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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the term “user terminal emulation server” is not defined in the specification as being hardware. Therefore, the claims 1-15 are being rejected for being software per se and for failing to fall within the four categories of patent eligibility.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1, 2, 5, 6, 13, 16, 17, 20, and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lingutla et al (US 20180348844) in view of Lewis et al (US 20160021684).
As to claim 1 and 16 Lingutla discloses a server and a method for providing a communication service through one or more input and/or output, I/O, user devices to a user ( Lingutla Fig.1, ¶0039- the computing device 102 can optionally be configured to interact with a server computing device 150 to improve the techniques set forth herein. In particular, at least one remote computing device that is associated with the computing device 102 can be configured to provide information to the server computing device 150 (e.g., a current location of the at least one remote computing device). , wherein the server is configured to: predict likelihood the user will become proximately located to an I/O user device (Lingutla ¶0086- 2nd sentence-the server computing device 150 can identify that a user of the computing device 102 is and/or will not be in proximity (predict likelihood) to the computing device 102 for an amount of time); determine discontinuous reception, DRX, settings based on the predicted likelihood the user will become proximately located to the I/O user device-in other words adjusting sleep states based on proximity (Lingutla Fig.5, ¶0065- 1st sentence- a method 500 for adjusting sleep states of a computing device based on a proximity of a remote computing device to the computing device ; Lingutla ¶0066- At step 504, the computing device 102 can determine whether a remote computing device is proximate to the computing device 102. Given that the computing device 102 determined that is currently within a sleep state at step 502, the computing device 102 then makes determinations as to whether it should enter a high-power sleep state or a low-power sleep state based on proximity to a remote computing device.); and configure the I/O user device to use the DRX settings for receiving downlink radio communications from a radio access network, RAN, which are related to the communication service (Lingutla ¶0086- 1st sentence- the computing device 102 can be configured to optionally interact with a server computing device 150 to obtain additional information that can enable the computing device 102 to increase the accuracy by which the computing device 102 activates the various sleep states .¶0086- last sentence- the server computing device 150 can determine that it would be beneficial to contact the computing device 102—e.g., via a network connection that remains active between the computing device 102 and the server computing device 150 while the computing device 102 remains in the high-power sleep state—and instruct the computing device 102 to enter into a lower-power sleep state to conserve energy).
Lingutla however is silent with regard to a user terminal emulation server that is configured to: register user information with a network entity providing the communication service; However in an analogous art Lewis remedies this deficiency: (Lewis, Fig.9, ¶0079- 1st sentence- a block diagram of a system 900 for providing virtualized cloud peering emulation services; Lewis ¶0084- 2nd sentence- the remote virtualized peering emulation service device 910 can emulate a device using a low power communication protocol and can transmit and/or receive wireless signals (e.g., similar to the user device 802, but the remote virtualized peering emulation service device 910 is a virtual device). In some embodiments (as explained herein), the remote virtualized peering emulation service device 910 is configured to automatically route communication from one user device to another, remote user device (e.g., located at a separate location). In some embodiments, the system 900 may include additional remote virtualized peering emulation service devices 910. ; Lewis ¶0088-1st sentence- FIG. 13 provides an overview of the lower software layers of the Bluetooth Stack. The HCl firmware 1330 implements the HCl Commands for the Bluetooth hardware by accessing, e.g., baseband commands, link manager commands, hardware status registers, control registers and event registers ).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the teachings of Lingutla with that of Lewis for the purpose of providing a cloud emulation service through one or more input/output device.
As to claims 2 and 17 the combined teachings of Lingutla and Lewis disclose the user terminal emulation server and method of claims 1 and 16 respectively, wherein: the prediction of likelihood the user will become proximately located to the I/O user device, comprises estimating time until the user will become proximately located to the I/O user device; and the DRX settings are determined based on the estimated time (Lingutla ¶0068- the computing device 102 determines that a user coupled to the remote computing device is more likely to use the computing device 102 within a pre-determined period of time and therefore sends control signals to power resource components that increase the amount of power supplied to components resident within the computing device 102).
As to claims 5 and 20 the combined teachings of Lingutla and Lewis disclose the user terminal emulation server and method of claims 1 and 16 respectively, wherein to predict likelihood the user will become proximately located to the I/O user device, the user terminal emulation server is configured to: process information indicating present proximity of the user to another I/O user device through a machine learning model that has been trained based on time ordered sequences of I/O user devices that have been historically observed to become proximately located to users; and predict likelihood the I/O user device will become proximately located to the user based on output of the machine learning model from processing the information (Lingutla ¶0038- the user activity detector 114 also includes the functionality to generate historical user activity data based on detected user activities, which can be analyzed by the learning engine 116 to establish meaningful observations about user behaviors. According to some embodiments, the learning engine 116 can be configured to correlate instances of user interactions with computing device 102 with specific time periods to identify typical user usage patterns. The user usage patterns can be gathered over time during a particular threshold time period (e.g., hours, days, months, years, etc.) and utilized by the power controller 112 to implement the user-behavior based sleep state adjustment techniques described herein).
