Prosecution Insights
Last updated: October 01, 2026
Application No. 18/663,262

INTERFACE TO OFFLOAD AI/ML OPERATIONS ACROSS ENTITIES

Non-Final OA §103
Filed
May 14, 2024
Priority
Aug 04, 2023 — FI 20235867
Examiner
ABSHER, LUCAS DONALD
Art Unit
Tech Center
Assignee
Nokia Corporation
OA Round
1 (Non-Final)
Grant Probability
Favorable
1-2
OA Rounds

Examiner Intelligence

Grants only 0% of cases
0%
Career Allowance Rate
0 granted / 0 resolved
-60.0% vs TC avg
Minimal +0% lift
Without
With
+0.0%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
Avg Prosecution
12 currently pending
Career history
3
Total Applications
across all art units
This examiner has no resolved cases yet (career too new); statute-level performance unavailable. The Grant Probability card shows Tech Center averages instead.

Office Action

§103
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 § 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) 21,31 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20120159218 A1, Vangala, 2010-12-16 in view of US 20200042240 A1, Therene, 2019-01-31, US 20170339038 A1, Everett, 2016-05-23 and CN 114650562 A, Wang, 2022-06-21. Vangala teaches the following substantially as claimed. 21. (New) An apparatus comprising: one or more processors; and memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the apparatus to perform: operating an application processor and a modem as co-located entities within the apparatus; [0027] The various aspects can accommodate different multi-processor architectures. A first aspect described herein may be implemented in applications that enable direct power state notification between the applications processor and the modem (or other) processor in which the applications processor control point explicitly sets the QMI filtering mode implemented by the modem processor informing, by the application processor via a device-internal control interface, the modem of (…) compute capability of the application processor (…) that the application processor is capable of performing on behalf of the modem; [0036] In a first aspect suitable for computing device architectures in which the applications processor 101 is configured to signal its power state to the modem 105, such a direct notification message can be used by the modem to set or implement the appropriate indication filtering criteria. In this direct state notification aspect, the applications processor control point explicitly informs the modem QMI of the applications processor power save state [0022] The various aspects enable an applications processor in a multiprocessor environments to prioritize event indications that may be received from a modem processor (or other second processor) based on its power management state [0023] The control channel through which the inter-processor communications pass may implement a variety of communication protocols. For example, messaging between the two processors may be based on standard AT commands or a proprietary modem defined signaling protocol. The various aspects are described herein using the Qualcomm Modem Interface (QMI) protocol as an example of a control signaling protocol. receiving, by the application processor from the modem via the device-internal control interface, a request to take over a specified (…) operation from the modem [0022] The various aspects enable an applications processor in a multiprocessor environments to prioritize event indications that may be received from a modem processor (or other second processor) based on its power management state [0023] The various aspects are described herein using the Qualcomm Modem Interface (QMI) protocol as an example of a control signaling protocol. Here an event corresponds to an operation. performing, by the application processor, the (…) operation using (…) compute resources of the application processor [0022] The various aspects enable an applications processor in a multiprocessor environments to prioritize event indications that may be received from a modem processor (or other second processor) based on its power management state. This enables an applications processor in a low power state to avoid having to receiver/process low priority notifications or event notifications that are irrelevant to the processor's current power state. This capability enables the applications processor to remain in a low power state to conserve power resources, while receiving and processing any high priority event notifications. For example, when the applications processor is in a low power state, an indication of a change in the modem's RSSI may not be passed to the applications processor, while an incoming call event indication will be passed so that the applications processor can “wakeup” to process the indication as normal (e.g., to activate the appropriate call ring tone, etc.) and respond to the high priority event. wherein the device-internal control interface comprises an AT command interface, [0023] The control channel through which the inter-processor communications pass may implement a variety of communication protocols. For example, messaging between the two processors may be based on standard AT commands and wherein data associated with the specified (…) operation is exchanged between the application processor and the modem via a shared memory of the apparatus. [0028] An architecture for a multi-processor computing device 100 suitable for use with the various aspects is illustrated in FIG. 1. The multi-processor computing device 100 illustrated in FIG. 1 is a mobile computing device with wireless communications capability. In this architecture, the computing device 100 includes an applications processor 101 that is coupled to memory 102 and to a wireless modem 105 that is coupled to an antenna 104. Vangala does not