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 .
Response to Amendment
This office action has been changed in response to the amendment filed on 4/14/2026.
Claims 1, 4-11, 15, 16 and 20 have been amended. Claims 2, 3, 12-14 and 17-19 have been canceled.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 4/14/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
In response to the Applicant’s argument that “Ninglekhu does not teach or suggest at least the features of claim 11 of determining a failure to execute the instruction based on an absence of the policy section at a [UE]; and generating, for transmission to the PCF, a reject message to indicate a cause of the failure” (Pages 6-7), the Examiner respectfully disagrees.
Ninglekhu teaches determining a failure to execute the instruction based on an absence of the policy section at a UE (Fig. 16 and Page 16 [0238] “Steps 1601-1602 may be triggered by the UE if the validity timer for the V2X Policy/Parameter expires or if there are no valid parameters, e.g., for current area, or due to abnormal situation”) and generating, for transmission to the PCF, a reject message to indicate a cause of the failure. (Fig. 16 [Steps 1601-1603] and Page 16 [0238] note: this is similar to steps 2007-2010 described in Fig. 20 where an event occurs, feedback is sent to the PCF and policies are then updated due to the event which includes, “no valid parameters”)
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, 4-8, 11, 15, 16 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Ninglekhu et al. (US-2022/0272620 hereinafter, Ninglekhu).
Regarding claim 1, Ninglekhu teaches a method comprising:
processing a request (Fig. 20 [2008]) from an access and mobility management function (Fig. 20 AMF) to create a policy association for a user equipment (UE); (Page 19-20 [0327] “An event occurs on the UE and, as a result of the event, the UE requires new, or updated, URSP rules”, Page 31 [0508] “Transmission of the updated UE STATE INDICATION message by the UE to the network may also be triggered by events” and Fig. 20 [2007-2008] and Page 21 [0377] “The UE STATE INDICATION may carry an ePDG identifier, N3IWF Identifier, or SSID to indicate to the network what access network it needs policies for”)
generating, based on the request from the AMF, a response to indicate a creation of the policy association for the UE; (Fig. 20 [2009 and 2010 which includes 2002])
determining an absence of a UE state indication having a UE policy section identifier (UPSI), an access network discovery and selection policy (ANDSP) indicator, or an operating system (OS) identifier; (Page 19 [0324] “Also as stated in reference SP-190449 (incorporated herein by reference): “In Rel-15 5GS UE Policy design, the UE needs to include all its stored PSIs (for URSP and ANDSP) in the UE Policy Container reported to PCF. PCF will assume that UE has no policy if a PSI is missing and provision the corresponding UE Policies, even if the UE has no interest in requesting such policies.”) and
generating, based on said determination of the absence of the UE state indication, a message (Fig. 20 [2002 & 2003]) to be sent from a policy control function (Fig. 20 PCF) to the UE (Fig. 20 UE) via the AMF (Fig. 20 AMF), wherein the message includes a query to obtain the UE state indication from the UE (Page 33 [0541] “The PCF invokes Namf_Communication_N1N2MessageTransfer service operation provided by the AMF. The message includes SUPI, UE Policy Container. The UE policy container includes indications to the UE that the UE should sent reports to the PCF when certain URSP rules or route descriptors are used.”), and wherein the message is to be sent based on a service operation of a service provided by an interface of the AMF to transfer the message from the PCF to the UE. (Fig. 20 [2003] and Page 33 [0542] “The AMF transfers transparently the UE Policy container (UE access selection and PDU Session selection related policy information) received from the PCF to the UE. The UE Policy container includes the list of Policy Sections and the indications that reports are required. This message may be the MANAGE UE POLICY COMMAND.”)
Regarding claim 4, Ninglekhu teaches wherein the interface is an Namf interface, the service is a communication service, and the service operation is a message transfer operation on an N1 interface. (Ninglekhu Page 33 [0541-0542] “Namf_Communication_N1N2MessageTransfer”)
Regarding claim 5, Ninglekhu teaches wherein the command is to request the UE to send the UE state indication to the PCF. (Ninglekhu Page 30 [0500] “the PCF may send a new command to the UE to request that the UE Send the PCF a list of UPSI's that are installed on the UE. The new procedure may be a network-initiated UE STATE INDICATION or may be MANAGE UE POLICY COMMAND with a new instruction. The command, instruction, or procedure may cause the UE to send a UE STATE INDICATION and the command, instruction, or procedure may indicate to the UE that the UE STATE INDICATION needs to indicate all UPSC's or if the UE may instead include only the UPSC-CRC. Of course, if the PCF has already detected that the UE does not have all necessary policies, then the PCF will indicate to the UE that it must send all installed UPSC's to the PCF.”)
