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 12/17/2025.
Claims 1, 6 and 11 have been amended. Claims 2, 7 and 12 have been canceled.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 12/17/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
In response to the Applicant’s argument that “the cited sections of Talebi do not support the Examiner’s contention” (Pages 5-7), the Examiner respectfully disagrees.
Talebi teaches that “The MPS priority treatment may comprise exempting requests associated with the MPS connection from overload and congestion control that may be performed by the SMF or the AMF” in Page 21 [0348]) and that the SMF “control part of policy enforcement and QoS” for UEs. (Page 3 [0166]) Quite frankly, it seems unreasonable to the Examiner to assume that the SMF can control part of policy enforcement and QoS and be able to know that requests for overload and congestion control should be exempted for specific UEs at the SMF without keeping a record. Accordingly, the Examiner respectfully disagrees with the Applicant’s assertion.
Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks on Pages 7-8, filed 12/17/2025, with respect to claims 4, 9 and 14 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The rejection of claims 4, 9 and 14 has been withdrawn.
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 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Suh et al. (US-2023/0239667 hereinafter, Suh) in view of Nayak (US-2023/0232207) and Talebi Fard et al. (US-2021/0410059 hereinafter, Talebi).
Regarding claim 1, Suh teaches a method for facilitating an on-demand multimedia priority service (MPS) for a data transport services (DTS) session in a radio access network (RAN) (Page 8 [0168-0177] and Fig. 6), comprising:
a Policy Control Function (PCF) (Fig. 6 [608]) sending (Fig. 6 [630]) and a Session Management Function (SMF) (Fig. 6 [607]) receiving, an MPS On-Demand indication (Fig. 6 [630]) following an authorized MPS user service grant; (Fig. 6 [610 & 620]) and
sending said MPS On-Demand indication from said SMF (Fig. 6 [607]) to an Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF), (Fig. 6 [640 & 603])
wherein said AMF (Fig. 6 [603]), in response to receiving said MPS On-Demand indication (Fig. 6 [640]), sends, to user equipment (UE) (Fig. 6 [601]), an MPS indicator in downlink messaging to indicate said UE may use priority access for radios. (Fig. 6 [650] and Page 10 [0175-0176])
Suh differs from the claimed invention by not explicitly reciting that the AMF sends to the UE, an MPS indicator in a downlink Non-Access Stratum (NAS) message.
In an analogous art, Nayak teaches a method and apparatus to provide priority services to a UE in a wireless network (Abstract) that includes an AMF (Fig. 3 [200]) that receives an indication of an updated MPS priority (Fig. 3 [303]) and sends this to the UE (Fig. 3 [304]) in a downlink NAS message. (Claim 5 “receiving the priority services information related to the priority service from the AMF in at least one non-access stratum (NAS) message”, Fig. 3 [304-306] and Pages 5-6 [0058-0059)
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 Suh after modifying it to incorporate the ability to send messages from the AMF to the UE as NAS messages of Nayak since NAS messages are part of the 5G protocol when communicating between the UE and the AMF.
Suh in view of Nayak differs from the claimed invention by not explicitly reciting wherein said SMF records session upgrade to MPS on demand status, and thereafter excludes said session from congestion controls that reduce services offered to non-MPS sessions.
In an analogous art, Talebi teaches a method and system for multimedia priority service (Abstract) that includes an SMF (Fig. 15 [SMF]) that records session upgrade to MPS on demand status (Page 3 [0166] “control part of policy enforcement and QoS”, Page 19 [0339] and Page 21 [0348] “The MPS priority treatment may comprise exempting requests associated with the MPS connection from overload and congestion control that may be performed by the SMF or the AMF”), and thereafter excludes said session from congestion controls that reduce services offered to non-MPS sessions. (Page 21 [0348])
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 Suh in view of Nayak after modifying it to incorporate the ability to use the SMF to except congestion controls on the MPS session of Talebi since it enables service to be provided the UE at a high QOS even when NAS congestion is detected. (Talebi Page 5 [0197] and Page 19 [0339])
Regarding claim 3, Suh in view of Nayak and Talebi teaches wherein said SMF also sends said MPS On-Demand indication to a User Plane Function (UPF) (Talebi Pages 24-25 [0373]), thus informing said UPF of said session undergoing MPS on-demand upgrade (Talebi Pages 24-25 [0373]), and
wherein said UPF records session upgrade to MPS on demand status, and thereafter excludes said session from any congestion controls that result in reduced services offered to non-MPS sessions. (Talebi Page 21 [0348] and Pages 24-25 [0373])
Regarding claim 5, Suh in view of Nayak and Talebi teaches wherein said UE, in response to a loss of communication with said RAN, includes an MPS Access Identity in radio resource control (RRC) messaging with said RAN (Talebi Page 20 [0340] “he MPS settings may comprise pre-configuration of the UE to access the network using a specific access identity (e.g., access identity 1). The MPS settings may allow the UE to perform RRC procedures, such as an RRC connection establishment, RRC connection setup request, RRC resume request, and/or the like with an RRC establishment cause of mps-priorityAccess. When a UE is configured with access identity 1 or when an RRC establishment cause of mps-priorityAccess is used during an initial access request (e.g., an RRC request), the network (e.g., RAN or base station) may treat the access request with high priority”), and
wherein said RAN, in response to receiving said MPS Access Identity, proceeds with a prioritized connection setup for said UE. (Talebi Page 20 [0340] “The network may admit or accept an RRC request from a UE with an RRC establishment cause mps-priorityAccess when the network is overloaded or congested. When the network is overloaded or congested, the AMF may send an overload start message to a RAN node. The RAN node may determine to reject access requests or RRC requests from UEs until the RAN node receives an overload stop message indicating the overload or congestion is alleviated. When an overload start message is received by the RAN node, the RAN node may reject RRC requests except those associated with emergency services, MPS (e.g., RRC establishment cause mps-priorityAccess), and/or the like. When the UE performs a registration procedure, the RAN node may notify the AMF that the UE has used RRC establishment cause mps-priorityAccess”)
Regarding claim 6, the limitations of claim 6 are rejected as being the same reasons set forth above in claim 1. See additional structure (Suh Fig. 9 [930] and Page 11 [0197] through Page 12 [0201] which discusses processor and memory of the network entity)
Regarding claims 8 and 10, the limitations of claims 8 and 10 are rejected as being the same reasons set forth above in claims 3 and 5.
Regarding claim 11, the limitations of claim 11 are rejected as being the same reasons set forth above in claim 1. See additional structure (Suh Pages 2-3 [0030])
Regarding claims 13 and 15, the limitations of claims 13 and 15 are rejected as being the same reasons set forth above in claims 3 and 5.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4, 9 and 14 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: The Examiner was convinced by the Applicant’s arguments and was unable to find the combination of claims 1+4, 6+9 and 11+14 in the prior art.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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