DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present U.S. non-provisional application is being examined under the first-inventor-to-file provisions of the AIA . The present U.S. non-provisional application, filed on September 29, 2023, is the U.S. national stage of an international PCT application, filed on April 1, 2022, and claims priority to a foreign application, filed on April 1, 2021.
Response to Amendment
This Office action is responsive to the amendment and arguments on February 4, 2026. Claims 1, 4-6, 8, 11-13 and 15 were amended. Claim 16 was added. Claims 1-16 are pending for consideration in the present U.S. non-provisional application.
Response to Arguments
The arguments (pages 7-10) directed to the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been considered. The arguments are directed to the amendment, and considered as sufficient to overcome the rejections for independent claims 1 and 15. However, the arguments are considered as not sufficient nor relevant for independent claim 8 because the amendment thereof is completely different. Accordingly, the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103 are partially withdrawn.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-7, 15 and 16 are considered as allowable. The claimed invention is neither anticipated by the prior art of record, nor considered as obvious in view thereof to a person having ordinary skill in the art.
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 8-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumar et al. (US 2022/0217560 A1) in view of Liu et al. (US 2022/0417780 A1).
8. An operation method of a base station that communicates with a user equipment (UE) for managing quality of experience (QoE) in a wireless communication system, the operation method (Kumar, FIG. 6) comprising:
establishing a radio resource control (RRC) connection with the UE (Kumar, paras. [0070], [0105], “…As shown by reference number 610, the UE may receive, and the base station may transmit, an RRC configuration (e.g., RRCConfig, RRCReconfiguration, and/or measConfigAppLayer, among other examples) via the UE AS layer. The RRC configuration may include a QoE configuration and/or an indication of a service type associated with QoE measurements. In some aspects, the RRC configuration may indicate that the UE is to perform one or more operations associated with obtaining and/or reporting QoE measurements that are associated with the QoE server. In some aspects, the RRC configuration may indicate that the UE is in an RRC connected state.” emphasis added.);
receiving UE capability information related to logged QoE measurement from the UE (Kumar, paras. [0070], [0105], “The UE capability determined, at 406, may be based on a number of UE capabilities 408. For example, a first UE capability 408(1) may be that a QoE measurement capability is determined per service type. A second UE capability 408(2) may be a simultaneous QoE measurement capability for a plurality of service types. A third UE capability 408(3) may be a QoE measurement capability for multiple instances of a single service type. A fourth UE capability 408(4) may be a combined UE capability to perform both the second UE capability 408(2) and the third UE capability 408(3) simultaneously. A fifth UE capability 408(5) may be a QoE measurement capability for an RRC idle state or an RRC inactive state of the UE 402. The UE 402 may transmit, at 410, an indication of the determined UE capabilities to the base station 404, based on the UE capabilities determined, at 406 (e.g., in association with the number of UE capabilities 408)…” emphasis added. Id.);
generating logged QoE measurement configuration information, and transmitting the generated logged QoE measurement configuration information to the UE (Kumar, paras. [0070], [0071], “…At 412a, the UE 402 may receive a RAN decodable QoE measurement information configuration from an OAM server for the UE application layer, via the base station 404, which may include triggering/reporting information for one or more QoE measurements of the UE 402. The triggering/reporting information may be received at the UE 402 as an application layer triggering/reporting condition. Alternatively, at 412b, the UE 402 may receive, from the RAN/base station 404, a RAN decodable parameter configuration (e.g., for storing the QoE measurement) and/or an indication of a trigger/reporting condition for reporting the QoE measurement to the base station 404. The information received, at 412b, by the UE 402 may be received for the RRC layer.” emphasis added.);
receiving, from the UE, availability of logged QoE measurement results (Liu, paras. [0066], [0133], “…For QoE measurement reporting from UE to network, the UE can send QoE measurement report. This may include the UE sending the QoE measurement report to network directly when results are available at UE side. This may also include the UE first sending an available indication to network, indicating that UE has available QoE measurement results. The network can trigger a results retrieve procedure by sending a request to UE, then UE can deliver the QoE measurement report to network.” emphasis added.);
transmitting a QoE data retrieval request to the UE (Liu, paras. [0066], [0133], “…For QoE measurement reporting from UE to network, the UE can send QoE measurement report. This may include the UE sending the QoE measurement report to network directly when results are available at UE side. This may also include the UE first sending an available indication to network, indicating that UE has available QoE measurement results. The network can trigger a results retrieve procedure by sending a request to UE, then UE can deliver the QoE measurement report to network.” emphasis added. Id.); and
receiving, from the UE, QoE measurement result data logged based on the logged QoE measurement configuration information in response to receiving the QoE data retrieval request (Liu, paras. [0066], [0133], “…For QoE measurement reporting from UE to network, the UE can send QoE measurement report. This may include the UE sending the QoE measurement report to network directly when results are available at UE side. This may also include the UE first sending an available indication to network, indicating that UE has available QoE measurement results. The network can trigger a results retrieve procedure by sending a request to UE, then UE can deliver the QoE measurement report to network.” emphasis added. Id.)
