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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1 – 20 are pending.
Any references to applicant’s specification are made by way of applicant’s U.S. pre-grant printed patent publication.
Drawings
The drawings are objected to as failing to comply with 37 CFR 1.84(p)(5) because none of the reference characters shown within the drawings are mentioned in the description.
Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d), or amendment to the specification to add the reference character(s) in the description in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(b) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
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 2, 17, and 18 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.
Regarding claim 2, the applicant’s specification fails to adequately describe the features of “…normalizing timestamps to a common time base with fixed precision and normalizing currency values to a canonical numeric and currency-code pair to remove locale and formatting variance …” and “…computing the commitment over the canonical representation such that inputs differing only by field ordering or locale formatting are mapped to an identical canonical form across nodes…”.
Depending claims are rejected by virtue of dependency.
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 1 – 20 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.
Regarding claim 1 and 2, the term “review record” renders the scope of the claims indefinite. Specifically, this term lacks any standardized definition within the art. Furthermore, the applicant’s specification fails to provide a definition for the term. Thus, the types of records falling within or outside the scope of a “review record” remains unclear and the scope of the claims are indefinite.
Furthermore, the recitation “…for each review record…” (e.g. claim 1, line 3; claim 2, line 3) renders the scope of the claim indefinite because there is no antecedent basis within the claims for one or more “review records”. Thus, it is unclear as to what records the applicant is attempting to reference by a citation to “each” review record.
Regarding claim 1, the recitation “…the canonicalization and commitment pipeline…” lacks antecedent basis within the claims. Thus, the scope of the claims is rendered indefinite.
Regarding claim 1 and 2, the term “DS_Context” renders the scope of the claims indefinite. Specifically, this term lacks any standardized definition within the art. Furthermore, the applicant’s specification fails to provide a definition for the term. Thus, the subject matter falling within or outside scope of the term “DS_Context” remains unclear.
Regarding claim 1, claim limitations “a canonicalization engine configured to…”, “…a commitment generator configured to…”, “…a batch module configured to …”, “…a lineage component configured to…”, “…a verification interface configured to…”, invokes 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. However, the written description fails to disclose the corresponding structure, material, or acts for performing the entire claimed function and to clearly link the structure, material, or acts to the function. Therefore, the claim is indefinite and is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, second paragraph.
Applicant may:
(a) Amend the claim so that the claim limitation will no longer be interpreted as a limitation under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph;
(b) Amend the written description of the specification such that it expressly recites what structure, material, or acts perform the entire claimed function, without introducing any new matter (35 U.S.C. 132(a)); or
(c) Amend the written description of the specification such that it clearly links the structure, material, or acts disclosed therein to the function recited in the claim, without introducing any new matter (35 U.S.C. 132(a)).
If applicant is of the opinion that the written description of the specification already implicitly or inherently discloses the corresponding structure, material, or acts and clearly links them to the function so that one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize what structure, material, or acts perform the claimed function, applicant should clarify the record by either:
(a) Amending the written description of the specification such that it expressly recites the corresponding structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function and clearly links or associates the structure, material, or acts to the claimed function, without introducing any new matter (35 U.S.C. 132(a)); or
(b) Stating on the record what the corresponding structure, material, or acts, which are implicitly or inherently set forth in the written description of the specification, perform the claimed function. For more information, see 37 CFR 1.75(d) and MPEP §§ 608.01(o) and 2181.
Regarding claim 3, the recitation “…timestamps with “Z”…” renders the scope of the claims indefinite. Specifically, this notion lacks any standardized meaning within the art. Furthermore, the applicant’s specification fails to provide an explanation for this recitation.
Regarding claim 15, the recitation “…IR and IPR tiers…” renders the scope of the claims indefinite. Specifically, “IR and IPR tiers” lacks a standardized meaning within the art. Furthermore, the applicant’s specification fails to provide an explanation for this recitation.
Depending claims are rejected by virtue of dependency.
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.
