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 .
Claim Status
This office action is in response to the communication(s) filed on 07/14/2026.
Claim(s) 1-5, 7, 12-17, 19, 24-27, and 30 is/are currently presenting for examination.
Claim(s) 1, 13, 25, and 30 is/are independent claim(s).
Claim(s) 1-5, 7, 12-17, 19, 24-27, and 30 is/are rejected.
This action has been made NON-FINAL.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 07/14/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed on 07/14/2026 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
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 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1-5, 7, 13-17, 19, 25-27, and 30 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US_20230072769_A1_Yeh in view of US_20240049104_A1_Sun and US_20220402137_A1_Racz.
Regarding claim 1, Yeh teaches a method for improving Quality of Service (QoS) in an end-to-end network connection performed by a user equipment (UE) (Yeh figure 9, paragraph 32-33, and paragraph 186, “…The IoT devices 911 can utilize technologies such as M2M or MTC for exchanging data with an MTC server ( e.g., a server 950), an edge server 936 and/or edge computing system 935, or device via a PLMN, ProSe or D2D communication,…”), comprising: wherein the end-to-end network connection is via: a fifth generation (5G) communication network including the UE and a 5G network function (Yeh figure 9, paragraph 184, “…the communication networks and/or access technologies may include cellular technology such as LTE, MuLTEfire, and/or NR/5G…”); and a non-5G communication network including the UE and a wireless device (Yeh figure 9, , paragraph 194, “…The UEs 921, 911 may further directly exchange communication data via respective direct links 905, …”), wherein the non-5G communication network is a Wi-Fi network, a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) network, or a universal serial bus (USB) network (Yeh paragraph 194, “…The UEs 921, 911 may further directly exchange communication data via respective direct links 905, which may be… WiFi based links… WiFi-direct; Bluetooth/Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocols)).
but does not teach determining, a QoS requirement of the end-to-end network connection, sending, to the 5G network function of the 5G communication network, a QoS parameter indicating a requested QoS of the 5G communication network, wherein the QoS parameter is based on the determined QoS requirement; the QoS parameter is a 5QI parameter; and receiving, from the wireless device, a message indicating a change in: a round-trip delay or one-way delay of the end-to-end network connection; or a packet error rate associated with the end-to-end network connection, and wherein the 5QI is adjusted based on the QoS requirement and the change indicated by the message received from the wireless device.
Sun from the same or similar fields of endeavor teaches: determining, a QoS requirement of the end-to-end network connection (Sun figure 4A, step 406, the relay UE 104 receives the E2E QoS requirement from remote UE 106, and forwards it to the base station 102); and sending, to the 5G network function of the 5G communication network, a QoS parameter indicating a requested QoS of the 5G communication network (Sun figure 4B, steps, 420, 426, paragraph 74, “At 426, the relay UE 104 transmits a communication resource request to the base station 102…”), wherein the QoS parameter is based on the QoS requirement (Sun figure 4A-4B, step 426, the requested communication resource is determined based on the hop QoS status and QoS requirement).
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the teachings of Sun into Yeh, since Yeh suggests a technique for establishing E2E connection according to QoS requirement, and Sun suggests the beneficial way of transmit an E2E QoS requirement to the base station so that/thus allocates proper radio and core network resources to match the specific performance needs of an application in the analogous art of communication.
Yeh and Sun do not teach the QoS parameter is a 5QI parameter; and receiving, from the wireless device, a message indicating a change in: a round-trip delay or one-way delay of the end-to-end network connection; or a packet error rate associated with the end-to-end network connection, and wherein the 5QI is adjusted based on the QoS requirement and the change indicated by the message received from the wireless device.
Racz from the same or similar fields of endeavor teaches: the QoS parameter is a 5QI parameter (Racz paragraph 9, “…5G Quality of Service (QoS) Indicator (5QI) related information…”, also see paragraphs 38, 39); and receiving, from the wireless device, a message indicating a change in: a round-trip delay or one-way delay of the end-to-end network connection; or a packet error rate associated with the end-to-end network connection (Racz paragraph 39, “the root cause for the QoE degradation may be identified by determining whether a respective performance indicator exceeds a corresponding performance threshold… when packet loss is >5%, or when the RTT is >100 ms. In case the respective performance indicator is not representative of a numerical value, such as in case of a 5QI value mapping to one or more QoS characteristics, the root cause for the QoE degradation may be identified without comparison to a threshold.”. Also see paragraph 4, 9, 11, 30,), and wherein the 5QI is adjusted based on the QoS requirement and the change indicated by the message received from the wireless device (Racz figure 2, paragraph 39, “the root cause for the QoE degradation may be identified by determining whether a respective performance indicator exceeds a corresponding performance threshold… when packet loss is >5%, or when the RTT is >100 ms. In case the respective performance indicator is not representative of a numerical value, such as in case of a 5QI value mapping to one or more QoS characteristics, the root cause for the QoE degradation may be identified without comparison to a threshold… a 5QI mapping that does not provide the QoS characteristics required for an orderly operation of the robotic application”, paragraph 43, changing the 5QI value according to the QoS requirement and connection condition).