Regarding 6, Ninglekhu teaches process a second message received from the AMF in response to the query, wherein the second message is of a notification service operation of a communication service provided by an interface of the AMF to PCF used to notify the PCF of a communication from the UE. (Ninglekhu Fig. 20 [2005] and Page 33 [0544])
Regarding claim 7, Ninglekhu teaches wherein the query is to be sent from a policy control function (PCF) to a unified data repository (UDR) on an interface between the PCF and the UDR. (Ninglekhu Page 7 [0093] and Page 34 [0556-0559] i.e. requesting the appropriate information from the UDR to determine if the UE is properly applying the policies)
Regarding claim 8, Ninglekhu teaches process a message received from the UDR based on the query, wherein the message is to include the UE state indication. (Ninglekhu Page 34 [0565-0566] i.e. PCF receives changes to the stored data in the UDR and can pre-emptively send the appropriate policy to the UE)
Regarding claim 11, Ninglekhu teaches a method comprising:
processing a policy section indicator (PSI) received from a policy control function (PCF); (Page 15 [0227] “The UE processes the UE policy sections, each identified by the UPSI, received from the PCF”)
processing an instruction received from the PCF associated with the PSI; (Page 16 [0234] “the “MANAGE UE POLICY COMMAND” is used by the network to install, remove, or update a UE Policy Section”) and
determining a failure to execute the instruction based on an absence of the policy section at a UE; (Fig. 16 and Page 16 [0238] “Steps 1601-1602 may be triggered by the UE if the validity timer for the V2X Policy/Parameter expires or if there are no valid parameters, e.g., for current area, or due to abnormal situation”) and
generating, for transmission to the PCF (Fig. 16 [PCF]), a reject message to indicate a cause of the failure. (Fig. 16 [Steps 1601-1603] and Page 16 [0238] note: this is also similar to steps 2007-2010 described in Fig. 20 where an event occurs, feedback is sent to the PCF and policies are then updated due to the event which includes, “no valid parameters”)
Regarding claim 15, Ninglekhu teaches wherein the reject message includes a UE policy section identifier (UPSI), an access network discovery and selection policy (ANDSP) indicator (Page 30 [0504]), or an operating system (OS) identifier. (Page 29 [0495-0496] and Fig. 20 [2004])
Regarding claim 16, the limitations of claim 16 are rejected as being the same reasons set forth above in claim 11. See additional structure (Fig. 1F [102] ~ apparatus, Fig. 1F [118] ~ processing circuitry, interface circuitry described in Page 8 [0106-0107] and component Fig. 1F [120, 136, 128])
Regarding claim 20, the limitations of claim 20 are rejected as being the same reasons set forth above in claim 15.
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 9 and 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ninglekhu in view of 3GPP “S2-2208349” UE Policy determination at AMF relocation with PCF change Oct. 10, 2022 hereinafter, Ericsson (as found on the IDS).
Regarding claims 9 and 10, Ninglekhu teaches the limitations of claim 1 above, but differs from the claimed invention by not explicitly reciting wherein the query is to be sent from a first policy control function (PCF) to a second PCF with which the UE was previously associated and process a message received from the second PCF based on the query, wherein the message is to include the UE state indication.
In an analogous art, Ericsson teaches the policy to be able to relocate an AMF with a PCF change and to send a query from the first PCF to a second PCF to get a list of stored PSIs for the UE from the previous PCF (second) (Fig. 4.16.11-1 [V-PCF & H-PCF, 3 & 4]) and process a message received from the second PCF based on the query, wherein the message is to include the UE state indication. (Page 4 Step 3 through Step 5)
Before the effective filing date of the invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to be motivated to implement the invention of Ninglekhu after modifying it to incorporate the ability to receive PSI data from the previous PCF that a UE was connected to of Ericsson since it keeps a UE from being misconfigured until a trigger to invoke a 5GS Initial Registration to provide the first PCF with the list of stored PSIs. (Ericsson Page 2 [Summary of Change])
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US-11,647,124 to Sun et al. which discloses a method for configuring policies in a UE
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, 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 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MATTHEW C SAMS whose telephone number is (571)272-8099. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:30-5 EST.
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/Matthew C Sams/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2646
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