DETAILED ACTION
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(s) (IDS) submitted on 08/26/2025 is/are being considered by the Examiner.
Claim Interpretation
NOTE: In order to promote compact prosecution, prior art will be applied for all claim limitations as appropriate, even when the broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI) does not include certain contingent limitations present in method claims. However, this should not be taken as an acknowledgement that the BRI and therefore the scope of method claims with such contingent limitations are broader than as discussed below.
Regarding claim 1, the method claim contains recitation(s) contingent upon “when C’1 is no longer used as a controller” and “when C’1 is deleted”, which appear to be synonymous per paragraph [0032] of the published application. However, this recitation is not required to carry out the claimed invention (i.e. the controller C’1 cannot be deleted and therefore is still used as a controller) and according to MPEP 2111.04, II, “The broadest reasonable interpretation of a method (or process) claim having contingent limitations requires only those steps that must be performed and does not include steps that are not required to be performed because the condition(s) precedent are not met.” See also Ex parte Schulhauser, Appeal 2013-007847 (PTAB April 28, 2016). The criteria for such a determination are given explicitly in step 6 of claim 1.
Therefore, in a situation where C’1 cannot be deleted, the BRI of claim 1 would not include step 5, the second to last part of step 6 i.e. “the new controller is added to a set…”, and possibly step 7 (further explained in the 112 section below).
Furthermore, in a situation where C’1 can be deleted, the BRI of claim 1 would not include the final part of step 6 i.e. “C’1 is added to the set…”
Regarding claim 4, the method claim contains recitation(s) contingent upon “if multiple satisfactory minimal dominating sets exist”. However, this recitation is not required to carry out the claimed invention (i.e. one minimal dominating set exists). Therefore, the BRI of claim 4 would not include the following limitation(s) if only one minimal dominating set exists:
“a minimal dominating set with the largest sum of degrees of the nodes in the set, thereby improving the control redundancy of the control plane while minimizing the deployment cost.”.
Claim Objections
Claim 1 objected to because of the following informalities:
step 6 appears to give criteria for when a controller C’1 can be deleted but step 5 refers to a situation where C’1 is already deleted. It would flow better to have step 6 in between step 4 which ends with “trying to delete C’1” then having step 6 which gives the criteria for such a deletion.
Further regarding claim 1, step recites SDON with a redundant “network” after it. Each acronym should be spelled out first and the redundant “network” should be deleted. The claim also refers to SDN which also needs to be spelled out.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
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, 2, 4, and 5 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, step 3 recites that the topology is “usually” divided into n areas. However, no criteria are present in the claims for when “usually” occurs and if/when the claim encompasses “n” areas or a different number of areas. Therefore, one or ordinary skill in the art would find the meets and bounds of this recitation to be unclear. Furthermore, step 7 refers to “after operation of C’1”. It is unclear what “after operation” means. As noted above, claim 1 refers to C’1 being deleted or no longer being used which are possibly synonymous with “after operation”. However, when looking to the Specification of the published application, only paragraph [0016] uses this terminology and states “Step 7: after operation (it is inappropriate to discuss this term) of C’1”. (emphasis added) This not only gives little clarity to “after operation”, but also opens up new questions as to why it would be inappropriate to further discus claim terminology in the Specification. Therefore, one or ordinary skill in the art would find the meets and bounds of “after operation” to be unclear. Dependent claims 2, 4, and 5 do not cure claim 1 of these issues, and are similarly rejected.
Further regarding claims 1, 2, 4, and 5, there are multiple antecedent basis issues as many newly recited elements are preceded with “the” (e.g. “the length W of the longest control link…”) or are missing an article (e.g. “reconverting G to network topology”, where network topology should be preceded with “a”). Newly recited elements usually are preceded with “a/an”. It also appears that some terminology is used inconsistently throughout the claims (e.g. the Floyd algorithm is later referred to as the corrected Floyd algorithm, which then also later becomes the Floyd Shortest Path Algorithm). The same claim terminology for elements should be used consistently throughout the claim set to avoid confusion. There are too numerous examples fully list but Applicant should carefully review the claim elements to overcome these issues.
Conclusion
The Examiner was unable to contact Applicant to correct the issues above because it appears Applicant has legal representation but a valid power of attorney has not been filed in the present application. Providing representative information in an Application Data Sheet (ADS) does not constitute a power of attorney. See 37 CFR 1.76(b)(4) and MPEP § 408. For information on appointing a power of attorney, see MPEP § 402.02 et seq.
Although no prior art is used against claim 1, this is not an indication that it/they is/are allowable. See MPEP 2173.06, section II, second paragraph. The 112 issues cause a great deal of confusion and uncertainty as to the proper interpretation of the limitations of the claim(s). It is therefore difficult for the Examiner to properly search for prior art for the invention.
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Tse et al, U.S. Publication No. 2020/0036467 generally teaches a software defined optical network comprising nodes (see Tse Figure 1, network 105 with SDN controller 155 to nodes 131-137), each node comprising a switch and controller (see Figure 1, node 101 example with controller 178 and switch 193).
Ranjbar et al, U.S. Publication No. 2020/0295998 generally teaches a software defined optical network which is configured to delete controllers for system optimization (see Ranfbar Figure 1 and paragraph [0070]).
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/CASEY L KRETZER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2635