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 .
Claims
Claims 1-19 and 25 are pending.
Claims 20-24 and 26-30 are cancelled.
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.
Claim(s) 14 and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over United States Patent Application Publication 2008/0304822 A1 to Bianchi et al. and United States Patent Application Publication 2018/0351686 A1 to Busi et al.
Regarding Claim 14, Bianchi discloses an exception locating method, comprising:
receiving, by a second device, a second exception signal, (Fig. 3, network element (23) begins receiving a LOS/LOF signal)
wherein the second exception signal is a signal that changes abruptly from a second communication signal when the second communication signal passes through a location of an exception on a first line (Fig. 3, network element (12) receives a communication signal from network element (11) until a fault (indicated by X) occurs on the fiber, the communication signal abruptly stops and the LOS/LOF signal is sent),
the first line is a line between a first device and the second device (Fig. 3, fault on fiber (10A)), and
the second communication signal is a signal sent by the first device to the second device through the first line (Fig. 3, communication signal sent from NE (11) to NE (12)); and
sending, by the second device, exception alarm information to the first device (Fig. 3, NE (12) sends a Backward Defect Indication to NE (11)),
wherein the exception alarm information alarms about the second exception signal (¶ 20, BDI signal alarms NE (11) about the exception encountered by NE (12)), and
the exception alarm information is further used to trigger the first device to perform protection switching (¶ 21, the BDI triggers protection switching.)
Bianchi does not expressly disclose determining the location of the exception.
Busi discloses that alarms are not only used to trigger protection switching, they are also used to trigger fault location (¶ 16.)
Before the filing date of the instant application, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art to use the alarm information to trigger protection switching (as disclosed by Busi) in the system disclosed by Bianchi. The suggestion/motivation would have been to not only work around the detected fault, but to also enable replacement or fixing the failed component (¶ 16).
Bianchi and Busi are from the same art with respect to optical communication, and are therefore analogous art.
Regarding Claim 19, Bianchi discloses wherein an interval between time at which the second device receives the second exception signal and time at which the second device sends the exception alarm information is a specified time interval (Fig. 3, ¶ 20, the time between receipt of LOS and sending the BDI is deterministic number defined by the speed of the local processor and propagation delay.)
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-13 and 25 are allowed.
Claims 15-18 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DANIEL G DOBSON whose telephone number is (571)272-9781. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8-5 EST.
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/DANIEL G DOBSON/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2634
02/12/2026