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 .
Response to Amendment and Argument
1. This communication is in response to applicant's 01/07/2026 communications in the application of Li et al. for the "COMMUNICATION METHOD AND APPARATUS" filed 07/25/2023. This application is a Continuation of PCT/CN2021/130087, filed 11/11/2021 and claims foreign priority to 202110104966.X, filed 01/26/2021 in China. The amendment and response have been entered and made of record. Claims 1-16 are pending in the present application.
2. Applicant’s remarks and argument to the rejected claims are insufficient to distinguish the claimed invention from the cited prior arts or overcome the rejection of said claims under 35 U.S.C. 103 as discussed below. Applicant’s argument with respect to the pending claims have been fully considered, but they are not persuasive for at least the following reasons.
3. In response to Applicant’s argument that the reference does not teach or reasonably suggest the functionality upon which the Examiner relies for the rejection. The Examiner first emphasizes for the record that the claims employ a broader in scope than the Applicant’s disclosure in all aspects. In addition, the Applicant has not argued any narrower interpretation of the claim limitations, nor amended the claims significantly enough to construe a narrower meaning to the limitations. Since the claims breadth allows multiple interpretations and meanings, which are broader than Applicant’s disclosure, the Examiner is required to interpret the claim limitations in terms of their broadest reasonable interpretations while determining patentability of the disclosed invention. See MPEP 2111. In other words, the claims must be given their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification and the interpretation that those skilled in the art would reach. See In re Hyatt, 211 F.3d 1367, 1372, 54 USPQ2d 1664, 1667 (Fed. Cir. 2000), In re Cortright, 165 F.3d 1353, 1359, 49 USPQ2d 1464, 1468 (Fed. Cir. 1999), and In re American Academy of Science Tech Center, 2004 WL 1067528 (Fed. Cir. May 13, 2004). Any term that is not clearly defined in the specification must be given its plain meaning as understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. See MPEP 2111.01. See also In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321, 13 USPQ2d 1320, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 1989), Sunrace Roots Enter. Co. v. SRAM Corp., 336 F.3d 1298, 1302, 67 USPQ2d 1438, 1441 (Fed. Cir. 2003), Brookhill-Wilk 1, LLC v. Intuitive Surgical, Inc., 334 F.3d 1294, 1298 67 USPQ2d 1132, 1136 (Fed. Cir. 2003). The interpretation of the claims by their broadest reasonable interpretation reduces the possibility that, once the claims are issued, the claims are interpreted more broadly than justified. See In re Prater, 415 F.2d 1393, 1404-05, 162 USPQ 541, 550-551 (CCPA 1969). Also, limitations appearing in the specification but not recited in the claim are not read into the claim. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993). Therefore, the failure to significantly narrow definition or scope of the claims and supply arguments commensurate in scope with the claims implies the Applicant intends broad interpretation be given to the claims. The Examiner has interpreted the claims in parallel to the Applicant in the response and reiterates the need for the Applicant to distinctly define the claimed invention.
4. In response to Applicant’s argument that there is no suggestion to combine the references, i.e., Li et al. (US#12,317,164) in view of Hong et al. (US#10,448,386) as proposed in the office action. The Examiner recognizes that references cannot be arbitrarily combined and that there must be some reason why one skilled in the art would be motivated to make the proposed combination of primary and secondary references. In re Nomiya, 184 USPQ 607 (CCPA 1975). However, there is no requirement that a motivation to make the modification be expressly articulated. The test for combining references is what the combination of disclosures taken as a whole would suggest to one of ordinary skill in the art. In re McLaughlin, 170 USPQ 209 (CCPA 1971). It must be recognized that any judgment on obviousness is in a sense necessarily a reconstruction based upon hindsight reasoning. But so long as it takes into account only knowledge which was within the level of ordinary skill at the time the claimed invention was made, and does not include knowledge gleaned only from the applicant's disclosure, such a reconstruction is proper. See In re McLaughlin, 443 F.2d 1392, 170 USPQ 209 (CCPA 1971).