Claims 1 – 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bei, US 2026/0254657 A1, in view of Bei (Bei-2), US 2026/0212426 A1, in view of Bray, RFC 8259, “The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data Interchange Format”, in view of Bei (Bei-3), US 2026/0268017 A1.
Regarding claim 1, as best determined in view of the above noted deficiencies of clarity, Bei discloses:
A system for preventing byte-level hash computation discrepancies in distributed review verification, the system comprising (e.g. Bei, Abstract):
(a) a canonicalization engine configured to perform byte-level transformations before parsing to produce, for each review record, a deterministic canonical byte sequence that eliminates encoding and parser-state discrepancies (e.g. Bei, par. 44, 53, 251 – herein a deterministic canonicalization encoding means), including application of a versioned protocol domain-separation string (DS_CONTEXT) and ordered field processing to render a deterministic canonical representation across nodes (e.g. Bei, par. 50, 82).
Bei disclose performing canonicalization of event data. However, Bei does not appear to explicitly teach the performance of certain canonicalization methods, such as white space trimming or the UTF-8 decoding. However, Bei-2 discloses such methods (e.g. Bei-2, par. 73). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate Bei’s canonicalization teachings within his/her own teachings of a system for performing canonicalization because one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated by the Bei’s teaching that he/she is referencing the same Behavioral Economics Identity system (e.g. Bei-2, par. 44; Bei, Abstract).
Furthermore, Bei does not appear to explicitly teach, but Bray does teach canonicalization methods, such as removing byte order marks, removing zero-width characters, and normalizing line endings (e.g. Bray, pg. 6, 7, 9), and it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate Bray’s JSON canonicalization teachings within Bei’s system because Bei explicitly teaches to use JSON canonicalization (e.g. Bei, par. 44).
Thus, the combination enables:
the byte-level transformations comprising strict UTF-8 decode with error rejection, Unicode NFC normalization, removal of byte-order marks and zero-width characters, normalization of line endings to LF, and whitespace trimming, executed prior to any parsing (e.g. Bei, par. 44, 53, 55, 60; Bei-2, par. 44; e.g. Bray, pg. 6, 7, 9); (b) a commitment generator configured to compute a salted cryptographic commitment for each canonical record and to bind a Canonicalization Program Identifier (CPI) and a versioned DS_CONTEXT identifying a canonicalization ruleset version (e.g. Bei, par. 38, 54; 229, 259; claim 3; fig. 3); (c) a batch module configured to aggregate per-record commitments into a batch root and to anchor the batch root to a public blockchain transaction or log field (e.g. Bei, par. 37, 145 – signature commitments are combined into batched Merkle roots);
Bei may not disclose, but Bei-3 does disclose persisting deltas of state information and weighted multi ledgers (e.g. Bei-3, par. 1, 5, 40, 92, 117, 124), and it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate Bei’s delta persistence teachings and weighted ledgers within his/her own teachings of a system for performing canonicalization because one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated by the Bei’s teaching that he/she is referencing a behavioral identity system (e.g. Bei-3, Abstract; Bei, Abstract).
Thus, the combination enables:
(d) a lineage component configured to persist write-once deltas linked by prior-state digests to enable reconstruction of historical states without in-place mutation (e.g. Bei-3, par. 92); and (e) a verification interface configured to return record inclusion proofs and to accept or reject based on CPI equality and a weighted multi-ledger confirmation policy, without requiring a full node (e.g. Bei-3, par. 40, 117, 124; Bei, 41, 71-74, 78) wherein the canonicalization and commitment pipeline is deterministic such that inputs differing only by field ordering or locale formatting are rendered to an identical canonical representation across nodes, yielding identical commitments for semantically equivalent inputs (e.g. Bei, par. 16, 44).
Regarding claim 3, the combination enables:
wherein parsing after the byte-level transformations applies a strict profile with stable field ordering, UTC timestamps with “Z”, deterministic numeric rounding, explicit nulls, and lowercase Booleans. The examiner takes official notice that these are all well-known and commonly practiced methods within the art for canonicalization, and thus, would have obvious to one or ordinary skill in the art in view of the Bei’s teachings to perform canonicalization (e.g. Bei, Abstract).
