DETAILED ACTION
This Non-Final Office Action is in response to application number 17/756,432 filed on October 24th,2025. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed on May 25th,2022.
Information Disclosure Statements
The information disclosure statements (IDS), submitted on May 25th, 2022 and on April 4th, 2022 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 04/30/2026 has been entered.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being as being unpatentable over Dunsmore et al. (WO2021108358-A1) in view of Theimer et al. (WO 2020256688 A1) further in view of Saha et al (CN 105262664 A Translation).
Regarding claim 1, Dunsmore et al. disclose a control device (Paragraph 00109 discloses “Such a change in access points is referred to herein as a “mobility event. “The mobility management component is typically a defined component in wireless networks, such as the Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF) for 5G networks or the Mobility Management Entity (MME) for 4G or LTE networks. The detection of such mobility events in a CSP network 801, for example, may be based on a certain signal measured by the electronic device 890 that is periodically reported to the CSP network 801 or when other conditions are satisfied. These measurements, for example, can include the received power or the signal quality perceived by the electronic device 890 coming from different geographic areas of coverage (or “cells”) provided by various access points (e.g., access points 888, 889). In some embodiments, these measurements can be used by mobility management component(s) 862 and/or other components of the CSP network 801 to decide whether a handover of the electronic device 890 from one access point to another is to take place, and which access point is the best connection point.”) Select a first processing device from the plurality of processing devices based on the acquired information and the mobility of the mobile device; (Paragraph 00119 discloses “ In this example, the edge location placement service 820 returns an identification of edge location 810-2 as a candidate edge location and the hardware virtualization service 806 selects edge location 810-2 if more than one candidate was returned. The hardware virtualization service 806 issue control plane command(s) to a local resource manager 814 at the edge location 810-2 to launch the requested instance, as indicated at circle “6” of FIG. 8. In some embodiments, a compute instance 815 launched at an edge location 810-2 responsive to a mobility event associated with an electronic device 890 can be based on a same resource (e.g., a virtual machine image, container image, etc.) as that used to launch the compute instance 813 to which the electronic device 890 was previously connected. Once launched, the electronic device 890 can establish a connection with the compute instance 815 launched at the edge location 810-2 and resume use of any application(s) with which the device was interacting.”). Paragraph 0092 and FIG. 8 discloses the Edge Location Placement Service acquiring and comparing latency data and mobility data to identify the optimal edge location. Furthermore paragraphs 0088-0090 disclose a range of additional processing qualities from CPU and memory constraints to network performance and network configurations that can be evaluated in the edge location selection process).
Dunsmore et al. fail to explicitly disclose selecting at least one network function from a plurality of network functions of a core network connected to the base station device, wherein the selection of the at least one network function is based on a hardware processing quality of the selected first processing device, the plurality of processing qualities includes the hardware processing quality of the selected first processing device.
However, in an analogous art, Theimer et al. teaches selecting at least one network function from a plurality of network functions of a core network connected to the base station device, wherein the selection of the at least one network function is based on a hardware processing quality of the selected first processing device, the plurality of processing qualities includes the hardware processing quality of the selected first processing device, (Page 3 Paragraph 2 discloses selecting a network function from one or more network functions by querying the network repository function for one or more network function identifiers and selecting a network function identifier from the provided set of network function identifiers). Furthermore Page 3 Paragraph 2 discloses that “…each of the one or more network functions provides the service and fulfills a condition;” Whereby the conditions comprise “…at least one of a distance condition related to a distance between the respective network function and a reference point, a performance condition related to a performance of the respective network function, a capacity condition related to a capacity of the respective network function, an operational state condition related to an operational state of the respective network function, and a reliability condition related to a reliability of the respective network function;”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Dunsmore et al. to incorporate the teachings of Theimer et al., to select a core network function from a plurality of network functions based on the acquired information of the processing devices, in order to support the support the application requirements of the end user.
