DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to Application No. No. 18/163,502 filed on 2/2/2023. The amendment presented on 1/27/2026, which amends claims 1, 8, and 15, is hereby acknowledged. Claims 1-20 have been examined.
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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 1/27/2026 has been entered.
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 1-3, 7-10, 14-17, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang et al. (hereinafter Yang)(US 2024/0414586) in view of Niska et al. (hereinafter Niska)(US 2008/0212593).
Regarding claims 1, 8, and 15, Yang teaches as follows:
A method comprising:
receiving, by a wireless device (interpreted as the UE 110 in figure 1)(the UE may be configured to communicate with one or more networks. In the example of the network configuration 100, the network with which the UE 110 may wirelessly communicate is a 5G NR radio access network (RAN) 120, see, ¶ [0028]), a quality of service (QoS) configuration (interpreted as the QoS rules) associated with a data flow (the third pathway 763 relates to a configuration of QoS rules for the UE 705. The UE 705 is configured with the QoS rules by the SMF 730 (via the AMF 725) via N1 signaling. The QoS rules may include parameters for processing the received IP flows, also including a packet filter, see, ¶ [0089] and figure 7b);
sending, based on the QoS configuration, the first packet of the data flow (the QOS rules at the UE 505 may include similar and complementary packet filters. Thus, the original IP packets are extracted and delivered to the higher layers. It should be understood that when IP flows are generated by the UE 505 for UL transmission, the 5GSM layer similarly maps IP flows to QoS flows according to the packet filters contained in the QoS rules, see, ¶ [0054] and figure 5) with first information that indicates the first packet is associated with a first application data unit (ADU) type (the traffic flow 660 comprises IP packets belonging to a first ADU, a second ADU and a third ADU. The first transmission is ADU 1 comprising three packets transmitted under a first flow label, followed by ADU 2 comprising four packets transmitted under a second flow label, followed by ADU 3 comprising three packets transmitted under flow label 1, see, ¶ [0071] and figure 6d); and
sending, based on the QoS configuration, the second packet of the data flow with second information that indicates the second packet is associated with the second ADU type (see, ¶ [0054] and [0071] as presented above)(each ADU can consist of a number of IP packets, e.g., 3 or 4 IP packets. The number of IP packets included in an ADU may vary within a given application and across different applications depending on the data included therein. Thus, depending on the XR application, the size of the ADUs may be different, see, ¶ [0042]).
Yang does not teach that the second packet belongs to the second ADU type.
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Yang to include allocating one packet to first ADU and the subsequent packet to the next ADU in order to efficiently adjust number of packets assignment depending on the data type included in packets.
Yang in view of Niska does not teach the Differentiated Service Code Pont (DSCP) value to determine an application data unit (ADU) type.
Niska teaches as follows:
The IP packet consists of a header 50 and payload data 60. The header normally consists of 20 bytes of data. Further optional bytes can be added. The fields of the header 50 starting from the least significant byte, are as follows: 4-bit protocol version; 4-bit IP header length, IHL; 6-bit Differentiated Services field (DS) that defines a Differentiated services Code Point (DSCP)…The Differentiated Services field (DS) is provided to indicate the Quality of Service needs from the network. The different types of service are indicated by a different value, called a differentiated services code point DSCP, in this field (see, ¶ [0026] and figure 4); and
received data is received by a receiver module 301 that extracts the IP packets and passes these to a DSCP extract module 302. This DSCP extract module 302 extracts the DSCP value from the DS field in the IP packet header… The DSCP value inserted into outgoing IP packets will always reflect the value contained in the last received IP packet for a given Source-Destination pair. In this way it is ensured that the Quality of Service set by the access controller AC 103 will also be set by the mobile station (see, ¶ [0028] and figure 5).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Yang with Niska to include the Differentiated services Code Point (DSCP) extract module to extract the DSCP value from the received packet as taught by Niska in order to efficiently determine the ADU type comprising multiple packets.
Regarding claims 2, 9, and 16, Yang teaches as follows:
Wherein at least one of the first information or the second information indicates that the first packet is associated with at least one of a higher importance or a higher priority than the second packet (the priority field 630 may indicate a type of media in the packet so that preferential treatment may be given to certain types of media in the identified ADU. The priority field 630 in combination with the ADU ID field 620 may indicate the type of media belonging to a particular ADU. This information may be used to, for example, map certain types of media to certain QoS flows, see, ¶ [0064] and figure 6a).
