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 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.
Claims 1-2, 10 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being obvious over Shah as stated above further in view of Stoj et al. (Article Titled, FPGA based Industrial Ethernet Network Analyzer for Real-time Systems Providing Openness of Industry 4.0; Provided by the applicant in an IDS).
In regards to claims 1-2 and 10 and 15, Shah et al. (US Publication 2010/0192218 A1) teaches, a method, comprising: conveying symbols from a PHY toward a MAC via a PHY-side of PHY-MAC interface (see figure 2B, paragraph 40; The network-side PHY/MAC processing module 230 may comprise suitable logic, circuitry, code, and/or interfaces that may enable performing PHY and MAC processing operations within the network controller 204 during external transmission and/or reception of data. The network-side PHY/MAC processing module 230 may be operable to enable physical transmission and/or reception of bit streams, which may correspond to transmitted and/or received network packets, via physical links); and filtering one or more symbols at an input of a PHY-side of interface wrapper of the PHY-side of PHY-MAC interface (see paragraph 44; The inbound network packet filtering module 240 may comprise suitable logic, circuitry, code, and/or interfaces that may enable filtering of external network packets received in the network controller 202; see paragraph 47; The filtering may be performed based on the MAC/IP addressing information corresponding to the local host 206 and/or management controller 204).
In further regards to claims 1-2 and 10-15, fails to teach, the filtering specifically comprising suppressing signaling at the input of the PHY side of the interface wrapper with the one or more symbols and wherein filtering one or more symbols present at the input of the PHY-side of interface wrapper of the PHY-side of PHY-MAC interface comprises: detecting a symbol corresponding to a predetermined symbol and suppressing signaling to the input of the PHY-side of interface wrapper associated with the symbol.
Stoj teaches, the filtering specifically comprising suppressing signaling at the input of the PHY side of the interface wrapper with the one or more symbols (see figures 2,3 and 4 and paragraph s4, 4.1,4.3 and 4.5; frames are passed through the filtering module and frames that meet the criterial are forwarded; this implies that the rest are suppressed) and wherein filtering one or more symbols present at the input of the PHY-side of interface wrapper of the PHY-side of PHY-MAC interface comprises: detecting a symbol corresponding to a predetermined symbol and suppressing signaling to the input of the PHY-side of interface wrapper associated with the symbol (see figures 2,3 and 4 and paragraph s4, 4.1,4.3 and 4.5; frames are passed through the filtering module and frames that meet the criterial are forwarded; this implies that the rest are suppressed).
Shah and Stog both relate to Networking.
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to incorporate filtering as taught by Stoj into the teachings of Shah. The motivation to do so would be to ensure reliable communication, by removing frames that do not meet the criteria from corrupting in-band signals.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 7-9 have previously been allowed.
Claims 3-6, 11-14 and 16-20 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the claims are indicated as allowable in view of the remarks filed on 7/8/2026.
Conclusion
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/JAY P PATEL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2466
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