DETAILED ACTION
This action is responsive to the communication filed on 12/22/2025.
In response to the Restriction Requirement, applicant(s) have elected claims 1-7 and 15-17 for examination.
Claims 8-14 and 18-20 have been withdrawn.
No claims have been added and/or canceled.
Claims 1-7 and 15-17 are pending.
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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
(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.
Claim(s) 1, 2, 4-7 and 17-15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Ali et al (WO 2021/008687 A1 herein after “Ali”).
As per claim 1 and similarly claim 15, Ali discloses an apparatus comprising:
a transceiver that is in communication with a first node in an ethernet-based fieldbus system and is in communication with a plurality of user equipment ("UE") devices via a mobile wireless communication network (Ali, pg. 12 line 17-23: device 200 is in a wireless communication network 300; network 300 comprises a core network device 301, a base station 302 and one or more UEs 303; where a transceiver of device 200 is implicit for transmitting and/or receiving);
a processor (Ali, pg. 12 line 5-15: device 200 may comprise processing circuitry…the processing circuitry comprises one or more processors) that:
determines configuration information that comprises a mapping defining which datagrams of a packet each of the plurality of UE devices within the mobile wireless communication network receives and a sequence in which each UE device receives the datagrams (Ali, pg. 13 lines 26- pg. 14 line 1: device 200…may be configured to obtain the context information…processes the context information into RAN-relevant information…such information provide a basis for the segmentation and scheduling; pg. 6 line 1-11: map each data unit to a time-frequency resource allocated to the UE connected with the respective slave node, based on a mapping table; context information comprises the mapping table);
receives, via the transceiver, from the first node in the ethernet-based fieldbus system, a packet comprising a plurality of datagrams (Ali, pg. 12 line 28-30: device 200 is configured to receive…an Ethernet frame comprising a header and a payload, wherein the payload comprises data of the one or more slave nodes);
determines which datagrams of the plurality of datagrams are for each UE device according to the configuration information (Ali, pg. 12 line 30-32: device 200 is further configured to segment the Ethernet frame into a header unit and multiple data units, based on the context information, wherein each data unit comprises data of a respective slave node); and
sends, via the transceiver, to each UE device within the mobile wireless communication network, in order of the sequence defined by the configuration information, a packet comprising the datagrams for the UE device (Ali, pg. 12 line 32- pg. 14 line 2: transmit each data unit…to be forwarded to the respective slave node).
As er claim 2 and similarly claim 16, Ali discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processor further receives the configuration information from a configuration entity of the ethernet-based fieldbus system (Ali, pg. 13 line 26-30).
As per claim 4, Ali discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein each of the UE devices is configured with the configuration information from a configuration entity of the ethernet-based fieldbus system (Ali, pg. 8 line 27-28).
As per claim 5, Ali discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processor further determines, based on the configuration information, whether a datagram that is sent to a UE device comprises an originally-received datagram or a datagram that is modified by a previous UE in the sequence (Ali, pg. 8 line 6).
As per claim 6, Ali discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processor further determines time sensitive communications assistance information for each UE device based on the datagrams for each UE device and a quality of service (Ali, pg. 13 line 32-34; pg. 15 line 28).
As per claim 7, Ali discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the processor further constructs and sends, via the transceiver, a packet comprising datagrams to a first node in response to the sequence being complete (Ali, pg. 20 line 2-5).
As per claim 17, Ali discloses the method of claim 15, further comprising determining, based on the configuration information, whether a datagram that is sent to a UE device comprises an originally- received datagram or a datagram that is modified by a previous UE in the sequence (Ali, pg. 8 line 6-7).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 3 is 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: While the prior art discloses that each data unit is mapped to a time-frequency resource and the data units of the respective slave node is inserted in time slots allocated to the respective slave nodes and/or teaches using Time-Sensitive Networking, the prior are of record does not teach and/or suggest sending the configuration information (i.e. context information) in response to a communication time (i.e. the expected traffic arrival/transmission to/from each slave UE node from one or more etherCat frames) satisfying a threshold communication time.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure. See form 892.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Natisha Cox whose telephone number is (571)270-7167. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday to Friday, 10:00 am - 6:00pm EST.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Umar Cheema can be reached on (571)270-3037. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is (571) 273-8000.
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/NATISHA D COX/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2458
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