DETAILED ACTION
1. This action is responsive to the communications filed on 03/29/2026.
2. Claims 1-13, 16-22, are pending in this application.
3. Claims 1, 4, 7-12, 16, 18, 19, have been amended.
4. Claims 14, 15, have been cancelled.
5. Claims 21-22 are new.
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 .
Response to Arguments
6. Applicant’s argument with respect to claims 1-10, 16-20 have been considered but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection.
Although a new ground of rejection has been used to address additional limitations that have been added to claims 1-10, 16-20, a response is considered necessary for several of applicant's arguments since references Gutt and Kitani will continue to be used to meet several claimed limitations for claim 11.
In the remarks, applicant argued that:
a. Claim 11 has been amended to recite the features of original claim 15, including the features of intervening original claim 14. In particular, amended claim 11 (i.e., original claim 15) recites, among other features, "wherein the network device is a network device that lacks routing functionality and that is coupled between the additional network device and the host."12
In the Office Action, claim 15 was rejected as being allegedly unpatentable over Gutt and Kitani.
In particular, in the rejection reasoning of claim 15 (on page 9 of the Office Action), Gutt's gateway device 110 was suggested to be the "network device" in claim 15 and Gutt's IP device 112 (or 114) appeared to be equated to the "host" in claim 15. However, Gutt's gateway device 110 is NOT "coupled between the additional network device and the host," as claimed. In fact, as shown in FIG. 1 of Gutt, Gutt's gateway 110 does not appear to be coupled between any device and Gutt's IP device 112 (or 114).
Kitani was not relied upon in the rejection reasoning of claim 15 and is therefore irrelevant to these features deficient from Gutt. Accordingly, Gutt and Kitani, as applied in the rejection reasoning, fail to show or suggest at least all of the features of amended claim 11 (i.e., original claim 15).
In view of foregoing, Applicant respectfully requests that the rejection to claim 11 (i.e., to original claim 15) be withdrawn. Claim 11 is therefore patentable. Claims 12 and 13 depend from claim 11 and are patentable at least because claim 11 is patentable (Applicant’s remarks, pages 12-13).
In response: The examiner respectfully disagrees. Applicant’s specification’s only mention of this limitation is:
[0017] As shown in FIG. 1, network devices of network 8 may include different sets of network devices such as a set of access network devices 10-1 and an additional set of network devices 10-2 upstream from network devices 10-1 and coupled to network devices 10-1 via corresponding wired connections (e.g., cables). End hosts such as end hosts 14 (e.g., hosts 14-1, 14-2, etc.) may be coupled to network devices 10-2 via intervening network devices 10-1 and may be coupled to network portion 8A (e.g., the Internet) via network devices 10-1 and 10-2. There may be additional intervening network device(s) between hosts 14 and network devices 10-1, between network devices 10-1 and network devices 10-2, and/or between network devices 10-2 and network portion 8A.
The examiner is therefore defining ‘coupled between’ with broadest reasonable interpretation. Gutt explicitly positions the gateway device 110 between the hosts and another network device. Gutt discloses that in figure 1, an embodiment that shows the IP devices 112, 114 at a location coupled to router 108 and that gateway device 110 is coupled to IP devices through router 108 and to at least one server 102 (i.e., additional network device) through router 108 and Internet 104 (Paragraph 9). In Gutt, the gateway device mediates discovery/communication for the local IP devices (Paragraphs 13-15). The IP devices are equated to the claimed host and they communicate with the gateway through the router 108, but the gateway device is still the network element that bridges the local devices to the server side of the system (Paragraphs 33-34, detailing how the system servers send the gateway device the addresses in order to start attempting to determine the IP addresses of the IP devices). Therefore, the gateway device 110 is characterized as being in between the host devices and the external network side (i.e., additional network device)).
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
7. Claims 1, 2, 6, 7, 21, 22, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gutt et al. (US 2007/0286210) in view of Kitani et al. (US 2009/0154461) and Martin et al. (US 6,614,788).
