DETAILED ACTION
This is in response to the RCE filed on March 18th 2026.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 3/18/26 has been entered.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 7/2/26 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see pg. 8, filed 3/18/26, with respect to the claim objection have been fully considered and are persuasive. In response to the amendment, the claim objection of claims 1 and 8 has been withdrawn.
Applicant’s arguments, see pg. 9-10, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1 under 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Specifically, the argument that the art does not disclose an SMO obtaining a request or recommendation from an rApp (pg. 9) is not moot in view of the new ground of rejection. The remarks (pg. 10) that the update based on status is not statistical and/or telemetry data is persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Sarma et al. US 2024/0129774 A1.
Applicant’s remarks, pg. 11, regarding claim 20 have been considered but are not persuasive. As explained in the advisory action, citations were made to the prior art that teach draining a resource and placing resources into maintenance mode. The effective result is that the resource is “cordoned” under the broadest reasonable interpretation because access is prevented. Therefore, applicant’s remarks regarding claim 20 are not persuasive.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(d):
(d) REFERENCE IN DEPENDENT FORMS.—Subject to subsection (e), a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, fourth paragraph:
Subject to the following paragraph [i.e., the fifth paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112], a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
Claims 2, 9 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(d) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, 4th paragraph, as being of improper dependent form for failing to further limit the subject matter of the claim upon which it depends, or for failing to include all the limitations of the claim upon which it depends. The claims recite features that are already recited by their respective independent claims. Thus, they do not further limit the claimed subject matter. Applicant may cancel the claim(s), amend the claim(s) to place the claim(s) in proper dependent form, rewrite the claim(s) in independent form, or present a sufficient showing that the dependent claim(s) complies with the statutory requirements.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claim(s) 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over O-RAN Working Group 6; Cloudification and Orchestration Use Cases and Requirements for O-RAN Virtualized RAN, O-RAN Alliance 2022 (cited in IDS filed 1/30/24), hereinafter “O-RAN” in view of Sarma et al. US 2024/0129774 A1.
Regarding claim 1, O-RAN discloses a method for changing the status of an O-RAN Cloud (O-Cloud) resource (see Section 3.1 – O-Cloud use cases):
obtaining, by a Service Management and Orchestration Framework (SMO) function, a first request or recommendation to update a functional status of an O-Cloud resource, the first request or recommendation being obtained by the SMO function (see Fig. 3-6, Section 3.1.7.1 – “allow for the request of state and status information from the O-Cloud”; Sections 3.1.8.1 and 3.1.8.2 teach updating the state and status of O-Cloud resources; Section 3.1.8.2 discloses the SMO is the initiator – thus the request is obtained “by the SMO function”);
transmitting, by the SMO function to an Infrastructure Management Services (IMS), a second request to update the functional status of the O-Cloud resource based on the obtained first request or recommendation (see Sections 3.1.8.2 and 3.1.8.3, the IMS is involved in the functional status update); and
receiving, by the SMO function from the IMS, a first response as to whether the functional status of the O-Cloud resource was updated (Section 3.1.8.2 and 3.1.8.3 – IMS responds to status update),
wherein the first request or recommendation is determined based on metric and/or observability data received by the … via O1 and/or O2 related services (the O-RAN cloud is connected via O1 and/or O2 – see Fig. 2-2, these are the “interfaces”; the broadest reasonable interpretation of “maintainer” is interpreted to include an O-Cloud operator, O-RAN discloses the O-Cloud operator requests status – Sections 3.1.7.1-3, then makes a functional update request – Section 3.1.8.2 and 3.1.8.3; thus the first request or recommendation is based on metric and/or observability data received by the O-Cloud Maintainer / Operator via O1 and/or O2 related services because the status data was received via O1 and/or O2).
O-RAN does not explicitly disclose an rApp of a non-real time RIC but this is well-known in the art and explicitly taught by Sarma (paragraph 19, Fig. 1). O-RAN also does not explicitly disclose that the metric/observability data comprising at least one of a statistical data and telemetry data of the O-Cloud resource. This is also taught by Sarma as the non-RT RIC / rApp collect and aggregate metrics and provide recommendations to the SMO via the R1 interface (see paragraphs 15, 19-20; also see paragraph 37 which teaches specific metrics/telemetry including load, latency, etc.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify O-RAN to use an rApp to communicate with the SMO and receive/provide metric data comprising statistics or telemetry data regarding the O-Cloud resources as taught by Sarma for the purpose of managing and orchestrating services. One of ordinary skill in the art would understand that monitoring data is necessary to make informed decisions regarding network optimization and configuration. Sarma explicitly teaches this is useful to avoid potential performance issues (paragraph 15).