Dunsmore et al. and Theimer et al. fail to explicitly disclose that the selected first processing device downloads software and a setting file for implementation of
However, in an analogous art, Saha et al. teaches that the selected first processing device downloads software and a setting file for implementation of (Page 11 Paragraph 3 discloses “…alternatively or in addition to the traditional core network or virtual/virtualized network function (corresponding to the network element or a specific function) is in the form of the corresponding network function, namely the software and virtualization core network is formed as an operation on the corresponding computing device such as server 200. including, for example, , PGW, MME, HSS, SGW based on software, which executes corresponding to the hardware such as a network element based on the same or at least similar function.” Page 8 Paragraph 4 discloses “In addition, according to the embodiment, for example is provided for a computer program product, comprising software code portions for steps when said product is run on a computer execution for method defined herein. The computer program product may include a computer-readable medium on which the software code portions stored. Furthermore, in internal memory of computer program product can be directly loaded into a computer and/or by means of upload, download and push (push) process of at least one but can be transmitted via a network.” Page 19-20 Paragraph 5-1 respectively disclose “…there is provided a process and configuration, enabling the VNF (such as, for example, GW) is instantiated using the available hardware capacity…. Therefore, according to the example of the embodiment, supporting different hardware profiles for VNF different types of SW image data set is generated and is provided to the allocation so that the responsible for the allocation of VNF instantiation can obtain the data set.” ).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Dunsmore et al. and Theimer et al. to incorporate the teachings of Saha et al., to implement a virtual a core network function on a server by downloading and executing software and configuration files on the server, in order enable scaling and simplify life cycle management.
Regarding claim 2, Dunsmore et al. disclose the control device according to claim 1, wherein the information related to the plurality of processing qualities includes information related to latency between the first processing device and the base station device (Paragraph 0092 discloses the latency between the base station and the edge location equivalent to the processing device evaluated by the edge location placement service).
Regarding claim 3, Dunsmore et al. disclose the control device according to claim 2, wherein the information related to the latency between the first processing device and the base station device indicates: information related to a position between the first processing device and the base station device and latency between the first processing device and the position (Paragraph 0089 discloses the particular geographic locations where edge optimized instances are to be launched, this is equivalent to the predetermined location of the processing device. Additionally the latency between the particular geographic location and the user device equivalent to the base station is also disclosed).
Regarding claim 4, Dunsmore et al. disclose the control device according to claim 3, wherein the base station device, the plurality of processing devices, and the control device are independently connected to a plurality of different networks, the plurality of different networks includes the first network, and the position between the first processing device and the base station device is a connection point that connects the plurality of different networks (FIG. 6 discloses the Cloud Provider Network consisting of the Hardware Virtualization Service, Edge Location Placement Service and the Database Service equivalent to the control device connected to a plurality of Edge Locations equivalent to the processing devices and the Electronic Devices equivalent to the base station).
Regarding claim 5, Dunsmore et al. disclose the control device according to claim 1, wherein the information related to the plurality of processing qualities includes information related to the processing speed of the first processing device (Paragraphs 0031 and 0088 discloses through “configuration of CPUs” and “resource constraints of CPU” processing qualities such as processing speed that are evaluated by the edge location placement service).
Regarding claim 6, Dunsmore et al. disclose the control device according to claim 1, wherein the information related to plurality of processing qualities includes information related to a capacity of the first processing device (Paragraph 0096 discloses through “available capacity” processing qualities such as device capacity evaluated by the edge location placement service).
Regarding claim 7, Dunsmore et al. disclose the control device according to claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to: control the first processing device, connected to the first network to which the base station device is connected, to implement the selected at least one function of the core network, or control the first processing device, in a case where the first processing device is connected to a second network(Paragraph 0048, 0058 and FIG. 2 disclose that the edge location or provider substrate extension (PSE) can be located in various locations ranging from the same network as base station to an independent network).
Regarding claim 8, Dunsmore et al. disclose the control device according to claim 1, wherein the hardware processing quality required for the execution of the at least one function of the core network (Paragraph 0092 discloses the Edge Location Service an equivalent component of the control unit acquiring and comparing latency data to desired requirements to identify the optimal edge location. Furthermore paragraphs 0088-0090 disclose a range of additional processing qualities from CPU and memory constraints to network performance and network configurations that can be evaluated in the edge location selection process).
Regarding claim 9, Dunsmore et al. disclose the control device according to claim 1, wherein at least one processor is configured to reselect, based on an update of the information related to the plurality of processing qualities of the plurality of processing devices, the first processing device to implement at least one function from the plurality of processing devices (Paragraphs 00107-00108 and FIG.8 disclose the reselection of the edge location equivalent to the processing device, from edge location 810-1 to edge location 810-2 as edge location 810-1 and compute instance 813 were unable to maintain the initial processing quality the latency requirement).
