Claim Objections
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 1-9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because
From applicant’s specification, a computer-readable medium is open to transitory mediums and thus is non-statutory subject matter. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is obliged to give claims their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification during proceedings before the USPTO. See In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319 (Fed. Cir. 1989) (during patent examination the pending claims must be interpreted as broadly as their terms reasonably allow). The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim drawn to a computer/processor readable medium (also called machine readable medium and other such variations) typically covers forms of non-transitory tangible media and transitory propagating signals per se in view of the ordinary and customary meaning of computer readable media, particularly when the specification is silent. See MPEP 2111.01. A claim drawn to such a computer/processor readable medium that covers both transitory and non-transitory embodiments may be amended to narrow the claim to cover only statutory embodiments to avoid a rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 by adding the limitation "non-transitory" to the claim. Such an amendment would typically not raise the issue of new matter, even when the specification is silent because the broadest reasonable interpretation relies on the ordinary and customary meaning that includes signals per se. The limited situations in which such an amendment could raise issues of new matter occur, for example, when the specification does not support a non-transitory embodiment because a signal per se is the only viable embodiment such that the amended claim is impermissibly broadened beyond the supporting disclosure. Appropriate corrective action is required.
Claim Objections
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities: Claim 1, line 5 recites: “a radio access technology scan cycle” should be written as “a radio access technology (RAT) scan cycle”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 10 is objected to because of the following informalities: Claim 10, line 3 recites: “a radio access technology scan cycle” should be written as “a radio access technology (RAT) scan cycle”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 17 is objected to because of the following informalities: Claim 17, line 8 recites: “a radio access technology scan cycle” should be written as “a radio access technology (RAT) scan cycle”. Appropriate correction is required.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-9 will be allowable if overcome 101 rejections.
Claims 10- 20 are allowable.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
During search examiner found the following closest arts:
EDGE (US 20250240604) teaches a method of providing an emergency alert to user equipment (UE) (abstract: user equipment (UE) may receive a wireless message, broadcast by a network node, that indicates an alerting event ) without terrestrial coverage via satellite (Paragraph 100: not all UEs may have a capability to access a satellite, and in some cases, access to certain satellites may be restricted (e.g., if a UE is indoors, has no line of sight to a satellite or currently has no coverage from a satellite). As another example, the emergency system may be upgraded to support the transmission of wireless messages via side link signaling. A wireless message may be relayed from a UE with wireless coverage to other UEs without wireless coverage, using side link signaling), initiating, by the UE, a radio access technology scan cycle to identify an available public land mobile network (PLMN), Paragraph 28: The first UE may receive the wireless message and transmit the wireless message using a same RAT or different RATs. The first UE may transmit the wireless message using the store-and-forward operation, where the store-and-forward operation may be associated with a diffusion time) and Paragraph 89: the alert messages may be broadcast (e.g., by network nodes 110) using one or more system information blocks (SIBs) (e.g., a SIB12).
TUGNAWAT (US 20250247682) teaches (abstract: a user equipment (UE) may transmit, via a non-terrestrial network (NTN), a request to register for emergency alerts. The UE may receive, via the NTN and based at least in part on the request, an emergency alert message and a reference location associated with the emergency alert message. The UE may provide the emergency alert message for display based at least in part on a current location associated with the UE being within a threshold distance from the reference location), (Paragraph 26: UE may include a software stack to process NR/LTE SIBs, and the NB-NTN may have the capability to connect to public land mobile networks (PLMNs) that support emergency alerts. However, no network node may be defined to register the UE's request for receiving ETWS/CMAS alerts, no network node may be defined to register the UE's location, and/or no network node may be defined to transmit ETWS messages to the UE that are able to be processed by the UE's SIB layer. Further, a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) location of the UE may be unknown to the network node, such that the network node may be unable to identify whether an emergency alert should be broadcast to a certain area containing the UE. In some cases, even when the emergency alert is delivered to the UE, the emergency alert may be stale (e.g., the UE may receive an alert for a location that is relatively far away from the UE's current location). Thus, an inability to reliability transmit emergency alerts (e.g., ETWS/CMAS alerts) to NTN NB-IoT equipped UEs may degrade an overall system performance).
Agarwal (US 20260019976) teaches (abstract: methods for HPLMN control for discontinuous coverage in satellite access network by UE. The method includes determining whether DisCo No service applicability parameter is set to a value corresponding to true to indicate that UE remain in no service or whether parameter is set to a value corresponding to false to indicate that UE selects and camps on alternate network) and Paragraph 10: provide a method and the satellite access network to handover a UE to other Radio Access Technologies (RAT(s)) or Accesses or PLMN(s) when going into or coming out of Discontinuous coverage of Satellite Access).