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the teachings of Racz into Yeh and Sun, since Yeh and Sun suggest a technique for establishing E2E connection according to QoS requirement, and Racz suggests the beneficial way of changing the 5QI value according to the QoS requirement and connection condition so that/thus ensures that the network dynamically provides the optimal balance of speed, latency, and reliability for every individual end-to-end (E2E) connection in the analogous art of communication.
Regarding claim 2, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the method of claim 1, and Yeh further teaches wherein the end-to-end network connection is between the wireless device and an endpoint server associated with an augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), or extended reality (XR) application that is running on the wireless device (Yeh figure 9, paragraph 32-33, and paragraph 186, “…The IoT devices 911 can utilize technologies such as M2M or MTC for exchanging data with an MTC server ( e.g., a server 950), an edge server 936 and/or edge computing system 935, or device via a PLMN, ProSe or D2D communication,…”, and paragraphs 25, 94, 178, AR/VR applications).
Regarding claim 3, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the method of claim 1, and Racz further teaches wherein the change is: a requested decrease in the round-trip delay, the one-way delay, or the packet error rate; or an allowable increase in the round-trip delay, the one-way delay, or the packet error rate (Racz figure 2, paragraph 39, “the root cause for the QoE degradation may be identified by determining whether a respective performance indicator exceeds a corresponding performance threshold… when packet loss is >5%, or when the RTT is >100 ms. In case the respective performance indicator is not representative of a numerical value, such as in case of a 5QI value mapping to one or more QoS characteristics, the root cause for the QoE degradation may be identified without comparison to a threshold… a 5QI mapping that does not provide the QoS characteristics required for an orderly operation of the robotic application”, paragraph 43, changing the 5QI value according to the QoS requirement and connection condition).
Regarding claim 4, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the method of claim 1, and Racz further teaches wherein the change is determined by the wireless device based on a Quality of Experience (QoE) experienced by the wireless device (Racz figure 2, and paragraphs 39, 43).
Regarding claim 5, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the method of claim 1, and Sun further teaches further comprising obtaining QoS information that includes a classification of the non-5G communication network, the classification indicating that the non-5G communication network is the Wi-Fi network, the BLE network, or the USB network (Sun figure 4B, hop QoS status).
Regarding claim 7, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the method of claim 1, and Sun further teaches further comprising obtaining QoS information includes at least one of application information or traffic information (Sun paragraph 71, traffic information).
Regarding claim 13, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the limitations as set forth in claim 1, and Sun further teaches user equipment (UE) network element, comprising: one or more memories; one or more transceivers; and one or more processors communicatively coupled to the one or more memories and the one or more transceivers (Sun figure 2).
Regarding claim 14, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the limitations as set forth in claim 2.
Regarding claim 15, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the limitations as set forth in claim 3.
Regarding claim 16, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the limitations as set forth in claim 4.
Regarding claim 17, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the limitations as set forth in claim 5.
Regarding claim 19, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the limitations as set forth in claim 7.
Regarding claim 25, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the limitations as set forth in claim 1.
Regarding claim 26, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the limitations as set forth in claim 2.
Regarding claim 27, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the limitations as set forth in claim 3.
Regarding claim 30, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the limitations as set forth in claim 1, and Sun further teaches a non-transitory processor-readable medium having stored thereon processor-executable instructions configured to cause a processor of a network element to perform operations (Sun figure 102, 105).
Claim(s) 12 and 24 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US_20230072769_A1_Yeh in view of US_20240049104_A1_Sun, US_20220402137_A1_Racz and US_20170041231_A1_Seed.
Regarding claim 12, Yeh, Sun and Racz teach the method of claim 1, but do not teach wherein the QoS requirement of the end-to-end network connection is determined based on a service agreement, application type, or user request.
Seed teaches wherein the QoS requirement of the end-to-end network connection is determined based on a service agreement, application type, or user request (Seed paragraph 77, “…Depending on the type of application and the type of device, this communication may have specific E2E QoS requirements…”).
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the teachings of Seed’s the QoS requirement of an E2E communication is depending on the type of application and the type of device in Yeh, Sun and Racz’s system to optimize network performance, and to ensure a satisfactory user experience. This method for improving the system of Yeh, Sun and Racz was within the ordinary ability of one of ordinary skill in the art based on the teachings of Seed. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of Yeh, Sun, Racz and Seed to obtain the invention as specified in claim 12.
Regarding claim 24, Yeh, Sun, Racz and Seed teach the limitations as set forth in claim 12.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WEIBIN HUANG whose telephone number is (571)270-3695. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 9:30AM - 6:00PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Sujoy Kundu can be reached at (571)272-8586. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/W.H/Examiner, Art Unit 2471
/SUJOY K KUNDU/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2471
