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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 07/09/2026 complies with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the IDS is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Amendment
The following is a final office action in response to applicant’s amendment filed on 07/09/2026 for response of the office action mailed on 04/23/2026. Independent Claim 1 and dependent Claims 2, 4 and 5 are amended. Claims 12-30 are canceled. Claims 31-41 are newly added. Claims 1-11 and 31-41 are pending in the application.
In light of applicant’s amendments to Claims 2 and 4, the rejection of Claims 2 and 4 under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) are withdrawn.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to Claims 1-6 and 10 have been fully considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 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 non-obviousness.
Claims 1-10 and 31-40 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ou (US 20250038834 A1), in view of in view of VEDULA (US 20170118067 A1).
Regarding Claim 1, Ou teaches an apparatus for wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE) (Ou, ¶0003, method and apparatus for handling a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) store and forward (S&F) configuration in a wireless communication system; ¶0053, method of S&F operation of UE; FIG. 3, communication device 300/” UE”), the apparatus comprising:
at least one memory (Ou, FIG. 3, memory 310); and
at least one processor coupled to the at least one memory (Ou, FIG. 3, CPU 308), and, based at least in part on information stored in the at least one memory, the at least one processor, individually or in any combination, is configured to cause the UE to:
access a space vehicle (SV) using a service link (Ou, FIG. 14-15 ¶0053, link/connection/interface between the satellite NW (“SV”) and the UE may be referred as a service link), at a time that the SV does not have a feeder link to a ground based network and the UE is not registered with the SV (Ou, FIG. 15, ¶0021, “S&F satellite operation mode” where there is no feeder link with the ground NW/”network”; ¶0229 UE may be in RM-DEREGISTERED state; see also FIG. 12, intermittent feeder link; ¶0053 teaches S&F operation is an operation mode of satellite-access providing some level of service (in storing and forwarding the data) when satellite connectivity is intermittently/temporarily unavailable, e.g., to provide communication service for UEs under satellite coverage without a simultaneous active feeder link connection to the ground segment);
register with the SV (Ou, ¶0063 UE is registered with satellite NW . . . initial attach procedure / ¶0078 if UE considers S&F operation is allowed/enabled/activated for a traffic/service, the UE may perform transmission (and/or reception) of the traffic/service (e.g., using the S&F operation), initiate a procedure to (or for) performing transmission (and/or reception) of the traffic/service (e.g., using the S&F operation), “registration procedure”);
send . . . data . . . to the SV for storage at the SV until the SV has the feeder link to the ground based network to forward the MO data to the at least one remote endpoint via the ground based network (Ou, ¶0053 S&F operation is an operation mode of satellite-access providing some level of service (in storing and forwarding the data) when satellite connectivity is intermittently/temporarily unavailable, e.g., to provide communication service for UEs under satellite coverage without a simultaneous active feeder link connection to the ground segment));
de-register from the SV; and cease to access the SV (Ou, ¶0228, procedure (e.g., the NAS procedure) may be (or comprise) a deregistration procedu¶0229 UE may be in RM-DEREGISTERED state;).
Ou does not explicitly teach to send mobile originated (MO) data intended for at least one remote endpoint [nor] to receive, after sending the MO data, a response to the MO data from an endpoint proxy function of the SV wherein the endpoint proxy function simulates the at least one remote endpoint.
However, in the analogous art, VEDULA discloses to send mobile originated (MO) data intended for at least one remote endpoint [and] to receive, after sending the MO data, a response to the MO data from an endpoint proxy function of the SV (VEDULA, FIG. 1A/, a satellite communication system; [s]atellite communications system 130 includes a satellite 132 that supports communications among multiple satellite terminals (STs) 134a-134n /”SV”; [and] ¶0032,[e]ach PEP proxy (of the VSATs 134a-134n)/”SV” terminates the TCP connection as to the respective local client(s)/, i.e., the intended recipient of “MO data”)), wherein the endpoint proxy function simulates the at least one remote endpoint (VEDULA, ¶0032,the respective proxy simulates communications with its respective local client(s) to appear as if the communications originate from the remote or destination endpoint).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine Ou’s methods, systems, and apparatuses are provided for handling Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) store and forward (S&F) configurations in a wireless communication system with VEDULA’s performance enhancing proxy apparatus and method of operation. The motivation would be to improve the end-to-end performance of respective communications protocols [VEDULA, ¶0032]
Regarding Claim 2, Ou and VEDULA teach Claim 1.
Ou further teaches the service link supports wireless access to the SV using at least 4G LTE, 5G NR or a 6G standard, wherein the SV comprises a radio access network (RAN) and a core network (CN) (Ou, ¶0053, t]he network node(s) on a satellite may be (or comprise) NG-RAN, Evolved Node B (eNB), gNB, gNB-Distributed Unit (DU), Core Network (CN) node).
Regarding Claim 3, Ou and VEDULA teach Claim 2.
