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 .
This Office Action is in response to the Applicants' amendment received on 03/03/2026.
Claim Status
Claims 1-13 are currently presenting for examination.
Claims 14-20 are withdrawn.
This action has been made FINAL.
Response to Arguments
Applicants' arguments filed 03/03/2026 have been fully 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 of this title, 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.
Claims 1-3, 5-11, 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over England, US 20030221008 in view of Wang, US 20220174051.
For claim 1. England teaches: A method of managing flows on a network comprising:
identifying a first flow on the network; identifying a second flow on the network; responsive to identifying the first flow, determining a priority of the first flow; responsive to identifying the second flow, determining a priority of the second flow; (England, fig 3, paragraph 31-36, “The exemplary method begins in step 300 where priorities are assigned to the communications flows coming into the receiver 102 over the common communications link 108. The priorities are used later in the method (see step 304) to decide, when it becomes necessary to re-allocate the limited bandwidth of the common link 108, which incoming flows should relinquish some bandwidth for the benefit of other incoming flows.”; paragraph 38, “Several techniques are available to the receiver 102 to automatically set priorities in step 400. In a very simple case, an incoming communications flow's priority can be set to be the inverse of its current bandwidth use. While mostly arbitrary, this method at least leads to a somewhat even sharing of bandwidth when bandwidth demand exceeds the total bandwidth capacity of the common communications link 108. In a more sophisticated technique, the receiver 102 examines the name of an application associated with an incoming flow. An Internet Protocol telephony application, because of the real-time nature of its communications flows, would be given a "high" or "real-time" priority while a browser would get a "medium" or "interactive" priority. Unknown applications may by default be given a "low" priority, leaving it up to a user (see the discussion of steps 406 through 410 below) to change this as appropriate.”)
comparing the priority of the first flow to the priority of the second flow to determine which of the first flow and the second flow is a flow having a lower priority and which of the first flow and the second flow is a flow having a higher priority; (England, fig 5c, paragraph 50, step 522, “if another incoming communications flow has a priority lower than the priority of this incoming flow” clearly indicates that comparison was performed between the two flows to know which one has lower priority)
determining that a bandwidth of the flow having the higher priority is below a target bandwidth of the flow having the higher priority, (England, fig 5c, paragraph 50, “The final example of methods for deciding when to re-allocate bandwidth is given in FIG. 5c. This method is reminiscent of the method of FIG. 5a. However, the method of FIG. 5a looks at total bandwidth use to predict a future shortfall while the method of FIG. 5c looks at the current communications characteristics of a single incoming communications flow. In step 516 is set a desired range of a communications characteristic of an incoming flow. For an interactive incoming flow, for example, a typical characteristic would be response latency, with the range specifying a maximum acceptable value. Variations in transmission latency and minimum bandwidth are important to real-time incoming flows. In steps 518 and 520, the actual characteristic is measured and compared against the desired value range. If the characteristic does not lie within the desired value range, then the receiver 102 decides that a re-allocation of bandwidth may help to move the characteristic back into the desired range. Applying a more sophisticated technique (not shown), the receiver 102 may monitor the characteristic and take proactive action before the characteristic actually leaves the desired value range.”; bandwidth is a characteristic for real-time (high priority) incoming flow since “Variations in transmission latency and minimum bandwidth are important to real-time incoming flows”; desired value range is target bandwidth; not lie within the desired value range is below desired value range or exceed desired value range)
and distributing bandwidth from the flow having the lower priority to the flow having the higher priority. (England, fig 3, paragraph 31-36, “In step 304, at least one of the lower-priority incoming communications flows is selected to relinquish some of the bandwidth it is currently using. It is in this step 304 that the priorities set in step 300 are used… The bandwidth relinquished by these selected flows becomes available for use by other, higher priority, incoming flows.”; paragraph 11-15, “Thus, the receiver changes the allocation of incoming bandwidth by moving some bandwidth from lower priority communications flows to higher priority flows, all without requesting a bandwidth change from the senders.”; also see fig 5A-C, paragraph 47-50 for more information)
England doesn’t teach: wherein the target bandwidth of the flow having the higher priority is less than a total amount of bandwidth available on the network;
Wang from the same or similar fields of endeavor teaches: wherein the target bandwidth of the flow having the higher priority is less than a total amount of bandwidth available on the network; (Wang, paragraph 82, “For example, assume that the service policy is defined as follows: total interface bandwidth of the second device 302 is 100 Mbps (megabits per second)… interface bandwidth allocated to a voice application is 20 Mbps… The voice application is a high-precedence application… if traffic of the voice application exceeds 20 Mbps or traffic of the email application exceeds 10 Mbps, the second device 302 buffers an excess of packets, and when subsequent traffic decreases, sends the buffered packets”; traffic is flow)
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 Wang into England, since England suggests a technique for assigning target bandwidth to high priority flow, and Wang suggests the beneficial way of having such target bandwidth to be less than the total bandwidth available to reduce calculation overheads (Wang, paragraph 7) in the analogous art of communication.
