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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-5, 9-13 are allowed.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
With respect to the claim(s), the prior art of record fails to disclose singly or in combination or render obvious all the limitations of the claim(s).
The closest prior art relating to Applicant' s claimed invention is:
US 20150245256 A1 Kiss; Krisztian
US 20230370957 A1 Niemi; Marko et al.
Kiss discloses reducing or mitigating no-service delays for LTE capable wireless devices which do not have permission to access one or more LTE networks. According to some embodiments, a MME of a first PLMN may receive an LTE NAS request corresponding to a tracking area from a wireless device. The MME may determine to reject the request, and may send a rejection response to the request indicating that access to the first PLMN in the tracking area according to LTE is not available to the wireless device. The rejection response may further include extended cause information relating to whether or not the wireless device is permitted to access the first PLMN in other tracking areas according to LTE.
Niemi discloses handling of reject causes and forbidden tracking area identifier (TAI) lists in reject messages in mobile communications. A user equipment (UE) receives a reject message from a satellite-accessing cell of a network. The UE then stores one or more TAIs that are included in at least one information element (IE) of the reject message in a list of forbidden tracking areas in the UE regardless of a reject cause indicated in the reject message.
The prior art of record does not teach or suggest that a UE conditionally storing the at least one TAI is based upon: in case that the at least one TAI in the information belongs to the serving PLMN or the equivalent PLMN, storing the at least one TAI; and in case that the at least one TAI in the information does not belong to the serving PLMN or equivalent PLMN, ignoring the at least one TAI.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
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) 6-8, 14, 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20150245256 A1 to Kiss; Krisztian in view of US 20230370957 A1 to Niemi; Marko et al.
Re: Claim(s) 6, 14
Kiss discloses a method performed by an access and mobility management function (AMF) in a wireless communication system, the method comprising: (Fig. 7)
identifying whether at least one tracking area identity (TAI) in information on forbidden tracking areas belongs to a serving public land mobile network (PLMN) or an equivalent PLMN (0095 - In 704, the MME 322 may determine to reject the [NAS] request ... the identification and/or authentication information may indicate that the UE does not have permission for E-UTRA/LTE access to the PLMN of the MME 322, at least in the current tracking area of the UE. Such a scenario might occur if the UE 106 is roaming on a PLMN with which its service provider has not negotiated for LTE roaming. 0098 - In 706, the MME 322 may determine additional EMM cause information to provide with a rejection response. The additional EMM cause information may include an extended EMM cause information element which may relate to whether or not the UE is permitted LTE access to the PLMN in areas other than the current tracking area. For example, the additional EMM cause information may include an indication to the UE 106 that E-UTRA/LTE access to the current TA of the PLMN of the MME 322 is forbidden to the UE, or that E-UTRA/LTE access to the multiple TAs of the PLMN of the MME 322 (e.g., including the current TA) is forbidden to the UE, or that E-UTRA/LTE access to the PLMN of the MME 322 is generally forbidden and UE shall disable LTE capabilities and ignore LTE cells of the PLMN of the MME 322. The Examiner notes that in other words, the MME is determining a list of TAIs that are forbidden based upon the PLMN the UE is accessing (i.e. serving or equivalent PLMN));
in case that the at least one TAI belongs to the serving PLMN or the equivalent PLMN, including the at least one TAI into a message; and transmitting, to a terminal, the message comprising the at least one TAI (0102 - In 708, the MME 322 may send to the UE 106 a rejection response to the NAS response, which may include the determined additional EMM cause information).
Kiss does/do not appear to explicitly disclose an AMF as the entity performing the method, but rather discloses said function as being performed by an MME.
However, attention is directed to Niemi which discloses a similar method pertaining to handling of reject causes and forbidden tracking area identifier (TAI) lists in reject messages in mobile communications (Abstract) wherein a reject message may include a forbidden TAI list (0030 - the reject message may include at least one of the following: (i) one or more forbidden TAIs for the list of “forbidden tracking areas for roaming” IE, (ii) one or more forbidden TAIs for the list of “5GS forbidden tracking areas for roaming” IE, (iii) one or more forbidden TAIs for the list of “forbidden tracking areas for regional provision of service” IE, and (iv) one or more forbidden TAIs for the list of “5GS forbidden tracking areas for regional provision of service” IE) which can be performed by either of a MME or AMF (0020 - Under a proposed scheme in accordance with the present disclosure, in case that a Mobility Management Entity (MME) (or an Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF)) of network 120 is to reject different TAIs with different cause values (e.g., TAI #1 with cause #12, TAI #2 with cause #13, and TAI #3 with cause #15), then the MME or the AMF may include in the EMM/5GMM cause value IE of a REJECT message a reject cause value which is one of the multiple cause values or, alternatively, another cause (e.g., cause #11 for “PLMN not allowed”, cause #35 for “Requested service option not authorized in this PLMN”, or a new cause #to indicate that the REJECT is sent by the network “for multiple reasons”)).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the Kiss invention by employing the teaching as taught by Niemi to provide the ability for an AMF to perform the same function as the MME described in Kiss. The motivation for the combination is given by Niemi (0002 and 0006).
Kiss in view of Niemi further discloses a corresponding AMF which performs the method of claim 6 which comprises a transceiver and processor (Kiss – Fig. 6 – 670, 604. See Niemi as noted above for AMF detail) as required by claim 14.
Re: Claim(s) 7, 15
Kiss in view of Niemi discloses those limitations as set forth in the rejection of claim(s) 6 above.
Kiss further discloses wherein the information is at least one of information on forbidden tracking areas for roaming, or information on forbidden tracking areas for regional provision of service (0098 - In 706, the MME 322 may determine additional EMM cause information to provide with a rejection response. The additional EMM cause information may include an extended EMM cause information element which may relate to whether or not the UE is permitted LTE access to the PLMN in areas other than the current tracking area. For example, the additional EMM cause information may include an indication to the UE 106 that E-UTRA/LTE access to the current TA of the PLMN of the MME 322 is forbidden to the UE, or that E-UTRA/LTE access to the multiple TAs of the PLMN of the MME 322 (e.g., including the current TA) is forbidden to the UE, or that E-UTRA/LTE access to the PLMN of the MME 322 is generally forbidden and UE shall disable LTE capabilities and ignore LTE cells of the PLMN of the MME 322. The Examiner notes that in other words, the MME is determining a list of TAIs that are forbidden based upon the PLMN the UE is accessing (i.e. serving or equivalent PLMN)).
Re: Claim(s) 8
Kiss in view of Niemi discloses those limitations as set forth in the rejection of claim(s) 6 above.
Kiss further discloses wherein the message is one of a message for registration acceptance, a message for registration rejection, a message for service acceptance, a message for service rejection, or a message for deregistration request (Fig. 7 – 708).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KASHIF SIDDIQUI whose telephone number is (571)270-3188. The examiner can normally be reached on M-R 6:00 EST to 16:00 EST.
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/KASHIF SIDDIQUI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2415