchain nodes, to update the locally recorded proposal waiting parameters corresponding to the blockchain nodes (Paragraph 30; the application transmits the change to the blockchain (e.g., as a background/asynchronous/synchronous process) and waits for confirmation that the change occurred. For instance, the application executes mint and transfer of the token item on the blockchain).
Relevant Prior Art References
The following prior art is cited as being of interest to the claimed invention but has not been applied in any of the current rejections.
Silver et al.- US Patent Publication 2023/0162188- the prior art teaches techniques for efficient and secure management of blockchain transaction approval using private encryption keys.
Ziotnick et al.- US Patent Pub. 2020/0226268 - the prior art teaches techniques for blockchain technology for regulatory compliance.
Park et al.- US Patent Pub. 2022/0083656 - the prior art teaches techniques for tolerating Byzantine faults in blockchain platforms.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANTHONY D BROWN whose telephone number is (571)270-1472. The examiner can normally be reached 730-330pm.
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/ANTHONY D BROWN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2408
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