5. Applicant's argument with respect to the rejected claims that the cited reference fail to teach or suggest wherein “the first/second request messages comprise the same session pair information to establish redundant sessions including a first/second session” (page 8, last paragraphs). In response to the above-mentioned argument, examiner respectively disagrees. Given the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim language, as required by MPEP 2111, Applicant’s attention is directed to Figs. 6, 8 of Li et al. (US#12,317,164) for the teaching of the procedure of PSPI generation for redundant transmission in 5G network, in which a PDU session pair information (PSPI) is associated with both a first and second PDU session. As shown in Fig. 6, step 226, the UE 201 generates PSPI information. Specifically, based on existing DC based redundant transmission mechanism, upper layer of UE 201 handles the traffic duplication/elimination, so it knows that PDU session 1 and 2 are linked together to provide the redundant transmission for the same application traffic. The upper layer of UE 201 constructs the PSPI and sends it to the NAS layer. The UE 201 associates the PSPI with the 2 PDU session IDs, which were generated by UE 201 when it requested to establish the PDU sessions (Examiner interprets: As depicted in FIG. 6, the UE 201 generates PSPI after PDU session 2 is established. Alternatively, PSPI could be a number or an ID (e.g., PDU session pair ID) that is assigned by the UE 201. The UE 201 may provide the same PSPI to the network for PDU Sessions that are redundant). Also, as shown in Fig. 8, At step 263, the configuration information may be used to determine to assign the same PSPI (e.g., a first PSPI) with a first PDU session and a second PDU session (Col. 11, lines 21-39 & Col. 16, lines 36-38). Furthermore, Hong et al. (US#10,448,386) discloses in Figs. 2, 3 block diagram illustrated the operations of a UE/BS to perform dual connectivity using a plurality of BS, in which the UE may copy a PDCP protocol data unit (PDU) from the PDCP entity, and the UE may transmit the copied PDCP PDU to different radio link control (RLC) entities, thereby redundantly transmitting the same data to the plurality of base stations. Accordingly, when the PDCP entity transmits the same data to the plurality of RLC entities with which the PDCP entity is associated, each base station may receive the same data. Here, the MeNB may receive data through the radio resource between the MeNB and the UE and may also receive the same data from the SeNB, thereby redundantly receiving the data transmitted by the UE (Col. 11, line 59 to Col. 12, line 28 & Col. 13, lines 37-67).
Since no substantial amendments have been made and the Applicant’s arguments are not persuasive, the claims are drawn to the same invention and the text of the prior art rejection can be found in the previous Office Action. Therefore, the Examiner maintains that the references cited and applied in the last office actions for the rejection of the claims are maintained in this office action.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
5. 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 may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1,148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
6. This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims under 35 U.S.C. 103, the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned at the time any inventions covered therein were made absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and invention dates of each claim that was not commonly owned at the time a later invention was made in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 103(c) and potential 35 U.S.C. 102(e), (f) or (g) prior art under 35 U.S.C. 103(a).
7. Claims 1-3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li et al. (US#12,317,164) in view of Hong et al. (US#10,448,386).
Regarding claims 1, 9, the references disclose an apparatus for improve communication quality between two communication links, according to the essential features of the claims. Li et al. (US#12,317,164) discloses a communication method, comprising: obtaining, by a terminal/ PCF device, association information between first traffic description information and second traffic description information, the association information comprising same session pair information (Fig. 4; Col. 4, lines 29-44: One PDU Session spans from the UE via Master NG-RAN to UPFI acting as the PDU Session Anchor, and the other PDU Session spans from the UF via Secondary NG-RAN to UPF2 acting as the PDU Session Anchor. Based on these two PDU Sessions, two independent user plane paths are set up. UPF1 and UPF2 connect to the same Data Network (DN), even though the traffic via UPF1 and UPF2 may be routed via different user plane nodes towards the DN); determining, by the terminal/PCF device, first traffic description information and second traffic description information for a same application (Fig. 8; Col. 16, lines 23-35: At step 262, the configuration information may be used to determine that a first PDU session and a second PDU session are associated. PDU Sessions may be considered to be associated if both PDU Sessions are used to send data from the same application); and sending, by the terminal/PCF device, a first request message and a second request message to establish redundant sessions including a first session and a second session, the first request message is used to request to establish the first session corresponding to the first traffic description information, the second request message is used to request to establish the second session corresponding to the second traffic description information (Figs. 4, 6; Col. 1; lines 60-67 & Col. 4, line 45 to Col. 5, line 11: policy rule provided from PCF to SMF for redundant transmission decision and configuration. The UE initiates establishment of two redundant PDU Sessions and provides different combination of DNN and S-NSSAI for each PDU Session).
However, Li reference does not disclose expressly wherein the first request message and the second request message comprise the same session pair information. In the same field of endeavor, Hong et al. (US#10,448,386) discloses in Figs. 2, 3 block diagram illustrated the operations of a UE/BS to perform dual connectivity using a plurality of BS, in which the UE may copy a PDCP protocol data unit (PDU) from the PDCP entity, and the UE may transmit the copied PDCP PDU to different radio link control (RLC) entities, thereby redundantly transmitting the same data to the plurality of base stations. Accordingly, when the PDCP entity transmits the same data to the plurality of RLC entities with which the PDCP entity is associated, each base station may receive the same data. Here, the MeNB may receive data through the radio resource between the MeNB and the UE and may also receive the same data from the SeNB, thereby redundantly receiving the data transmitted by the UE (Col. 11, line 59 to Col. 12, line 28 & Col. 13, lines 37-67).