For claim 2. England and Wang disclose all the limitations of claim 1 and England further teaches: wherein distributing bandwidth from the flow having the lower priority to the flow having the higher priority includes determining that the flow having the higher priority and the flow having the lower priority share at least one bottleneck link. (England, paragraph 11-15, “Thus, the receiver changes the allocation of incoming bandwidth by moving some bandwidth from lower priority communications flows to higher priority flows, all without requesting a bandwidth change from the senders… Another aspect of the present invention concerns how to decide whether a re-allocation of bandwidth is necessary. In some simple cases, it may be appropriate to set a threshold target of total bandwidth use. For example, when the total amount of bandwidth in use exceeds 95% of the capacity of the communications link, then bandwidth is re-allocated from the lower priority communications flows to the higher priority flows.”; “total amount of bandwidth in use exceeds 95% of the capacity of the communications link” is bottleneck)
For claim 3. England and Wang disclose all the limitations of claim 1 and England further teaches: further comprising: determining a bandwidth of the flow having the lower priority; determining the bandwidth of the flow having the higher priority; and wherein distributing bandwidth from the flow having the lower priority to the flow having the higher priority includes distributing no more bandwidth than the bandwidth of the flow having the lower priority. (England, fig 3, paragraph 31-36, “In step 304, at least one of the lower-priority incoming communications flows is selected to relinquish some of the bandwidth it is currently using. It is in this step 304 that the priorities set in step 300 are used… The bandwidth relinquished by these selected flows becomes available for use by other, higher priority, incoming flows.”; paragraph 11-15, “Thus, the receiver changes the allocation of incoming bandwidth by moving some bandwidth from lower priority communications flows to higher priority flows, all without requesting a bandwidth change from the senders.”; also see fig 5A-C, paragraph 47-50 for more information)
For claim 5. England and Wang disclose all the limitations of claim 1 and England further teaches: wherein distributing bandwidth includes using a competitive algorithm to distribute bandwidth, and the competitive algorithm is configured to favor the flow having the higher priority over at least one other flow. (England, fig 3, paragraph 31-36, “In step 304, at least one of the lower-priority incoming communications flows is selected to relinquish some of the bandwidth it is currently using. It is in this step 304 that the priorities set in step 300 are used… The bandwidth relinquished by these selected flows becomes available for use by other, higher priority, incoming flows.”; paragraph 11-15, “Thus, the receiver changes the allocation of incoming bandwidth by moving some bandwidth from lower priority communications flows to higher priority flows, all without requesting a bandwidth change from the senders.”; also see fig 5A-C, paragraph 47-50 for more information; paragraph 26, “In the description that follows, the present invention is described with reference to acts and symbolic representations of operations that are performed by one or more computing devices, unless indicated otherwise. As such, it will be understood that such acts and operations, which are at times referred to as being computer-executed, include the manipulation by the processing unit of the computing device of electrical signals representing data in a structured form. This manipulation transforms the data or maintains them at locations in the memory system of the computing device, which reconfigures or otherwise alters the operation of the device in a manner well understood by those skilled in the art. The data structures where data are maintained are physical locations of the memory that have particular properties defined by the format of the data. However, while the invention is being described in the foregoing context, it is not meant to be limiting as those of skill in the art will appreciate that various of the acts and operations described hereinafter may also be implemented in hardware.”)
For claim 6. England and Wang disclose all the limitations of claim 5 and England further teaches: wherein the at least one other flow is the flow having the lower priority. (England, fig 3, paragraph 31-36, “In step 304, at least one of the lower-priority incoming communications flows is selected to relinquish some of the bandwidth it is currently using. It is in this step 304 that the priorities set in step 300 are used… The bandwidth relinquished by these selected flows becomes available for use by other, higher priority, incoming flows.”; paragraph 11-15, “Thus, the receiver changes the allocation of incoming bandwidth by moving some bandwidth from lower priority communications flows to higher priority flows, all without requesting a bandwidth change from the senders.”)