Regarding claims 3, 10, and 17, Yang teaches as follows:
The sending the first packet comprises sending, based on the QoS configuration, the first packet via a first QoS flow; and the sending the second packet comprises sending, based on the QoS configuration, the second packet via a second QoS flow (the PDRs at the UPF 515 and the QOS rules at the UE 505 may include similar and complementary packet filters. Thus, the original IP packets are extracted and delivered to the higher layers. It should be understood that when IP flows are generated by the UE 505 for UL transmission, the 5GSM layer similarly maps IP flows to QoS flows according to the packet filters contained in the QoS rules, see, ¶ [0054] and figure 5).
Regarding claim 7, Yang teaches as follows:
Wherein the QoS configuration indicates at least one of an importance of an ADU type or a priority associated with the ADU type (the priority field 630 may indicate a type of media in the packet so that preferential treatment may be given to certain types of media in the identified ADU. The priority field 630 in combination with the ADU ID field 620 may indicate the type of media belonging to a particular ADU. This information may be used to, for example, map certain types of media to certain QoS flows, see, ¶ [0064] and figure 6a).
Regarding claims 14 and 20, Yang teaches the terminal sending the first and second packets as presented above. Therefore the base station inherently receives the first and second packets from the terminal.
Claims 4 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang et al. (hereinafter Yang)(US 2024/0414586) in view of Niska et al. (hereinafter Niska)(US 2008/0212593), and further in view of Van Phan et al. (hereinafter Phan)(US 2018/0199228).
Regarding claims 4 and 11, Yang in view of Niska teaches all limitations as presented above except for the concept of QoS differentiated sub-flows within a flow.
Phan teaches as follows:
5G contemplates the full vertical of the radio stack being QoS aware, with different QoS parameters for different sub-flows within a single service flow. QoS can then be enforced per user, per application, or per sub-flow, with differentiations within a given application and aggregation of same-QoS sub-flows across different applications (see, ¶ [0003]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Yang in view of Niska with Phan to include the concept of QoS differentiated sub-flows within a flow as taught by Phan in order to efficiently differentiate quality or priority of sub-flows of a flow.
Claims 5, 12, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang et al. (hereinafter Yang)(US 2024/0414586) in view of Niska et al. (hereinafter Niska)(US 2008/0212593), and further in view of Pelletier et al. (hereinafter Pelletier)(US 2012/0281566).
Regarding claims 5, 12, and 18, Yang in view of Niska teaches all limitations as presented above except for discarding packets based on the detected congestion and the QoS configuration.
Pelletier teaches as follows:
For WTRUs with an established RRC connection and/or with configured dedicated resources, the network may use a combination of QoS configuration parameters and scheduling priorities to ensure that QoS requirements for different services are met in a cell. Alternatively, the network may update the packet filters such that one or more flows are discarded by the WTRU, which requires involvement from the MME (NAS) to address a problem (congestion) experienced by the eNB (see, ¶ [0286]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Yang in view of Niska with Pelletier to include discarding packets based on the QoS configuration parameters and packets congestion as taught by Pelletier in order to efficiently control traffic with limited network resource.
Claims 6, 13, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang et al. (hereinafter Yang)(US 2024/0414586) in view of Niska et al. (hereinafter Niska)(US 2008/0212593), and further in view of Dhanabalan et al. (hereinafter Dhanabalan)(US 2021/0029043).
Regarding claims 6, 13, and 19, Yang in view of Niska teaches all limitations as presented above except for the QoS configuration specifying packet duplication.
Dhanabalan teaches as follows:
A QoS policy may relate to packet duplication across multiple communication paths. A QoS policy may specify, for example, that packets transmitted along a first communication path should be duplicated and transmitted along a second communication path (see, ¶ [0048]); and
packet duplication may increase the load across two paths such that bandwidth in a network may drop significantly, but may nonetheless be desirable for short-duration packet transmissions which benefit from speed (see, ¶ [0053]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Yang in view of Niska with Dhanabalan to include the QoS policy specifying packet duplication as taught by Dhanabalan in order to efficiently increase transmission speed for short-duration packet transmissions.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-20 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jeong S Park whose telephone number is (571)270-1597. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday 8:00-4:30 ET.
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/JEONG S PARK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2454
February 7, 2026