Regarding claim 1, Gutt disclosed:
A method of handling Internet Protocol (IP) information, the method comprising: obtaining, by a network device (Figure 1, gateway 110), an identifier (Figure 2, Ethernet address, step 212) of a host device (Figure 1, IP device A 112) coupled to the network device (Paragraph 10, gateway 110 obtains the Ethernet address, also called a MAC Id, of each device. Paragraph 26, the gateway device queries addresses to check by sending a request. The response includes an Ethernet address of the device for which the IP address has been assigned);
transmitting (Paragraph 26, queries), by the network device and to an external device (Figure 1, router 108), a first message (Paragraph 13, message) for obtaining an IP address (Paragraph 13, IP address) of the host device (Paragraph 13, the gateway sending out a message that asks which Ethernet address is using the IP address of the other device. As shown in Figure 1, the gateway 110 connects to IP devices A/B through router 108, so any messages to the IP devices must go through router 108. Figure 4, step 410, Paragraph 36, one IP device needing its P address determined);
obtaining, by the network device and from the external device, the IP address of the host device based on the transmitted first message (Paragraph 26, if a response is received by the gateway, it includes the IP address and the Ethernet address of the device for which the IP address has been assigned).
While Gutt discloses recording the responses (see paragraph 36), Gutt did not explicitly disclose transmitting, by the network device and to external equipment, a second message containing the IP address of the host device obtained from the external device.
However, in an analogous art, Kitani disclosed transmitting, by the network device and to external equipment, a second message containing the IP address of the host device obtained from the external device (Paragraphs 74-77, the ARP learning module learns ARP information such as the IP addresses and MAC addresses assigned for communication. The ARP information learning module then notifies the manager (i.e., external equipment) of the learned ARP information (i.e., the IP to MAC information) via the network).
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Gutt and Kitani because the references involve ARP, and as such, are within the same environment.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the transmission to external equipment of Kitani with the teachings of Gutt in order to enhance processing capability (Kitani, Paragraph 112).
Gutt and Kitani did not explicitly disclose wherein the first message identifies a target database from which the IP address of the host device is obtained or identifies a target portion of a database from which the IP address of the host device is to be obtained and wherein the target portion is curated for the network device.
However, in an analogous art, Martin disclosed wherein the first message identifies a target database from which the IP address of the host device is to be obtained (Figure 10A, 11, Column 6, Lines 65-67, step 152, an LDAP request message is sent from the combined front end to the directory service for an unused IP address. Column 5, Lines 5-64, the LDAP message can be a searchRequest message which enables a search to be initiated and defines the base object in the directory (i.e., target database) with respect to which the search is to be performed along with which attributes are to be returned. Column 7, Lines 1-5, the LDAP response includes the IP address returned from the directory service to the front end, where it is transmitted to the client) or identifies a target portion of a database from which the IP address of the host device is to be obtained and wherein the target portion is curated for the network device.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Gutt and Kitani with Martin because the references involve determining IP addresses, and as such, are within the same environment.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the identifying a target database of Martin with the teachings of Gutt and Kitani in order to keep the mappings between IP addresses and hostname/username in an easy to access, single location (Martin, Column 8, Lines 3-7).
Regarding claim 2, the limitations of claim 1 have been addressed. Gutt, Kitani, and Martin disclosed:
wherein the first message comprises a command to the external device to reply with the IP address of the host device and wherein the command identifies the identifier of the host device (Gutt, Paragraph 13, asking which Ethernet address is using the IP address of the device. Paragraph 26, the gateway device queries addresses to check by sending a request. Paragraphs 14-15, ARP request asking who is 192.168.0.1? (i.e., command)).
Regarding claim 6, the limitations of claim 1 have been addressed. Gutt, Kitani, and Martin disclosed:
wherein the external equipment comprises a network management server and wherein the second message comprises a network accounting message containing the IP address of the host device as an attribute in the network accounting message (Kitani, Figure 3, Paragraphs 66-67, showing that the manager 200 is a computer that manages the entire network switching system and includes stored ARP information manager, routing information manager, system routing table, and system ARP table (i.e., all showing it is a management server. Paragraphs 74-77, the ARP learning module learns ARP information such as the IP addresses and MAC addresses assigned for communication. The ARP information learning module then notifies the manager of the learned ARP information (i.e., the IP to MAC information) via the network).
For motivation, please refer to claim 1.
