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 .
Status of Claims
The examiner has taken notice that claims 1-2, 5, 8-14, 17, and 19-20 have been amended, and claim 7 has been canceled. Claims 1-6 and 8-20 are pending in the current application.
Response to Arguments
Applicant has amended independent claims 1 and 19 to include allowable subject matter of claims 7 and 12, respectively. The rejection of claims 1 and 19 under 35 USC § 103 has been withdrawn and the claims allowed.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 17-18 have been considered but are moot in view of newly found reference Mong.
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.
The factual inquiries 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.
Claims 17-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Haartsen et al. (US 2010/0112950 A1), hereinafter referred to as Haartsen, in view of Aweya (US 2015/0092793 A1) and Mong et al. (US 2018/0237040 A1), hereinafter referred to as Mong.
Regarding claim 17, Haartsen teaches a device comprising a processor coupled to storage (Haartsen – Fig. 1B; Paragraph [0049], note baseband processor 203, controller 204; Paragraph [0173], note implemented by special purpose hardware-based systems which perform the specified functions or acts, or combinations of special purpose hardware and computer instructions), wherein the processor is configured to:
instruct an update of a clock of a follower device in absence of time synchronization information from a leader device by using time synchronization information previously received at the follower device (Haartsen – Paragraph [0050], note a slave unit in sniff mode may wake up periodically in order to listen to transmissions from the master unit and in order to re-synchronize its clock offset, packet exchange may provide timing information to update the clock of the slave unit, when no packets are exchanged, the clocks of the master unit and slave unit, respectively, may remain loosely in sync due to the previous adjustments, clock information should, therefore, preferably be stored during a previous connection stage, the clock information may, e.g., be stored as a time offset to its own native clock, the offset in the slave unit may have to be adjusted to compensate for drift, the reception of packets sent by the master unit may be used to adjust the offset).
Haartsen does not teach instructing an update of a clock of a follower device to continue processing control information at the follower device.
In an analogous art, Aweya teaches instructing an update of a clock of a follower device to continue processing control information at the follower device (Aweya – Paragraph [0055], note by combining features of Sync-E and IEEE 1588 PTP, the method may allow the slave to accurately measure the actual PDV of PTP messages (control information) arriving at the slave, the slave can then correctly adjust its clock while compensating for the actual delay variations).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Aweya into Haartsen in order to update the clock of a slave/follower and additionally verify time offset estimates for use in clock alignment, reducing clock update errors (Aweya – Paragraph [0059]).
The combination of Haartsen and Aweya does not teach instructing an update of a clock of a follower device to continue processing time-critical control information at the follower device, wherein the time-critical control information comprises instructions for one or more actions that the follower device execute as part of a time-critical operation.
In an analogous art, Mong teaches instructing an update of a clock of a follower device to continue processing time-critical information at the follower device, wherein the time-critical information comprises instructions for one or more actions that the follower device execute as part of a time-critical operation (Mong – Paragraph [0108], note a scheduler of TSN can create schedules that support QoS requirements (including a transport priority for transmitting time sensitive data, see Paragraph [0128]) of the data distribution service for time-critical control applications; Paragraph [0109], note a time-critical control application includes an operation of one or more devices in a control system (such as clocks under a grandmaster, see Paragraph [0243]) that relies on receipt of data in sufficient time to allow the one or more devices to react based on the data and provide an effective responsive action; Paragraph [0248], note the scheduler device communicates with the time-aware systems (switches with respective clocks), the time-aware systems implement a control plane element that forwards the commands from the centralized scheduler device; it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to assign (i.e., instruct) a higher priority to a clock device for communicating time sensitive data).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Mong into the combination of Haartsen and Aweya in order to utilize the transport priority QoS parameter of Mong to instruct the slave clock of Haartsen and Aweya to prioritize reception of control information as time sensitive data over other traffic, ensuring successful communication within designated time periods or at designated times (Mong – Paragraphs [0118] and [0128]).
Claim 18 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Haartsen in view of Aweya and Mong as applied to claim 17 above, and further in view of Joseph et al. (US 2020/0228220 A1), hereinafter referred to as Joseph.
Regarding claim 18, the combination of Haartsen, Aweya, and Mong does not teach wherein the follower device and the leader device are Time Sensitive Networking-enabled devices.
In an analogous art, Joseph teaches wherein the follower device and the leader device are Time Sensitive Networking-enabled devices (Joseph – Fig. 4; Paragraph [0158], note TSN 405, endpoints 415, and nodes 435).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Joseph into the combination of Haartsen, Aweya, and Mong in order to improve flexibility of PTP time synchronization and reduce signaling overhead (Joseph – Paragraph [0103]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-6, 8-16, and 19-20 are allowed.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Applicant’s independent claims recite determining whether a clock drift between the clock of the follower device and the clock of the leader device is less than a predefined drift threshold by: determining a plurality of drift values each corresponding to previous time synchronization information received at the follower device prior to the failed reception of the time synchronization information, wherein each drift value is representative of a difference between a clock value of the clock of the follower device and a clock value of the clock of the leader device prior to the update instructed by the corresponding time synchronization information; and determining whether the clock drift between the clock of the follower device and the clock of the leader device is less than the predefined drift threshold based on the plurality of drift values (as disclosed in Paragraphs [00110]-[00128] of applicant’s specification, filed 11/14/2022), which is neither taught nor suggested by the prior art.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Hu et al. (US 2018/0227067 A1) discloses changing a master clock source for a time domain within a TSN environment.
Bush et al. (US 2019/0123847 A1) discloses a network control system of a time-sensitive network system that transmits symmetric secret information.
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/BAILOR C HSU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2461
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