Regarding claim 4, the combination enables:
wherein salts are generated by a cryptographically secure source and reuse is detected using a probabilistic structure (e.g. Bei, par. 54).
Regarding claim 5, the combination enables:
further comprising attested receipts generated inside trusted hardware, and the verification interface rejects when an attestation digest is not present in an allow-list (e.g. Bei, par. 18, 41, 45, 64, 81, 109, 232).
Regarding claim 6, the combination enables:
wherein the verification interface returns field-specific inclusion proofs and a bandwidth-reduction indication relative to full-record transfer (e.g. Bei, par. 232, 248).
Regarding claim 7, the combination enables:
wherein the batch module closes a batch under a size policy and a time policy to balance anchor cost and latency (e.g. Bei, Abstract; par. 5, 13).
Regarding claim 8, the combination enables:
wherein the weighted multi-ledger confirmation policy derives an integrity confidence indication from confirmations across independent public blockchains (e.g. Bei-3; par. 1, 11, 12).
Regarding claim 9, the combination enables:
wherein the batch root is a Merkle tree root, and an inclusion proof comprises a bounded number of sibling hashes sufficient to authenticate a selected record to the root (e.g. Bei, par. 20, 50, 155, 232, 248).
Regarding claim 10, the combination enables:
wherein the batch root is a vector-commitment root that enables constant-size inclusion proofs in some embodiments (e.g. Bei, par. 9, 55, 56).
Regarding claim 11, the combination enables:
wherein canonicalization emits a canonicalization log sufficient to reproduce the canonical byte sequence for audit (e.g. Bei, Abstract; par. 40, 50).
Regarding claim 12, the combination enables:
wherein the CPI is recorded with each commitment and each receipt, and the verification interface rejects upon CPI mismatch (e.g. Bei, par. 6, 109; claim 1).
Regarding claim 13, the combination enables:
1wherein the lineage component supports reconstruction of a state at a requested time by applying ordered deltas from an anchored base, and upon redaction the system records a link token that binds a prior batch root to a new batch root (e.g. Bei-3, par. 5, 28 - 31).
Regarding claim 14, the combination enables:
further comprising optional zero-knowledge assertions that prove a property of a selected field without revealing plaintext (e.g. Bei, par. 17, 45, 80-82).
Regarding claim 15, the combination enables:
wherein a credential service issues and revokes reviewer credentials for IR and IPR tiers and records credential status changes as anchored events queryable during verification (e.g. Bei, par. 20, 50, 155, 232, 248).
Regarding claim 16, the combination enables:
wherein a policy gate approves an automated action only upon verification success, CPI equality, satisfaction of the multi-ledger policy, and a non-revoked credential at decision time (e.g. Bei, par. 1, 36, 38, 41; fig. 4).
Regarding claim 19, the combination enables:
wherein reviewer credentials include tier designations, and wherein the canonicalization engine normalizes credential fields, including time-zone and format normalization, to prevent cross-node verification discrepancies (e.g. Bei, par. 60, 108, 135).
Regarding claim 20, the combination enables:
wherein the canonicalization pipeline is deterministic such that inputs differing only by locale formatting or field ordering are rendered to an identical canonical representation, yielding identical cryptographic commitments across nodes and enabling consensus on trust contributions without central coordination (e.g. Bei, par. 60, 108, 135).
Regarding claims 2, 17, and 18, they are method claims, essentially corresponding to the claims above, and they are rejected, at least, for the same reasons. Furthermore, regarding claim 2, the combination discloses normalizing “currency” values and “currency-code pairs” (e.g. Bei, Abstract; par. 12).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
See Notice of References Cited.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JEFFERY L WILLIAMS whose telephone number is (571)272-7965. The examiner can normally be reached on 7:30 am - 4:00 pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Farid Homayounmehr can be reached on 571-272-3739. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JEFFERY L WILLIAMS/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2495