Regarding claim 7, the limitations of claim 6 have been addressed. Gutt, Kitani, and Martin disclosed:
wherein the network management server comprises a Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) server (Martin, Figure 9A, 135, Column 6, Lines 28-33, RADIUS front end and directory server 132 forms RADIUS server 135), wherein the network accounting message comprises a RADIUS accounting packet (Martin, Column 7, Lines 1-5, IP address returned from directory service as an accounting message) and wherein the attribute comprises a framed IP address attribute in the RADIUS accounting packet (Martin, Column 5, Lines 38-45, the searchRequest includes indication of attributes that are to be returned and attribute types and/or values).
For motivation, please refer to claim 1.
Regarding claim 21, the limitations of claim 1 have been addressed. Gutt, Kitani, and Martin disclosed:
wherein the first message includes the identifier of the host device and wherein the identifier of the host device is different from the IP address of the host device (Gutt, Paragraph 10, gateway 110 obtains the Ethernet address, also called a MAC Id (i.e., identifier), of each device. Paragraph 26, the gateway device queries addresses to check by sending a request. If a response is received by the gateway, it includes the IP address and the Ethernet address of the device for which the IP address has been assigned).
Regarding claim 22, the limitations of claim 21 have been addressed. Gutt and Kitani disclosed:
wherein the identifier of the host device included in the first message is a Media Access Control (MAC) address of the host device (Gutt, Paragraph 10, gateway 110 obtains the Ethernet address, also called a MAC Id (i.e., identifier), of each device).
8. Claims 3-5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gutt et al. (US 2007/0286210) in view of Kitani et al. (US 2009/0154461), Martin et al. (US 6,614,788), and Huang et al. (US 2022/0104004).
Regarding claim 3, the limitations of claim 1 have been addressed. Gutt, Kitani, and Martin did not explicitly disclose:
wherein the first message comprises a subscription request that subscribes to IP address updates of one or more IP addresses maintained at the external device.
However, in an analogous art, Huang disclosed wherein the first message comprises a subscription request that subscribes to IP address updates of one or more IP addresses maintained at the external device (Paragraph 18, the network exposure device enables the server to subscribe to be notified whenever the UE IP address and port assigned to the UE device has changed and been detected. The gateway device sends an updated subscriber ID message if the gateway device changes an IP address allocated to the UE device).
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Gutt, Kitani, and Martin with Huang because the references involve determining IP addresses, and as such, are within the same environment.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the subscription request of Huang with the teachings of Gutt, Kitani, and Martin in order to improve and expand services (Huang, Paragraph 1).
Regarding claim 4, the limitations of claim 3 have been addressed. Gutt, Kitani, Martin, and Huang disclosed:
wherein the IP address updates comprise updates of one or more IP addresses of one or more host devices coupled to the network device, and wherein the one or more IP addresses of the one or more host devices comprise the IP address of the host device (Huang, Paragraph 18, getting updates if the gateway device changes an IP address and/or port allocated to a UE).
For motivation, please refer to claim 3.
Regarding claim 5, the limitations of claim 4 have been addressed. Gutt, Kitani, Martin, and Huang disclosed:
wherein the IP address updates comprise updates of one or more additional IP addresses of one or more additional host devices coupled to an additional network device (Huang, Paragraphs 80, 90, showing multiple devices PGW, UPF and NEF that receive updated IP address information).
For motivation, please refer to claim 3.
9. Claims 8-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gutt et al. (US 2007/0286210) in view of Kitani et al. (US 2009/0154461), Martin et al. (US 6,614,788), and Johnson et al. (US 2017/0041247).
Regarding claim 8, the limitations of claim 1 have been addressed. Gutt, Kitani, and Martin did not explicitly disclose:
wherein the host device is a host device authenticated for network access during an authentication operation and wherein the network device serves as an authenticator for the authentication operation.
However, in an analogous art, Johnson disclosed wherein the host device is a host device authenticated for network access during an authentication operation and wherein the network device serves as an authenticator for the authentication operation (Paragraph 40, first Wi-Fi operator includes an Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting proxy server. Paragraph 44, the UE sends an EAP start message to the AP to initiate authentication using EAP. Paragraph 45, in response to the EAP start message, the AAA server exchanges authentication messages with the AAA proxy server in the WAG that includes RADIUS protocols).
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Gutt, Kitani, and Martin with Johnson because the references involve determining IP addresses, and as such, are within the same environment.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the authentication of Johnson with the teachings of Gutt, Kitani, and Martin in order to allow for transparent and secure authentication (Johnson, Paragraph 78).