teach the following. An artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) compute capability, the AI/ML compute capability indicating one or more AI/ML operations Therene does however. [0041] The AI engine 131 optionally includes its own CPU 132, which is separate from the CPU 133 of the storage controller 130. When the AI engine 131 includes the CPU 132, the CPU 132 is suitably configured as a co-processor configured, for instance, to offload various AI related compute operations from main CPU 133 Therene provides the context of AI related compute operations for a processor. It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of this application’s filing to combine this element with the design of Vangala as this would allow for balancing the processing of AI/ML specific tasks. Vangala as modified does not teach the following. while the modem refrains from performing the specified (…) operation; Everett does however. [0050] System 700 provides for the receiving modem 103 offloading the decoding process to the data processor Everett provides a modem offloading processing to a processor (or refraining from preforming). It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of this application’s filing to combine this element with the design of Vangala as this would allow for the conservation of resources on the modem. Vangala as modified does not teach the following. and providing, by the application processor to the modem (…), a result of the specified (…) operation, Wang does however. Page 7, Paragraph 3: the application processor 802 sends an optimization result 822 to the modem 804 Wang provides the application processor returning a processing result back to the modem. It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of this application’s filing to combine these elements with the design of Vangala as this would allow a processing record to be accessible at the modem. The following claim corresponds to Claim 21 and therefore inherits its rejection. 31. (New) A method performed by a terminal device, the method comprising: operating an application processor and a modem as co-located entities within the terminal device; informing, by the application processor via a device-internal control interface, the modem of an artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) compute capability of the application processor, the AI/ML compute capability indicating one or more AI/ML operations that the application processor is capable of performing on behalf of the modem; receiving, by the application processor from the modem via the device-internal control interface, a request to take over a specified AI/ML operation from the modem based on an availability of the AI/ML compute capability at the application processor; performing, by the application processor, the specified AI/ML operation using AI/ML compute resources of the application processor while the modem refrains from performing the specified AI/ML operation; and providing, by the application processor to the modem via the device-internal control interface, a result of the specified AI/ML operation, wherein the device-internal control interface comprises an AT command interface, and wherein data associated with the specified AI/ML operation is exchanged between the application processor and the modem via a shared memory of the terminal device. Claim(s) 22,32 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20120159218 A1, Vangala, 2010-12-16 in view of US 20200042240 A1, Therene, 2019-01-31, US 20170339038 A1, Everett, 2016-05-23 and CN 114650562 A, Wang, 2022-06-21, as well as in further view of WO 2023087696 A1, Chen, 2023-05-25. The following claim inherits from claim 21 and therefore inherits its rejection. Vangala does not teach the following. 22. (New) The apparatus of claim 21, wherein the AT command interface is established during a power-on procedure of the apparatus prior to execution of the specified (…) operation. Chen does however. In one or more embodiments, the interface combination configuration command is an AT (Attention) command. In one or more embodiments, the interface combination configuration is read through the boot interface during boot. It should be noted that the startup interface is a function with a read function. In one or more embodiments, the target interface is enabled according to the interface combination configuration during the startup phase of the communication module. Chen provides an AT command interface established at boot (or start up). This would necessarily precede any other operation. It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of this application’s filing to combine this element with the design of Vangala in view of Therene, Everett and Wang as this sequence would ensure subsequent operations are able to run without fault. The following claim corresponds to Claim 22 and therefore inherits its rejection. 32. (New) The method of claim 31, wherein the AT command interface is established during a power- on procedure of the terminal device prior to execution of the specified AI/ML operation. Claim(s) 23,24,33,34 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20120159218 A1, Vangala, 2010-12-16 in view of US 20200042240 A1, Therene, 2019-01-31, US 20170339038 A1, Everett, 2016-05-23 and CN 114650562 A, Wang, 2022-06-21, as well as in further view of WO 2023087696 A1, Chen, 2023-05-25 and US 20220179910 A1, Bharathy, 2021-05-06. The following claim inherits from claim 22 and therefore inherits its rejection. Vangala teaches the following substantially as claimed. 