For claim 7. England and Wang disclose all the limitations of claim 5 and England further teaches: wherein the at least one other flow is every flow present at a bottleneck link associated with the flow having the higher priority. (England, paragraph 11-15, “Thus, the receiver changes the allocation of incoming bandwidth by moving some bandwidth from lower priority communications flows to higher priority flows, all without requesting a bandwidth change from the senders… Another aspect of the present invention concerns how to decide whether a re-allocation of bandwidth is necessary. In some simple cases, it may be appropriate to set a threshold target of total bandwidth use. For example, when the total amount of bandwidth in use exceeds 95% of the capacity of the communications link, then bandwidth is re-allocated from the lower priority communications flows to the higher priority flows.”; “total amount of bandwidth in use exceeds 95% of the capacity of the communications link” is bottleneck)
For claim 8. England teaches: A method of distributing bandwidth on a network comprising:
providing at least one rule; identifying at least two flows; responsive to identifying the at least two flows, assigning two or more flows of the at least two flows a respective priority based on the at least one rule; (England, fig 3, paragraph 31-36, “The exemplary method begins in step 300 where priorities are assigned to the communications flows coming into the receiver 102 over the common communications link 108. The priorities are used later in the method (see step 304) to decide, when it becomes necessary to re-allocate the limited bandwidth of the common link 108, which incoming flows should relinquish some bandwidth for the benefit of other incoming flows. These priorities may be set automatically by software running on the receiver 102, by the direct intervention of a user of the receiver 102, or by some combination of these.”)
responsive to assigning the two or more flows of the at least two flows a priority, distributing bandwidth of at least one flow of the at least two flows to a different flow of the at least two flows. (England, fig 3, paragraph 31-36, “In step 304, at least one of the lower-priority incoming communications flows is selected to relinquish some of the bandwidth it is currently using. It is in this step 304 that the priorities set in step 300 are used… The bandwidth relinquished by these selected flows becomes available for use by other, higher priority, incoming flows.”; paragraph 11-15, “Thus, the receiver changes the allocation of incoming bandwidth by moving some bandwidth from lower priority communications flows to higher priority flows, all without requesting a bandwidth change from the senders.”; also see fig 5A-C, paragraph 47-50 for more information)
wherein distributing the bandwidth to the different flow is based on determining that the different flow has a bandwidth exceeding a target bandwidth, (England, fig 5c, paragraph 50, “The final example of methods for deciding when to re-allocate bandwidth is given in FIG. 5c. This method is reminiscent of the method of FIG. 5a. However, the method of FIG. 5a looks at total bandwidth use to predict a future shortfall while the method of FIG. 5c looks at the current communications characteristics of a single incoming communications flow. In step 516 is set a desired range of a communications characteristic of an incoming flow. For an interactive incoming flow, for example, a typical characteristic would be response latency, with the range specifying a maximum acceptable value. Variations in transmission latency and minimum bandwidth are important to real-time incoming flows. In steps 518 and 520, the actual characteristic is measured and compared against the desired value range. If the characteristic does not lie within the desired value range, then the receiver 102 decides that a re-allocation of bandwidth may help to move the characteristic back into the desired range. Applying a more sophisticated technique (not shown), the receiver 102 may monitor the characteristic and take proactive action before the characteristic actually leaves the desired value range.”; bandwidth is a characteristic for real-time (high priority) incoming flow since “Variations in transmission latency and minimum bandwidth are important to real-time incoming flows”; desired value range is target bandwidth; not lie within the desired value range is below desired value range or exceed desired value range)
England doesn’t teach: wherein the target bandwidth is less than a total amount of bandwidth available on the network.
Wang from the same or similar fields of endeavor teaches: wherein the target bandwidth is less than a total amount of bandwidth available on the network. (Wang, paragraph 82, “For example, assume that the service policy is defined as follows: total interface bandwidth of the second device 302 is 100 Mbps (megabits per second)… interface bandwidth allocated to a voice application is 20 Mbps… The voice application is a high-precedence application… if traffic of the voice application exceeds 20 Mbps or traffic of the email application exceeds 10 Mbps, the second device 302 buffers an excess of packets, and when subsequent traffic decreases, sends the buffered packets”; traffic is flow)
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 Wang into England, since England suggests a technique for assigning target bandwidth to high priority flow, and Wang suggests the beneficial way of having such target bandwidth to be less than the total bandwidth available to reduce calculation overheads (Wang, paragraph 7) in the analogous art of communication.