Regarding claim 10, Dunsmore et al. disclose a base station device, comprising: at least one processor configured to: acquire device information related to a first processing device of a plurality of processing devices, wherein the base station device is connected to the plurality of processing devices and a control device via a network, the base station device is selected based on a mobility of a mobile device, the base station device provides a wireless connection to the mobile device within a coverage of the base station device, the control device selects the first processing device from the plurality of processing devices based on the mobility of the mobile device and information related to a plurality of processing qualities of the plurality of processing devices; and establish a connection to a core network of which at least one network function is implemented by the selected first processing device, wherein the connection of the base station device to the core network is based on the acquired device information and the selection of the first processing device, the control device selects the at least one network function from a plurality of network functions of the core network based on a hardware processing quality of the selected first processing device, the plurality of processing qualities includes the hardware processing quality of theprocessing device, and the selected first processing device downloads software and a setting file for the implementation of the selected at least one network function of the core network, and constructs the selected at least one network function of the core network using the downloaded software and the downloaded setting file. (The limitations of this claim are rejected on the same grounds of rejection as claim #1 from the perspective of the base station).
Regarding claim 11, Dunsmore et al. disclose a control method, comprising: in a control device connected to a plurality of processing devices, a base station device, and a mobile device via a network: acquiring information related to a plurality of processing qualities of the plurality of processing devices, wherein the base station device is selected based on a mobility of the mobile device, and the base station device provides a wireless connection to the mobile device within a coverage of the base station device; selecting a first processing device from the plurality of processing devices based on the acquired information and the mobility of the mobile device; and selecting at least one network function from a plurality of network functions of a core network connected to the base station device, wherein the selection of the at least one network function is based on a hardware processing quality of the selected first processing device, the plurality of processing qualities includes the hardware processing quality of the first processing device, and the selected first processing device downloads software and a setting file for implementation of the selected at least one network function of the core network, and constructs the selected at least one network function of the core network using the downloaded software and the downloaded setting file. (The limitations of this claim are rejected on the same grounds of rejection as claim #1).
Regarding claim 12, Dunsmore et al. disclose a connection method, comprising: in a base station device connected to a plurality of processing devices and a control device via a network: acquiring device information related to a first processing device of the plurality of processing devices, wherein the base station device is selected based on a mobility of a mobile device, the base station device provides a wireless connection to the mobile device within a coverage of the base station device, and the control device selects the first processing device from the plurality of processing devices based on the mobility of the mobile device and information related to a plurality of processing qualities of the plurality of processing devices; and establishing a connection to a core network of which at least one network function is implemented by the selected first processing device, wherein the connection of the base station device to the core network is based on the acquired device information and the selection of the first processing device, the control device selects the at least one network function from a plurality of network functions of the core network based on a hardware processing quality of the selected first processing device, the plurality of processing qualities includes the hardware processing quality of thedownloaded setting file (The limitations of this claim are rejected on the same grounds of rejection as claim #1 from the perspective of the base station).
Regarding claim 13, Dunsmore et al. disclose the control device according to claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to: select, based on an update of the information related to the plurality of processing qualities of the plurality of processing devices, a second processing device from the plurality of processing devices, wherein the second processing device is selected to implement the selected at least one network function, and the second processing device is different from the first processing device; and control the first processing device to release the selected at least one network function (Paragraphs 00107-00108 and FIG.8 disclose the reselection of the edge location equivalent to the processing device, from edge location 810-1 to edge location 810-2 as edge location 810-1 and compute instance 813 were unable to maintain the initial processing quality the latency requirement) .
Regarding claim 14, Dunsmore et al. disclose the control device according to claim 13, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to receive a response associated with the first processing device, and the received response indicates the release of the selected at least one network function (Paragraph 0023 discloses “The cloud can provide convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be programmatically provisioned and released in response to customer commands. These resources can be dynamically provisioned and reconfigured to adjust to variable load. ”).
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim 1 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Samuel Dilan Rutnam whose telephone number is 703-756-1374. The examiner can normally be reached between 8:30am-5:00pm Mon-Fri.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Sujoy Kundu can be reached on 571-272-8586.
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/Samuel Dilan Rutnam/
Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2471
/MOHAMMAD S ADHAMI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2471
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