Kumar et al. may not seem to describe the identical claimed invention, however in the same field of endeavor, Liu et al. provides prior art disclosure for the claimed invention, such as receiving, from the UE, availability of logged QoE measurement results (Liu, paras. [0066], [0133], Id.); transmitting a QoE data retrieval request to the UE (Liu, paras. [0066], [0133], Id.); and receiving, from the UE, QoE measurement result data logged based on the logged QoE measurement configuration information in response to receiving the QoE data retrieval request The prior art disclosure and suggestions of Liu et al. for reasons of reporting QoE measurements together with a service type (Liu, paras. [0066], [0133], “For both signaling based QoE measurement and management based QoE measurement, the network can deliver the QoE measurement configuration to UE. This can include an application layer QoE measurement configuration container and requested service type. The UE's application layer can collect and log the experience information based on the configuration and send QoE measurement report to network. The report can include a QoE measurement report container and service type. The network can then deliver UE's QoE report to a collection center…” Id.) In view of the prior art of record, the claimed invention 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, for reasons of reporting QoE measurements together with a service type.
9. The operation method of claim 8, wherein the UE is in an RRC INACTIVE mode or an RRC IDLE mode before establishing the RRC connection with the base station (Kumar, paras. [0112], [0113], “As shown by reference number 635, the UE may obtain QoE measurements (e.g., a set of one or more QoE measurements) while in RRC idle mode or RRC inactive mode. In some aspects, the UE (e.g., at the UE application layer) may store the QoE measurements based at least in part on the UE being in the RRC idle mode or the RRC inactive mode (e.g., based at least in part on the indication to stop sending the QoE measurements). [ ] As shown by reference number 640, the UE may receive an RRC resume or an RRC setup from the base station. As shown by reference number 645, the UE may enter an RRC active mode (e.g., based at least in part on the UE receiving the RRC resume or RRC setup from the base station). Based at least in part on the UE entering the RRC active mode, the UE may be configured with an SRB associated with resources for transmitting a QoE measurement report.”)
10. The operation method of claim 8, wherein the UE capability information comprises information indicating a capability for logged QoE measurement by the UE (Kumar, paras. [0070], [0105], Id.)
11. The operation method of claim 8, wherein the logged QoE measurement configuration information comprises at least one of trace reference information, trace collection entity (TCE) identifier (ID) information, area configuration, or logged QoE PLMN list information (Kumar, paras. [0104], [0105], “In some aspects, the QoE configuration information may indicate that the UE is to report QoE measurements that are obtained while the UE is in RRC idle mode or RRC inactive mode. In some aspects, the QoE configuration information may indicate that the UE is to report QoE measurements that are obtained while the UE is in RRC idle mode or RRC inactive mode based at least in part on the UE satisfying one or more conditions. For example, the conditions may include the UE remaining within a current tracking area or a current radio access network-based notification area. Additionally, or alternatively, the conditions may include the UE remaining within a set of tracking areas and/or a set of radio access network-based notification areas, among other examples…”)
12. The operation method of claim 8, wherein the logged QoE measurement configuration information is transmitted to the UE via RRC reconfiguration message (Kumar, paras. [0070], [0105], Id.)
13. The operation method of claim 8, further comprising: before the transmitting of the QoE data retrieval request to the UE, reestablishing the RRC connection with the UE (Kumar, paras. [0112], [0113], Id.); and receiving an availability of logged QoE data from the UE via RRC reestablishment complete message, RRC reconfiguration complete message, RRC resume complete message, or RRC setup complete message (Liu, paras. [0140], [0141], “In a first example, a NR SA UE can be connected to gNB, and the UE can be configured with QoE measurement. When the UE already has available QoE measurement results, the UE can first send the 1-bit QoE results available indication to network. This available indication can be included in one of following RRC messages, or a newly defined RRC message, such as an RRC Reconfiguration Complete message, a UE assistance information message, a RRC Setup Complete message, a RRC Resume Complete message, etc…”)
14. The operation method of claim 8, further comprising receiving, from the UE, the availability of logged QoE measurement results before the transmitting of the QoE data retrieval request to the UE (Liu, paras. [0066], [0133], Id.)
Conclusion
The prior art made of record (PTO-1449, PTO-892) and not relied upon is considered pertinent to the subject matter of the present U.S. non-provisional application.
Kwong et al. (US 2021/0120621 A1) provides prior art disclosure considered as relevant to the subject matter of the claimed invention (Kwong, Abstract, “According to one example embodiment, a method in a user equipment, UE, includes receiving a request from a radio access network for a measurement report for an application operating at a layer above a radio resource control, RRC, protocol layer. The UE generates the measurement report in response to the request and determines a current RRC connected state of the UE when the measurement report is ready to be sent. In response to determining that the current RRC connected state of the UE is not a CELL_DCH RRC state, the UE sends a cell update message to the radio access network and receives instructions from the radio access network to transition to the CELL_DCH RRC state. The UE transitions to the CELL_DCH RRC state and transmits the measurement report while the UE is in the CELL_DCH RRC state. Related user equipment nodes, radio access nodes and methods are disclosed.”)
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
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/TIMOTHY J WEIDNER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2476