For claim 9. England and Wang disclose all the limitations of claim 8 and England further teaches: further comprising identifying at least one bottleneck link shared by the at least two flows. (England, paragraph 11-15, “Thus, the receiver changes the allocation of incoming bandwidth by moving some bandwidth from lower priority communications flows to higher priority flows, all without requesting a bandwidth change from the senders… Another aspect of the present invention concerns how to decide whether a re-allocation of bandwidth is necessary. In some simple cases, it may be appropriate to set a threshold target of total bandwidth use. For example, when the total amount of bandwidth in use exceeds 95% of the capacity of the communications link, then bandwidth is re-allocated from the lower priority communications flows to the higher priority flows.”; “total amount of bandwidth in use exceeds 95% of the capacity of the communications link” is bottleneck)
For claim 10. England and Wang disclose all the limitations of claim 8 and England further teaches: further comprising: identifying a bandwidth of a first flow of the at least two flows; identifying a bandwidth of a second flow of the at least two flows, the second flow having a priority lower than a priority of the first flow; (England, fig 3, paragraph 31-36, “The exemplary method begins in step 300 where priorities are assigned to the communications flows coming into the receiver 102 over the common communications link 108. The priorities are used later in the method (see step 304) to decide, when it becomes necessary to re-allocate the limited bandwidth of the common link 108, which incoming flows should relinquish some bandwidth for the benefit of other incoming flows.”)
and wherein distributing bandwidth of the at least one flow of the at least two flows to a different flow of the at least two flows includes distributing bandwidth from the second flow to the first flow. (England, fig 3, paragraph 31-36, “In step 304, at least one of the lower-priority incoming communications flows is selected to relinquish some of the bandwidth it is currently using. It is in this step 304 that the priorities set in step 300 are used… The bandwidth relinquished by these selected flows becomes available for use by other, higher priority, incoming flows.”; paragraph 11-15, “Thus, the receiver changes the allocation of incoming bandwidth by moving some bandwidth from lower priority communications flows to higher priority flows, all without requesting a bandwidth change from the senders.”; also see fig 5A-C, paragraph 47-50 for more information)
For claim 11. England and Wang disclose all the limitations of claim 10 and England further teaches: wherein the bandwidth distributed from the second flow to the first flow is less than or equal to the bandwidth of the second flow. (England, fig 3, paragraph 31-36, “In step 304, at least one of the lower-priority incoming communications flows is selected to relinquish some of the bandwidth it is currently using. It is in this step 304 that the priorities set in step 300 are used… The bandwidth relinquished by these selected flows becomes available for use by other, higher priority, incoming flows.”; paragraph 11-15, “Thus, the receiver changes the allocation of incoming bandwidth by moving some bandwidth from lower priority communications flows to higher priority flows, all without requesting a bandwidth change from the senders.”; also see fig 5A-C, paragraph 47-50 for more information)
For claim 13. England and Wang disclose all the limitations of claim 8 and England further teaches: wherein distributing bandwidth includes using a competitive algorithm, wherein the competitive algorithm is configured to favor the different flow of the at least two flows over the at least one flow of the at least two flows. (England, fig 3, paragraph 31-36, “In step 304, at least one of the lower-priority incoming communications flows is selected to relinquish some of the bandwidth it is currently using. It is in this step 304 that the priorities set in step 300 are used… The bandwidth relinquished by these selected flows becomes available for use by other, higher priority, incoming flows.”; paragraph 11-15, “Thus, the receiver changes the allocation of incoming bandwidth by moving some bandwidth from lower priority communications flows to higher priority flows, all without requesting a bandwidth change from the senders.”; also see fig 5A-C, paragraph 47-50 for more information; paragraph 26, “In the description that follows, the present invention is described with reference to acts and symbolic representations of operations that are performed by one or more computing devices, unless indicated otherwise. As such, it will be understood that such acts and operations, which are at times referred to as being computer-executed, include the manipulation by the processing unit of the computing device of electrical signals representing data in a structured form. This manipulation transforms the data or maintains them at locations in the memory system of the computing device, which reconfigures or otherwise alters the operation of the device in a manner well understood by those skilled in the art. The data structures where data are maintained are physical locations of the memory that have particular properties defined by the format of the data. However, while the invention is being described in the foregoing context, it is not meant to be limiting as those of skill in the art will appreciate that various of the acts and operations described hereinafter may also be implemented in hardware.”)
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4, 12 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KHOA B HUYNH whose telephone number is (571)270-7185. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 1:00 PM - 9:35 PM.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Yemane Mesfin can be reached at (571) 272-3927. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/KHOA HUYNH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2462
Prosecution Insights