ROY (US 20240236833) teaches (abstract: method and a system for selecting Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs) in communication networks are provided. The method includes prioritizing a random terrestrial network (TN) over other NTNs, changing the scan pattern to accommodate combination of Bands, radio access technologies (RATS), and public land mobile networks (PLMNs), and pre-configuring PLMN priorities at the user equipment (UE)), Paragraph 31: when MS attempts for emergency services on the available PLMN combination that does not support emergency services, then MS does not receive emergency services from the available PLMN or the network combination, Paragraph 38: UE may scan or search for any available PLMN for emergency service session. The UE may scan for emergency service session if the PLMN exists in the list of PLMNs not allowed to operate at the present UE location. I) The UE may also scan for emergency service session if the list of PLMNs not allowed includes the geographical location, and the UE determines that the distance to the current UE location is smaller than a UE implementation specific value. The UE may also scan for emergency service session if the list of PLMNs not allowed does not include a geographical location or the UE cannot determine whether the distance to the current UE location is smaller than a UE implementation specific The UE may also scan for emergency service session if there is no available PLMN or network combination that supports emergency services apart from the PLMN or the network combinations where the PLMN is a PLMN that meet the conditions to establish an emergency service session and the non-terrestrial network for example may be one of the satellite NG-RAN or satellite E-UTRAN. At operation 128, if the any of the above conditions for the UE to scan or search for available PLMN is satisfied then the UE or the MS is allowed to (re)-attempt the emergency service request or select and attempt registration on any of the PLMN(s) (e.g., PLMN-1, PLMN-2) that may be present in the list of “PLMNs not allowed to operate at the present UE location”, Paragraph 195: f there is at-least one available PLMN or the network combination, which does support emergency services, that is different from PLMN or the access technology combinations where the PLMN meets the conditions meet the conditions to establish an emergency service session and the access technology is one of the non-terrestrial networks for example, satellite NG-RAN or satellite E-UTRAN, then the MS or the UE 202 attempts registering for the emergency services (e.g., via emergency registration) on that PLMN or the network access technology combinations).
[0037] In an example scenario, for establishing the emergency service sessions in case only network or PLMN(s) (e.g., PLMN-1, PLMN-2) available to the UE belonging to the non-terrestrial network. The UE may have already received a rejection message from the available PLMN for the UE registration with “PLMN not allowed to operate in the country of the UE's location
Huang (US 20240138024) teaches (abstract: initiating disaster roaming search by user equipment (UE) if one of following conditions occurs: the UE receives System Information Block (SIB) from a first Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN), the UE receives a message and/or an information element from the first PLMN indicating an occurrence of a disaster or availability of disaster roaming, and the UE determines out-of-service (OOS) from the first PLMN. The SIB includes at least one disaster roaming information element. The method further includes searching by the UE for a second PLMN to register.
Speidel (US 20220052753) teaches (Paragraph 443: Prediction of satellite overpasses may be provided by itineraries that inform the control plane between the UE and the network as well. As an example, a typical search procedure for a mobile device UE may be modified to include a timer that checks the time against a provided itinerary for overpasses. Based on the timer, the UE may implement a procedure to scan for a specific LTE ARFCN, bandwidth, PLMN code, and/or Cell ID code from the orbital base station if, for instance, no other terrestrial or orbital base station is available at that time. When outside of typically terrestrial coverage, this may facilitate saving battery power on the device, as it knowns exactly when to begin scanning for newly available network access from the orbiting base station. Furthermore, after connecting to an orbiting base station there may be pre-existing knowledge for how long that satellite will be available to the UE, and based on this duration, the UE may determine what two-way communications are feasible, and perhaps, what should be prioritized for a given overpass. Further to this point, the itinerary may include information about the level of service for a given overpass in terms of radio access technology (e.g., GSM or LTE), data rate expectations, etc., which may drive the devices decision for what applications/data to request/move to and from the network (e.g., on GSM the device may favor SMS/low data rate traffic it seeks to move, while on LTE it may favor applications with higher data rate requirements, etc.).
None of the cited arts alone or in reasonable combination teach (upon the RAT scan cycle completing without identifying the available PLMN, search, by the UE, for an emergency alert (EA) PLMN; upon detecting the EA PLMN, passively monitor the EA PLMN, at the UE, for a System Information Block 12 (SIB12) broadcast message for a configurable amount of time) as claimed.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MARIA EL-ZOOBI whose telephone number is (571)270-3434. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 7-4.
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/MARIA EL-ZOOBI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2692
/CAROLYN R EDWARDS/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2692