23. (New) The apparatus of claim 22, wherein informing the modem of the AI/ML compute capability comprises transmitting an AT command [0023] The control channel through which the inter-processor communications pass may implement a variety of communication protocols. For example, messaging between the two processors may be based on standard AT commands Vangala does not teach the following. that identifies at least one supported AI/ML model type selected from the group consisting of a convolutional neural network, a recurrent neural network, and a long short-term memory network. Bharathy does however. [0033] The graph query engine 210 may be configured to understand the custom commands and/or parameters added to the graph query 102 that are not part of a standard graph query language (e.g., Apache TinkerPop Gremlin, SPARQL, and the like) and/or are part of a non-standard graph query language and use the custom commands and/or parameters to identify the ML model(s) (e.g., the ML model 116) against which the graph query 102 is to be executed. Bharathy provides a command which identifies an MI/ML model. It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of this application’s filing to combine this element with the design of Vangala in view of Therene, Everett, Wang, and Chen as this would indicate to the modem whether or not the processor has the resources to process any subsequent request. The following claim inherits from claim 23 and therefore inherits its rejection. Vangala teaches the following substantially as claimed. 24. (New) The apparatus of claim 23, wherein the request from the modem to take over the specified AI/ML operation is received as an AT command [0023] The control channel through which the inter-processor communications pass may implement a variety of communication protocols. For example, messaging between the two processors may be based on standard AT commands initiated by the modem [0022] The various aspects enable an applications processor in a multiprocessor environments to prioritize event indications that may be received from a modem processor (or other second processor) based on its power management state Vangala does not explicitly teach the following. and awaiting a response from the application processor. Wang does however. Page 7, Paragraph 3: the application processor 802 sends an optimization result 822 to the modem 804 to instruct how to improve the clogging condition. Wang provides sending a processing result to the modem (a response from the application processor). It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of this application’s filing to combine this element with the design of Vangala in view of Therene, Everett, Wang, Chen, and Bharathy as this would indicate to the modem the status of the request. The following claim corresponds to Claim 23 and therefore inherits its rejection. 33. (New) The method of claim 32, wherein informing the modem of the AI/ML compute capability comprises transmitting an AT command that identifies at least one supported AI/ML model type selected from the group consisting of a convolutional neural network, a recurrent neural network, and a long short-term memory network. The following claim corresponds to Claim 24 and therefore inherits its rejection. 34. (New) The method of claim 33, wherein the request from the modem to take over the specified AI/ML operation is received as an AT command initiated by the modem and awaiting a response from the application processor. Claim(s) 25,26,35,36 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20120159218 A1, Vangala, 2010-12-16 in view of US 20200042240 A1, Therene, 2019-01-31, US 20170339038 A1, Everett, 2016-05-23 and CN 114650562 A, Wang, 2022-06-21, as well as in further view of WO 2023087696 A1, Chen, 2023-05-25, US 20220179910 A1, Bharathy, 2021-05-06 and CN 110536469 A Guo, 2018-05-23. The following claim inherits from claim 24 and therefore inherits its rejection. Vangala teaches the following. 25. (New) The apparatus of claim 24, wherein performing the specified AI/ML operation comprises stored in the shared memory. [0028] An architecture for a multi-processor computing device 100 suitable for use with the various aspects is illustrated in FIG. 1. The multi-processor computing device 100 illustrated in FIG. 1 is a mobile computing device with wireless communications capability. In this architecture, the computing device 100 includes an applications processor 101 that is coupled to memory 102 and to a wireless modem 105 that is coupled to an antenna 104. Vangala does not teach the following. training an AI/ML model using training data Therene does however. [0073] the newly generated metadata is stored with the parameters for the AI model at DRAM 125, which can be used as updated training data to revise the AI model. Therene provides training an AI/ML model using training data. It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of this application’s filing to combine this elementswith the design of Vangala in view of Everett, Wang, Chen, and Bharathy as would allow for balancing the processing of AI/ML specific tasks. Vangala does not teach the following. packaged by the modem Guo does however. Page 7, Paragraph 4: In one possible implementation, the device comprising a processor and modem processor can be used for instructions or operating system, so as to realize the control of the first access point function, modem may package the data according to protocol, encoding and decoding, modulation and demodulation, equalization and so on to generate a radio frame, executing the corresponding function in the second aspect or the fourth aspect of the method to support a first access point AP. Guo provides data being packaged by a modem. It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of this application’s filing to combine these elements with the design of Vangala in view of Therene, Everett, Wang, Chen, and Bharathy as would allow for conserving resources at the application end. The following claim inherits from claim 25 and therefore inherits its rejection. Vangala teaches the following. 