Regarding claim 2, O-RAN discloses wherein the first request or recommendation is determined based on metric and/or observability data received by the … via O1 and/or O2 related services (the O-RAN cloud is connected via O1 and/or O2 – see Fig. 2-2, these are the “interfaces”; the broadest reasonable interpretation of “maintainer” is interpreted to include an O-Cloud operator, O-RAN discloses the O-Cloud operator requests status – Sections 3.1.7.1-3, then makes a functional update request – Section 3.1.8.2 and 3.1.8.3; thus the first request or recommendation is based on metric and/or observability data received by the O-Cloud Maintainer / Operator via O1 and/or O2 related services because the status data was received via O1 and/or O2).
O-RAN does not explicitly disclose “rApp” but this is taught by Sarma as discussed above. The motivation to combine is the same.
Regarding claim 3, O-RAN discloses the first response indicates that the function status was successfully updated (See Section 3.1.8.2 – Successful).
Regarding claim 4, O-RAN discloses the first response indicates that the O-Cloud resource could not be found and the functional status could not be updated (Section 3.1.8.2 – Object not found).
Regarding claim 5, O-RAN discloses the first response indicates that the functional status could not be updated and an unexpected error occurred (Section 3.1.8.2 – Update failure).
Regarding claim 6, O-RAN discloses the functional status update comprises setting the O-Cloud resource into maintenance mode (recovery use cases – Section 3.6.1, includes “draining” the O-Cloud node and setting “into maintenance mode”).
Regarding claim 7, O-RAN discloses sending, by the SMO function, a second response to the … based on the first response as to whether the functional status of the O-Cloud resource was updated (functional status response update – see Sections 3.1.8.2 and 3.1.8.3 and Fig. 3-8).
O-RAN does not explicitly disclose “rApp” but this is taught by Sarma as discussed above. The motivation to combine is the same.
Regarding claim 8, it is an apparatus claim that corresponds to the method of claim 1. O-RAN discloses a system to perform the method including the apparatus features comprising: at least one memory and at least one processor (system runs on hardware / nodes in a data center – see Sections 3.1, 3.1.2.1; also see Sections 2.3 and 2.4 which provide a high level overview of the O-RAN Cloud infrastructure). Therefore, the claim is rejected for the same reasons.
Regarding claims 9-14, they correspond to previously presented dependent claims 2-7 respectively and thus are also rejected for the same reasons.
Regarding claim 15, it is a non-transitory medium claim that corresponds to the method of claim 1; therefore it is rejected for the same reasons.
Regarding claims 16-20, they correspond to previously presented claims 2-6 respectively; so they are also rejected for the same reasons.
Also regarding claim 20, O-RAN discloses and wherein the O-Cloud resource is cordoned and drained based on the updated functional status (“drain” O-Cloud node – see Section 3.6.1; the BRI of “cordoned” is to prevent access, by teaching placing resources into maintenance mode and draining the resource, O-RAN effectively prevents access to the resource, thus, the resource is “cordoned” under the BRI).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Akman et al. US 2024/016349 A1 discloses O-RAN applications (i.e. rApps) utilize network data including metrics to provide recommendations for network optimization and policies (abstract, Fig. 1, paragraph 27).
Shankaranarayanan et al. US 2023/0308959 discloses an O-RAN architecture with O1 and O2 interface for management; and that operators connected to the O-Cloud operate and maintain the O-RAN (paragraphs 124-125).
H. Donertasli and M. Medithe, "Disaggregated Near-RT RIC Control Plane with Unified 5G DB for NS, MEC and NWDAF Integration," 2022 7th International Conference on Computer Science and Engineering (UBMK), Diyarbakir, Turkey, 2022, pp. 1-6; discloses O-RAN architecture includes SMO with rApp on the non-RT RIC (Sections I-II, Fig. 1).
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/JASON D RECEK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2458
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