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
This communication is in response to application filed on March 26, 2024 in which claims 1-10 are presented for examination.
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed in Taiwan parent application No. 112142785 on 11/07/2023.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 9/4/2024, and 2/3/2026 is/are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Specification
Objection to the Abstract
The content of a patent abstract should be such as to enable the reader thereof,
regardless of his or her degree of familiarity with patent documents, to determine quickly from a cursory inspection of the abstract the nature and gist of the technical disclosure and that which is new in the art to which the invention pertains (MPEP 608.01 (b)). The abstract of the disclosure is objected to because the current abstract merely repeats the claim language and does not enable the reader thereof to determine the nature and gist of the technical disclosure and that which is new in the art to which the invention pertains. The abstract should be in narrative form and should describe the disclosure sufficiently to assist readers in deciding whether there is a need for consulting the full patent text for details. Correction is required. See MPEP § 608.01 (b).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 1: The term "to-be-tested" in lines 4-5, and last paragraph is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term "to-be-tested" is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
Claim 6: The term "to-be-tested" in lines 5-7, and last few paragraphs is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term "to-be-tested" is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
Claims 4, and 8: The term "to-be-tested" in lines 3 and 6, is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term "to-be-tested" is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
The dependent claims 2-5 and 7-10 included in the statement of rejection but not specifically addressed in the body of the rejection have inherited the deficiencies of their parent claim and have not resolved the deficiencies. Therefore, they are rejected based on the same rationale as applied to their parent claims above.
Examiner notes: the term flooding mechanism of the VLAN, is interpreted as “computer network routing algorithms in which every incoming packet is sent through every outgoing link except the one it arrived on”.
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See Form 892.
Palazzolo et al. (US 20150333927 A1): teaches dynamic discovery and assignment of virtual local area networks (VLANs), a network switch receives a request for VLAN configuration, from a device connecting to a port of the network switch, the network switch retrieves a list of available VLANs at the port, determines whether respective ones of the available VLANs are configured for the device, forms an acknowledgement including a list of VLANs configured for the device, and sends the acknowledgement to the device [03-04].
Selvaraj et al. (US 20210409293 A1): teaches a network device for network traffic flooding, specifically, the method and network device disclosed herein implement the mitigation of the lack of data-link layer or L2 addressing resolutions, usually learned by or programmed manually into the network device (abstract).
Correspondence Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Razu Miah whose telephone number is (571)270-5433. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, 9-5 EST.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Glenton Burgess can be reached at 23949. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/RAZU A MIAH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2441
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