26. (New) The apparatus of claim 25, wherein the availability of the AI/ML compute capability at the application processor is determined based on at least one of an idle state of the application processor or a charging state of the apparatus. [0059] In method 900 in block 902, the first processor may register with the second processor a plurality of indication filtering criteria sets (e.g., a plurality of indication sets to be blocked or transmitted), with each of the plurality of indication filtering criteria sets configured for or associated with a different one of the plurality of power states of the first processor. During operation, the first processor may determine that it should transition to a different one of the plurality of power states in block 903. This determination may be based upon a current operating state or operation, such as an operating state in which the processor is idle and may remain in an idle state long enough to save battery power by transitioning to a lower power state. The following claim corresponds to Claim 25 and therefore inherits its rejection. 35. (New) The method of claim 34, wherein performing the specified AI/ML operation comprises training an AI/ML model using training data packaged by the modem and stored in the shared memory. The following claim corresponds to Claim 26 and therefore inherits its rejection. 36. (New) The method of claim 35, wherein the availability of the AI/ML compute capability at the application processor is determined based on at least one of an idle state of the application processor or a charging state of the terminal device. Claim(s) 27,28,37,38 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20120159218 A1, Vangala, 2010-12-16 in view of US 20200042240 A1, Therene, 2019-01-31, US 20170339038 A1, Everett, 2016-05-23 and CN 114650562 A, Wang, 2022-06-21, as well as in further view of WO 2023087696 A1, Chen, 2023-05-25, US 20220179910 A1, Bharathy, 2021-05-06 , CN 110536469 A Guo, 2018-05-23 and 20220345171 A1, Sicher, 2021-04-23 The following claim inherits from claim 26 and therefore inherits its rejection. Vangala teaches the following 27. (New) The apparatus of claim 26, wherein providing the result of the specified AI/ML operation comprises via an AT command. [0023] The control channel through which the inter-processor communications pass may implement a variety of communication protocols. For example, messaging between the two processors may be based on standard AT commands Vangala does not teach the following. transmitting an updated AI/ML model or model parameters to the modem Sicher does however. [0029] modem 114 may be configured to receive updated trained thermal AI/ML models Sicher provides a modem receiving updated/ AI/ML models. It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of this application’s filing to combine this elements with the design of Vangala in view of Therene, Everett, Wang, Chen, and Bharathy, and Gao as would allow for balancing the processing of AI/ML specific tasks. The following claim inherits from claim 27 and therefore inherits its rejection. Vangala teaches the following 28. (New) The apparatus of claim 27, wherein the application processor is configured to suspend or abort the specified (…) operation in response to detecting that the (…) compute capability of the application processor becomes unavailable due to a higher- priority operation. [0022] The various aspects enable an applications processor in a multiprocessor environments to prioritize event indications that may be received from a modem processor (or other second processor) based on its power management state. This enables an applications processor in a low power state to avoid having to receiver/process low priority notifications or event notifications that are irrelevant to the processor's current power state. This capability enables the applications processor to remain in a low power state to conserve power resources, while receiving and processing any high priority event notifications. The following claim corresponds to Claim 27 and therefore inherits its rejection. 37. (New) The method of claim 36, wherein providing the result of the specified AI/ML operation comprises transmitting an updated AI/ML model or model parameters to the modem via an AT command. The following claim corresponds to Claim 28 and therefore inherits its rejection. 38. (New) The method of claim 37, wherein the application processor is configured to suspend or abort the specified AI/ML operation in response to detecting that the AI/ML compute capability of the application processor becomes unavailable due to a higher-priority operation. Claim(s) 29 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20120159218 A1, Vangala, 2010-12-16 in view of US 20200042240 A1, Therene, 2019-01-31, US 20170339038 A1, Everett, 2016-05-23 and CN 114650562 A, Wang, 2022-06-21, as well as in further view of WO 2023087696 A1, Chen, 2023-05-25, US 20220179910 A1, Bharathy, 2021-05-06 , CN 110536469 A Guo, 2018-05-23, 20220345171 A1, Sicher, 2021-04-23 and 20240056523 A1, Hsu, 2023-07-13. The following claim inherits from claim 28 and therefore inherits its rejection. Vangala teaches the following, 29. (New) The apparatus of claim 28, into a local control or management workflow workflow executed by the modem [0019] In most wireless mobile computing devices the wireless receiver modem processor (referred to generally as “modem” herein) communicates frequently with the computing device's applications processor to provide low and high priority notifications. [0022] The various aspects enable an applications processor in a multiprocessor environments to prioritize event indications that may be received from