As to claims 6 and 21 the combined teachings of Lingutla and Lewis disclose the user terminal emulation server and method of claims 1 and 16 respectively, wherein to predict likelihood the user will become proximately located to the I/O user device, the user terminal emulation server (100) is configured to: process a present location of the user through a machine learning model (252) that has been trained based on locations of the I/O user devices (Lingutla ¶0038); and predict likelihood the user will become proximately located to the I/O user device based on an output of the machine learning model (252) from processing the present location of the user (Lingutla ¶0034- 2nd sentence- with respect to the proximity detector 110, this component can be utilized by the power controller 112 to identify when a remote device is nearby or away from the computing device 102, and accordingly adjust the sleep states of the computing device 102. With respect to the user activity detector 114/learning engine 116, these components can gather/learn user activity associated with the computing device 102, and be utilized by the power controller 112 to appropriately adjust the sleep states of the computing device 102).
As to claim 13 the combined teachings of Lingutla and Lewis disclose the user terminal emulation server (100) of Claim 1, further configured to: determine the DRX settings for the I/O user device based on information received from the I/O user device indicating: downlink streaming audio playout capability (Lingutla ¶0080- . According to some embodiments, voices can be detected using any hardware capable of detecting sound, e.g., microphones, included on the computing device 102).
Claim(s) 4 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lingutla in view of Lewis and further in view of Bassenye-Mukasa (US 20170242995).
As to claims 4 and 19 the combined teachings of Lingutla and Lewis disclose the user terminal emulation server and method of claims 1 and 16 respectively, however silent wherein: the prediction of likelihood the user will become proximately located to the I/O user device, comprises generating a set of proximity probability values indicating likelihood that the user will become proximately located to the I/O user device as a function of a set of different elapsed times; and the DRX settings are determined based on the set of proximity probability values. However, in an analogous art Bassenye-Mukasa remedies this deficiency: (Bassenye-Mukasa ¶0012- the location scan controller is capable of taking periodic sample location and proximity readings to determine user location and proximity. In another embodiment, the system further comprises a proximity probability simulator capable of generating a simulated probability score reflecting the level of likelihood that the user is within a given location and proximity.. ¶0064, ¶0065).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the combined teachings of Lingutla and Lewis with that of Bassenye-Mukasa for the purpose of determining the level of likelihood that the user is within a given location and proximity (Bassenye-Mukasa ¶0012).
Claim(s) 12 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lingutla in view of Lewis and further in view of MOHAMMAD SOLEYMANI et al (US 20240064849) hereinafter “ MOHAMMAD”.
As to claim 12 the combined teachings of Lingutla and Lewis disclose user terminal emulation server of Claim 1, however silent wherein the configuration of the I/O user device to use the DRX settings for receiving downlink radio communications from the radio access network, comprises: communicating the DRX settings to the I/O user device using radio resource control, RRC, signaling through the RAN. However in an analogous art MOHAMMAD remedies this deficiency (MOHAMMAD ¶0128- When the UE is in RRC connected state the following procedure that a UE receives a DRX configuration via dedicated RRC is possible. ¶0139- each UE could be provided via higher layers IE, e.g., RRC a set of DRX configuration, e.g., including on duration, inactivity timer, HARQ RTT timer, retransmission timer).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the combined teachings of Lingutla and Lewis with that of MOHAMMAD for the purpose of communicating DRX settings to user devices.
Claim(s) 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lingutla in view of Lewis and further in view of Fujishiro et al (US 20190053199).
As to claim 14 the combined teachings of Lingutla and Lewis disclose the user terminal emulation server of Claim 1, however silent wherein the configuring of the I/O user device to use the DRX settings for receiving downlink radio communications from the RAN comprises: configuring the following parameters used by the I/O user device for DRX operation, based on the DRX settings: drx-onDurationTimer for a duration at the beginning of a DRX cycle; drx-SlotOffset for a delay before starting the drx-onDuration Timer; drx-InactivityTimer for a duration after a PDCCH occasion in which a PDCCH indicates a new uplink or downlink transmission for the I/O user device; drx-Retransmission TimerDL for a maximum duration until a downlink retransmission is received by the I/O user device; drx-RetransmissionTimerUL for a maximum duration until a grant for uplink retransmission is received by the I/O user device; drx-LongCycleStartOffset for a subframe where the long DRX cycle starts; drx-ShortCycle for a Short DRX cycle; drx-ShortCycleTimer for a duration the I/O user device shall follow a Short DRX cycle;.
However, in an analogous art Fujishiro remedies this deficiency: (Fujishiro ¶0127- when receiving the DRX setting information for specifying a predetermined LCG from the eNB 200, the UE 100 may apply the DRX setting information to communication in a specific cell corresponding to the predetermined LCG. The UE 100 can monitor the PDCCH using a different DRX pattern for each LCG. The DRX setting information includes parameters such as onDurationTimer, drx-InactivityTimer, drx-RetransmissionTimer, longDRX-CycleStartOffset, shortDRX-Cycle, and DrxShortCycleTimer.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the combined teachings of Lingutla and Lewis with that of Fujishiro for the purpose of configuring DRX settings for I/O user devices.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3, 7-11, 15, 18, 22-25 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 DERRICK V ROSE whose telephone number is (571)270-7460. The examiner can normally be reached 9am- 6pm.
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/DERRICK V ROSE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2462