DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is in response to a communication received on December 4, 2025.
Claims 1, 8, and 15 have been amended.
Claims 1-20 are pending in this application.
Response to Arguments
The 35 USC §103 rejection of claims 1-20 is hereby withdrawn in light of applicant’s amendments and arguments. However, a new grounds of rejection has been provided in regards to 35 USC §112(a).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
Regarding claim 1, the claim recites, inter alia,
“determining, by the device, that one or more of the RAN factors, the core factors, or the transport factors, fail to satisfy the performance requirements;”
determining, by the device and using best efforts configuration settings, RAN configuration settings based on the RAN capability, core configuration settings based on the core capability, and transport configuration settings based on the transport capability, wherein the best efforts configuration settings partially satisfy the performance requirements for the one or more of the RAN factors, the core factors, or the transport factors;
generating, by the device, a RAN self-organizing network (SON) for the service area based on the RAN configuration settings; generating, by the device, a core SON for the service area based on the core configuration settings; generating, by the device, a transport SON for the service area based on the transport configuration settings; and
creating, by the device, a network slice based service area for the service area based on the generated RAN SON, the generated core SON, and the generated transport SON, wherein the network slice based service area satisfies the performance requirements for the service.
The claimed invention explicitly requires at least one of RAN capability, core capability, or transport capability fail to full meet the service performance requirements and instead select configuration settings that partially satisfy the performance requirements to generate the RAN SON. The claim then requires the network slice to be generated based upon the RAN SON. The specification provides support for this teachings in ¶15-19 of the specification. The claim has been amended to require the created network slice to satisfy the performance requirement for the service. This now requires having identified at least one configuration settings to only partially satisfy the performance requirement, but somehow the network slice created based on the RAN SON settings to fully satisfy the performance requirement. The specification suggests creating the network slice based upon the SON that was generated from the claimed process (see ¶18 and ¶24 of instant specification), but the specification fails to provide written description for a situation where at least one of the configuration settings only partially satisfy the performance requirement (found using best effort configuration), but goes through additional proves that somehow results in a network slice to provide a service that still fully satisfies all of the performance requirements. As result, the specification has failed to show the inventor had full possession of the claimed invention at filing, thus failing to provide written description for claim 1 as amended.
Claims 8 and 15 are rejected under the same rationale as claim 1.
Claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 are dependent from claims 1, 8, and 15 and are rejected under the same rationale.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KEVIN T BATES whose telephone number is (571)272-3980. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 9 am - 5:30 pm.
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/KEVIN T BATES/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2472