a modem processor Here, the modem’s low and high priority notifications, used to manage the processes prioritized by the application processor, correspond to a management workflow. Vangala does not teach the following. wherein the modem integrates the updated AI/ML model Hsu does however. [0017] In an embodiment of this invention, antennas impedance measurement can be utilized to detect the subtle change of antenna impedance. The embodiment integrates an application processor (AP), a sensor, and modem information with machine learning technique to recognize the antenna blockage scenarios of an electronic device. Hsu provides an integration of an updated AI model. It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of this application’s filing to combine these elements with the design of Vangala in view of Therene, Everett, Wang, Chen, Bharathy, Guo and Sicher as this would provide the modem with a record of all changes in state to a model in an AI/ML context. Vangala does not teach the following. after receipt of the result. Wang does however. Page 7, Paragraph 3: the application processor 802 sends an optimization result 822 to the modem 804 to instruct how to improve the clogging condition. Wang provides sending a processing result to the modem (a receipt of the result). It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of this application’s filing to combine these elements with the design of Vangala in view of Therene, Everett, Wang, Chen, Bharathy, Gao, and Sicher as this would ensure processing is completed in advance of any updates to a AI/Ml state record. The following claim corresponds to Claim 29 and therefore inherits its rejection. 39. (New) The method of claim 38, wherein the modem integrates the updated AI/ML model into a local control or management workflow executed by the modem after receipt of the result. Claim(s) 30,40 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20120159218 A1, Vangala, 2010-12-16 in view of US 20200042240 A1, Therene, 2019-01-31, US 20170339038 A1, Everett, 2016-05-23 and CN 114650562 A, Wang, 2022-06-21, as well as in further view of WO 2023087696 A1, Chen, 2023-05-25, US 20220179910 A1, Bharathy, 2021-05-06 , CN 110536469 A Guo, 2018-05-23, 20220345171 A1, Sicher, 2021-04-23, 20240056523 A1, Hsu, 2023-07-13 and WO 2022037541 A1, Qiu 2022-02-24. The following claim inherits from claim 29 and therefore inherits its rejection. Vangala does not teach the following 30. (New) The apparatus of claim 29, wherein the informing, receiving, performing, and providing are performed without involvement of a wireless network node external to the apparatus. Qiu does however. Page 3, Paragraph 9: The embodiment of the present application introduces an occlusion mode, and the predicted occlusion mode of the first sample face image and the target occlusion mode corresponding to the first sample face image are determined according to the first occlusion indication information generated in the face recognition process. For comparison, the image processing model can be trained to determine more accurate first occlusion indication information, and then face recognition is performed based on the accurate first occlusion indication information, and the obtained recognition result is more accurate, and the image processing model can be more accurate. Accurately process occluded face images, that is, the robustness of the image processing model is better. In other words, the image processing model can directly process the face image of the first sample to obtain the recognition result, and can perform image processing end-to-end without the aid of an external network, thus significantly reducing the amount of calculation and improving the running speed of the device. It can also effectively reduce the number of models, and since the accuracy of image processing by the image processing model is not affected by external network factors, the accuracy is significantly improved Qiu provides an AI/Ml apparatus performing processing independently of an external network. Such processing in the context of AI/ML training necessarily informing, receiving, performing, and providing. It would have been obvious to one skilled in the art at the time of this application’s filing to combine the element with the design of Vangala in view of Therene, Everett, Wang, Chen, Bharathy, Gao, Sicher, and Hsu as this could improve processing speeds by eliminating transmission delays. The following claim corresponds to Claim 30 and therefore inherits its rejection. 40. (New) The method of claim 39, wherein the informing, receiving, performing, and providing are performed without involvement of a wireless network node external to the terminal device. Conclusion Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Luke Absher whose telephone number is (571) 270-1057. The examiner can normally be reached M-F: 8:00 am - 4:00 pm. 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 US PTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http:/ /www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, Kevin Young can be reached at 571-270-3180. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300. Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https:/ /patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https:/ /www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786 9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000. /LUCAS DONALD ABSHER/ Examiner, Art Unit 2194 /KEVIN L YOUNG/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2194
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Prosecution Timeline

May 14, 2024
Application Filed
Jan 15, 2026
Response after Non-Final Action
Aug 24, 2026
Non-Final Rejection mailed — §103 (current)

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