One skilled in the art would have recognized the need for effectively and efficiently improve communication quality between two communication links supporting redundant transmission, and would have applied Hong’s novel use of the redundantly transmitting dual- or multi-connectivity-based data into Li’s enhancements to URSP rule to allow UE to perform traffic duplication and elimination at PDU layer. Therefore, It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention was made to apply Hong’s method and apparatus for controlling redundant data transmission into Li’s enhancement to redundant transmission in 5G network with the motivation being to provide a method and system for improve communication quality.
Regarding claims 2, 10, the reference further teaches wherein the same session pair information comprises an identifier indicating that the first session and the second session are associated (Li et al.: Fig. 6; Col. 2; lines 22-33 & Col. 11, lines 7-18).
Regarding claim 3, the reference further teaches wherein obtaining, by the terminal device, the same session pair information from a route selection policy (Li et al.: Fig. 8; Col. 16, lines 12-22).
Regarding claim 6, the reference further teaches wherein obtaining, by the terminal device, a locally configured route selection policy (Li et al.: Fig. 8; Col. 16, lines 12-22).
Regarding claim 7, the reference further teaches wherein receiving, by the terminal device, the route selection policy from a policy control function device (Li et al.: Col. 1; lines 60-67).
Regarding claims 13, 14, they are apparatus claims corresponding to the method claims 1, 2, 9, 10 discussed above. Therefore, claims 13, 14 are analyzed and rejected as previously discussed with respect to claims 1, 2, 9, 10 above.
Allowable Subject Matter
8. Claims 4, 5, 8, 11, 12, 15, 16 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claims, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
9. The following is an examiner's statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: The closest prior art of record fails to disclose or suggest wherein he route selection policy comprises a first rule corresponding to the first traffic description information and a second rule corresponding to the second traffic description information, the first rule and the second rule comprises the same session pair information; wherein the route selection policy comprises a first route selection descriptor (RSD) corresponding to the first traffic description information and a second RSD corresponding to the second traffic description information, the first RSD and the second RSD corresponding to the same session pair information, as specifically recited in the claims.
Conclusion
10. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure is indicated in PTO form 892.
11. Applicant's future amendments need to comply with the requirements of MPEP § 714.02, MPEP § 2163.04 and MPEP § 2163.06.
"with respect to newly added or amended claims, applicant should show support in the original disclosure for the new or amended claims." See MPEP § 714.02 and § 2163.06 ("Applicant should * * * specifically point out the support for any amendments made to the disclosure."); and MPEP § 2163.04 ("If applicant amends the claims and points out where and/or how the originally filed disclosure supports the amendment(s), and the examiner finds that the disclosure does not reasonably convey that the inventor had possession of the subject matter of the amendment at the time of the filing of the application, the examiner has the initial burden of presenting evidence or reasoning to explain why persons skilled in the art would not recognize in the disclosure a description of the invention defined by the claims."). See In re Smith, 458 F.2d 1389, 1395, 173 USPQ 679, 683 (CCPA 1972) In re Wertheim, 541 F.2d at 262,191 USPQ at 96 (emphasis added). "The use of a confusing variety of terms for the same thing should not be permitted.
New claims and amendments to the claims already in the application should be scrutinized not only for new matter but also for new terminology. While an applicant is not limited to the nomenclature used in the application as filed, he or she should make appropriate amendment of the specification whenever this nomenclature is departed from by amendment of the claims so as to have clear support or antecedent basis in the specification for the new terms appearing in the claims. This is necessary in order to insure certainty in construing the claims in the light of the specification." Ex parte Kotler, 1901 C.D. 62, 95 O.G. 2684 (Comm'r Pat. 1901). See 37 CFR 1.75, MPEP § 608.01 (i) and § 1302.01.
Note that examiners should ensure that the terms and phrases used in claims presented late in prosecution of the application (including claims amended via an examiner's amendment) 07find clear support or antecedent basis in the description so that the meaning of the terms in the claims may be ascertainable by reference to the description, see 37 CFR 1,75(d)(1 ). If the examiner determines that the claims presented late in prosecution do not comply with 37 CFR 1.75(d)(1), applicant will be required to make appropriate amendment to the description to provide clear support or antecedent basis for the terms appearing in the claims provided no new matter is introduced."
"USPTO personnel are to give claims their broadest reasonable interpretation in light of the supporting disclosure." In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054-55, 44 USPQ2d 1023,1027-28 (Fed. Cir. 1997). MPEP § 2106. "
12. THIS ACTION THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP ' 706.07(a). 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 extension fee 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.
13. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to M. Phan whose telephone number is (571) 272-3149. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon - Fri from 6:00 to 3:00.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor Chirag Shah, can be reached on (571) 272-3144. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is (571) 273-8300.
Any inquiry of a general nature or relating to the status of this application or proceeding should be directed to the receptionist whose telephone number is (571) 272-2600.
14. Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have any questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at toll free 1-866-217-9197.
Mphan
Feb. 13, 2026
/MAN U PHAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2477