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 .
Response to Amendment
Receipt is acknowledged of the amendment filed 11/8/2025. Claims 1 and 9 have been amended. Claim 3 has been canceled. Claims 12-15 have been added. Claims 1, 2 and 4-15 are pending and an action is as follows.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 11/8/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant Argues,” Claim 11 has been corrected to depend on claim 6 rather than claim 5, providing an antecedent for “time slots”…. The Examiner rejects the claims as being indefinite. In response, the claims have been revised to overcome the rejection.”
The Examiner disagrees, the most recent claims filed on 11/8/2025 comprises Claim 11 which has not been corrected to depend on claim 6 rather than claim 5. Instead Claim 11 has been amended by the Applicant to depend on claim 5 while also reciting an indication that the claim has been “previously presented” and not “amended” as suggested by the Applicant’s arguments found in Remarks filed 11/8/2025.
No prior art rejections are pending in the instant Office Action, therefore the Applicant’s arguments regarding prior art rejections are moot.
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority based on an application filed in Switzerland on April 22, 2022. It is noted, however, that applicant has not filed a certified copy of the CH20220000469 application as required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Examiner Note: On 5/17/2023 the Applicant’s Representative filed a document titled “A claim for priority and submission of document”. The submitted document was a copy of a certified copy and does not satisfy the requirement in 37 CFR 1.55(g) for a certified copy. MPEP 215 (II) titled “Meaning of ‘Certified Copy’” recites:
“The certified copy which must be filed is a copy of the original foreign application with a certification by the patent office of the foreign country in which it was filed. Certified copies ordinarily consist of a copy of the specification and drawings of the applications as filed with a certificate of the foreign patent office giving certain information. Certified copies include those retrieved by the Office in accordance with a priority document exchange program. See MPEP § 215.01. A copy of the certified copy filed by applicant, including a copy filed via the USPTO patent electronic filing system, will not satisfy the requirement in 37 CFR 1.55(g) for a certified copy...”
Specification
The disclosure is objected to because it contains an embedded hyperlink and/or other form of browser-executable code. Applicant is required to delete the embedded hyperlink and/or other form of browser-executable code; references to websites should be limited to the top-level domain name without any prefix such as http:// or other browser-executable code. See MPEP § 608.01.
Examiner Note: Paragraph 12 of the Specification as filed by Applicant on 4/24/2023 comprises an embedded hyperlink which has been objected to by the Examiner. See MPEP 608.01 (VII) titled “Hyperlinks and Other Forms of Browser-Executable Code in the Specification”.
Claim Objections
Claim 13 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Newly added claim 13 appears to also have been amended by the Applicant. The Examiner believes the strikethrough “the” may have been inadvertently made by the Applicant resulting in a typographical error. 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.
Claim 11 is 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.
Claim 11 recites the limitation "…, whereby the time slices are configured such that each class has a guaranteed bandwidth" in the last claim limitation. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Examiner Note: The Examiner believes the Applicant may have intended to amend the claim which is in contrast to the “(previously presented)” indication for claim 11. Additionally, it appears a though the claim should depend upon claim 6 rather than claim 5 as amended.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1, 2 and 4-15 are allowed.
Examiner Note: The claims as indicated above have been found to be Allowable over the prior art. Other objections and 112 rejections are still pending and must be overcome.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
The Examiner has conducted a search of the available Patent and Non-Patent Literature and was unable to find any prior art which teaches either solely or in combination with another reference the claimed features of 1) “wherein the addresses in the address table are statistically determined and the selection of the subset of neighbouring nodes is autonomous and time-deterministic”, in combination with the claim limitations of claim 1; and 2)“partitioning the messages transmitted to neighbouring nodes in classes or sub-networks according to predefined criteria, wherein each class is associated to one succession of time slices not overlapping with successions of time slices of other classes, and wherein the messages are transmitted to neighbouring nodes only when the time provided by the internal time reference is in a time slice of the associated succession of time slices.”, in combination with all the claim limitations of claim 12.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
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 LONNIE V SWEET whose telephone number is (571)270-3622. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday.
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/LONNIE V SWEET/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2467