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 .
Claims 1-27 are pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-3 and 15-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Bhar, et al. (“Protection architecture for Passive Optical Networks using cascaded AWG and tunable components”, published in the 2015 IEEE International Broadband and Photonics Conference (IBP), April 23-25, 2015, herein Bhar).1 2 Regarding claims 1 and 15, Bhar teaches a coexistence element within a passive optical network (PON) and method for wavelength division multiplexing comprising: a housing (Fig. 3) including: a plurality of input communication ports each configured to receive (Section II-B: ports), via a separate optical fiber, optical communications each having a wavelength within a particular wavelength band corresponding to a particular optical service (Section III: bandwidth), wherein at least one of the plurality of input communication ports is configured to receive optical communications having wavelengths within two or more different wavelength bands (Section III); and an output communication port configured to transmit, via a single optical fiber, the optical communications from each of the plurality of input communication ports (Section IV-B). Regarding claims 2 and 16, Bhar teaches the plurality of input communication ports are downstream input communication ports each configured to receive the optical communications from one or more optical line terminals (OLTs) (Section II-A) and the output communication port is a downstream output communication port configured to transmit the optical communications to one or more last mile termination units (LMTUs) (Section II-C). Regarding claims 3 and 17, Bhar teaches the plurality of input communication ports are upstream input communication ports each configured to receive the optical communications from one or more LMTUs and the output communication port is an upstream output communication port configured to transmit the optical communications to one or more OLTs (Section III-C).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-14 and 18-27 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
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MATTHEW MIKELS whose telephone number is (571)270-5470. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Thursday 7:00 AM ET - 4:30 PM ET, Friday 7:00 AM ET - 11:00 AM ET, the Examiner is on central time.3
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/MATTHEW MIKELS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2876
1 In addition to the cited portions, please see also the associated figures.
2 See 892 form for the full citation. A copy of this reference is attached to this Office Action.
3 The Examiner can also be reached at matthew.mikels@uspto.gov.