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 .
This Office Action is in response to the Applicants' response to restriction requirement received on 07/09/2026.
Applicant’s election with “traverse in part” of claims 24-31 is acknowledged. Since according to Applicants, the traversal was submitted solely to clarify the scope of the elected invention, and not on the ground that the identified inventions are or are not patentably distinct, the restriction is maintained.
Examiner appreciates Applicants’ clarification of the scope of the elected invention, as thus when the application is passed to issue, instead of changing the classification to H04W40/005 (routing actions in the presence of nodes in sleep or doze mode), Examiner will maintain the current classification (CPC First: H04W28/24 and CPC Inventive: H04W8/08, H04W8/20, H04W28/0268, H04W48/16).
Newly added claims 44-55 are accepted since they are readable on the elected invention.
Claim Status
Claims 24-31, 44-55 are currently presenting for examination.
This action has been made NON-FINAL.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 24-31 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claims 24-31 are indefinite because of the following reasons:
For claims 24-31, even though Applicants seem to be claiming a machine (computer readable apparatus), Applicants' claimed machine comprises only of a manufacture (at least one non-transitory storage medium comprising at least one computer program) which by itself cannot perform any function. A machine that does not perform any function is not a machine. In fact, what Applicants are claiming is closer to a “manufacture” than a “machine”. As thus it is unclear to Examiner what exactly is Applicants trying to claim, a machine or a manufacture.
Applicants are reminded that MPEP 2106 describes a machine as “Machine – a concrete thing, consisting of parts, or of certain devices and combination of devices. Burr v. Duryee, 68 U.S. (1 Wall.) 531, 570, 17 L. Ed. 650 (1863). This includes every mechanical device or combination of mechanical powers and devices to perform some function and produce a certain effect or result. Corning v. Burden, 56 U.S. 252, 267, 14 L. Ed. 683 (1854).”
To resolve the issue, Examiner recommends Applicants to amend the claim language as follow:
For claim 24, “A computer readable non-transitory storage medium comprising at least one computer program configured to, when executed on a processing apparatus of a wireless user device, cause the wireless user device to…”
For claims 25-31, “The computer readable non-transitory storage medium
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 24-31 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action.
Claims 44-55 are allowed.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
As per claims 44-55 generally, none of the prior art references of record, including, but not limited to: Wang, US 20200029264; Kim, US 20240214898; Feder, US 20070171850 as well as the other references; anticipate, disclose, teach or suggest, alone, or in combination, at the time of the invention, the features as discussed and remarked upon [in the prosecution of the current patent application and its parents U.S. patents 11297539 and 11856462] of the inventions as set forth in the claims in this application as allowed, and not necessarily as summarized and/or characterized by the examiner, whether or not as italicized, in the statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter.
Specifically, (as per claim 44 for example) prior art dealing with transferring user device from wireless access point to mobile network based on quality measurements, metrics is generally known to exist per se, (Wang, paragraph 38-43).
Nowhere in the prior art is found collectively the italicized claim elements (for example in claim 44): “attach to a mobile network node of the mobile network; based on the wireless user device being in an idle mode associated with the mobile network, connect to the wireless access point apparatus to obtain one or more network services via the wireless access point apparatus; transmit, to at least one of the wireless access point apparatus or a wireless controller apparatus, connection information indicative of a network utilization level associated with the wireless user device; receive a paging request based at least on the connection information indicating that the one or more network services fail to meet one or more quality of service (QoS) requirements; and based on the paging request, connect to the mobile network node to obtain the one or more network services via the mobile network”, at the time of the invention, serving to patently distinguish the invention from said prior art.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KHOA B HUYNH whose telephone number is (571)270-7185. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 1:00 PM - 9:35 PM.
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/KHOA HUYNH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2462