Ou further teaches when the service link supports the 5G NR, to register with the SV, the at least one processor is configured to cause the UE to perform a non- access stratum (NAS) registration with the SV (Ou, ¶0227-0228, a NAS procedure may be or comprise a registration procedure), and
to de-register from the SV, the at least one processor is configured to cause the UE to perform a NAS de-registration with the SV (Ou, ¶0228, the NAS procedure may be or comprise a deregistration procedure; ¶0229 the UE may be in a RM-DEREGISTERED state), wherein when the service link supports the 4G LTE, to register with the SV, the at least one processor is configured to cause the UE to perform a NAS attach with the SV (Ou, FIG. 4,¶0029; ¶0048 LTE, LTE-A, “4G” is supported ) and,
to de-register from the SV, the at least one processor is configured to cause the UE to perform a NAS detach with the SV (Ou, ¶0234-0235, the procedure (e.g., the NAS procedure) may be (or comprise) a detach procedure).
Regarding Claim 4, Ou and VEDULA teach Claim 1.
Ou further teaches the response indicates that the endpoint proxy function can receive and store the MO data (Ou, ¶0082, [t]he parameter may (at least) indicate how long (e.g., the delay, the latency) the response of a UE request is (expected to be) transmitted (or received) . . . [and] may (at least) indicate how long (e.g., the delay, the latency) the service would be delayed by the S&F operation.).
Regarding Claim 5, Ou and VEDULA teach Claim 4.
Ou further teaches the response includes at least one of: a pre-configured response to the UE at an application level; a transport level response to the UE; or both of these (Ou, ¶0072-0073, [0073] [t]he UE may determine (whether) to use the S&F operation based on (at least) the configuration, ¶0074, [t]he configuration may (also) be pre-configured).
Regarding Claim 6, Ou and VEDULA teach Claim 1.
Ou further teaches the MO data comprises at least one of: an MO short message service (SMS) message; media data for a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), wherein the media data includes at least one of voice, text or video; MO data transported using non-internet protocol (non-IP), internet protocol (IP), user datagram protocol (UDP)/IP or transmission control protocol (TCP)/IP; an Internet query; an Email query; or some combination of these (Ou, ¶0073, [t] he UE may determine (whether) to use the S&F operation based on (at least) the configuration; ¶0074, [t]he configuration may (at least) indicate what (type of) traffic or service is allowed to use the S&F operation [t]he (type of) traffic may include (UP) data [“MO data” ¶0070] . . . [and] may include SMS (short message service).
Regarding Claims 7-9, claims disclose similar features of Claims 1, 5-6, respectively and are rejected based on the same rationales of Claims 1, 5-6 (Ou ¶0177, the configuration may be one or more of the S&F configurations mentioned in this disclosure).
Regarding Claim 10, Ou and VEDULA teach Claim 1.
Ou further teaches the at least one processor is further configured to cause the UE to: receive an indication in a broadcast received from the SV, wherein the indication indicates that the SV is operating in a store and forward mode and access the SV using the service link, based on the indication, received from the SV, that the SV is operating in the store and forward mode ((Ou, ¶0060, [t]he indication and/or the configuration/parameter related to S&F may be provided (by the NW, e.g., the satellite NW / “satellite”) (to the UE) in a broadcast signaling, [and] the UE may acquire the broadcast signaling . . . by the NW (e.g., notification of system information change).
Regarding Claims 31-40 the claims disclose similar features of Claims 1-10, respectively and are rejected based on the same rationales of Claims 1-10, in method form (a method of wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE) (Ou ¶0005, methods, systems, and apparatuses are provided for handling Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) store and forward (S&F) configurations in a wireless communication system)).
Claims 11 and 41 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ou and VEDULA as cited in Claims 1-10 above, and further in view of T. Kellermann et al., "Novel Architecture for Cellular IoT in Future Non-Terrestrial Networks: Store and Forward Adaptations for Enabling Discontinuous Feeder Link Operation," in IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 68922-68936, 2022, hereinafter IEEE.
Regarding Claim 11, Ou and VEDULA teach Claim 10.
Ou and VEDULA do not explicitly teach the UE has a subscription to access the SV when the SV is operating in the store and forward mode.
However, in the analogous art IEEE explicitly discloses the UE has a subscription to access the SV when the SV is operating in the store and forward mode (IEEE, III. A. EMM Specific Procedures, [S&F] attach procedure, “now that the UE is authenticated, and a security context is established, the MME needs to obtain information about the UE’s subscription. For that, it sends an Update Location Request (ULR) to the HSS, that is responded with an Update Location Answer(ULA)(steps8and9inFig.2).The subscription information is needed to provide session related information for the following message to the UE”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine Ou’s methods, systems, and apparatuses are provided for handling Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) store and forward (S&F) configurations in a wireless communication system and VEDULA’s performance enhancing proxy apparatus and method of operation with IEEE’s user data proxy and UE attachment method. The motivation would be to improve the 3GPP and NTN standard by providing mobility management improvements to cope with moving satellite cells. [IEEE, Section II A.].
Regarding Claim 41, the claim discloses similar features of Claim 11 and is rejected based on the same rationales of Claim 11, in method form (a method of wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE) (Ou ¶0005, methods, systems, and apparatuses are provided for handling Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) store and forward (S&F) configurations in a wireless communication system)).
Conclusion
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 TRACY L WILLIAMS whose telephone number is (571)270-7694. The examiner can normally be reached Mon - Fri 8:30-5:30.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ayman Abaza can be reached at 571-270-0422. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/TRACY L WILLIAMS/Examiner, Art Unit 2465 /CHRISTOPHER T WYLLIE/Examiner, Art Unit 2465
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