Regarding claim 9, the limitations of claim 8 have been addressed. Gutt, Kitani, Martin, and Johnson disclosed:
wherein the network device is a data link layer device that lacks locally stored IP information (Gutt, Paragraph 10, gateway 110 obtains the Ethernet address, also called a MAC Id, of each device. Paragraph 26, the gateway device queries addresses to check by sending a request. The response includes an Ethernet address of the device for which the IP address has been assigned. As the gateway is querying for the MAC/IP pair, it lacks that information).
Regarding claim 10, the limitations of claim 9 have been addressed. Gutt, Kitani, Martin, and Johnson disclosed:
wherein the external device is a network layer device that stores IP information locally on the network layer device (Kitani, Paragraphs 74-77, the ARP learning module learns ARP information such as the IP addresses and MAC addresses assigned for communication. The ARP information learning module then notifies the manager of the learned ARP information (i.e., the IP to MAC information) via the network).
For motivation, please refer to claim 1.
10. Claims 11, 13, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gutt et al. (US 2007/0286210) in view of Kitani et al. (US 2009/0154461).
Regarding claim 11, Gutt disclosed:
A network device comprising: one or more input-output interfaces (Paragraph 82, gateway device including an interface to receive data from different premises management devices);
memory circuitry (Paragraph 94, memory on the gateway); and one or more processors coupled to the memory circuitry (Paragraph 96, processor) and configured to:
obtain, from an external source using one of the one or more input-output interfaces, an Internet Protocol (IP) address of a host connected to the network device (Paragraph 10, gateway 110 obtains the Ethernet address, also called a MAC Id, of each device. Paragraph 26, the gateway device queries addresses to check by sending a request. The response includes an Ethernet address of the device for which the IP address has been assigned. Paragraph 13, the gateway sending out a message that asks which Ethernet address is using the IP address of the other device. As shown in Figure 1, the gateway 110 connects to IP devices A/B through router 108, so any messages to the IP devices must go through router 108. Figure 4, step 410, Paragraph 36, one IP device needing its IP address determined. Paragraph 82, gateway device including an interface to receive data from different premises management devices);
wherein the network device is a network device that lacks routing functionality and that is coupled between an additional network device and the host (Paragraph 10, gateway 110 obtains the Ethernet address, also called a MAC Id, of each device. Paragraph 26, the gateway device queries addresses to check by sending a request. The response includes an Ethernet address of the device for which the IP address has been assigned. As the gateway is querying for the MAC/IP pair, it lacks that information and lacks routing functionality until the information is received).
While Gutt discloses recording the responses (see paragraph 36), Gutt did not explicitly disclose transmit, to one or more network management servers using one of the one or more input-output interfaces, an accounting message containing the IP address of the host obtained from the external source; and wherein the external source comprises an additional network device having routing functionality and configured to store network layer information, including the IP address of the host connected to the network device.
However, in an analogous art, Kitani disclosed transmit, to one or more network management servers using one of the one or more input-output interfaces, an accounting message containing the IP address of the host obtained from the external source (Paragraphs 74-77, the ARP learning module learns ARP information such as the IP addresses and MAC addresses assigned for communication. The ARP information learning module then notifies (i.e., accounting message) the manager (i.e., network management server) of the learned ARP information (i.e., the IP to MAC information) via the network).
wherein the external source comprises an additional network device having routing functionality and configured to store network layer information, including the IP address of the host connected to the network device (Paragraphs 74-77, the ARP learning module learns ARP information such as the IP addresses and MAC addresses assigned for communication. The ARP information learning module then notifies the manager of the learned ARP information (i.e., the IP to MAC information) via the network).
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Gutt and Kitani because the references involve ARP, and as such, are within the same environment.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the accounting message of Kitani with the teachings of Gutt in order to enhance processing capability (Kitani, Paragraph 112).
Regarding claim 13, the limitations of claim 11 have been addressed. Gutt and Kitani disclosed:
wherein the one or more processors are configured to: obtain, from the external source using one of the one or more input-output interfaces, an updated IP address of the host (Gutt, Paragraph 13, the gateway sending out a message that asks which Ethernet address is using the IP address of the other device. As shown in Figure 1, the gateway 110 connects to IP devices A/B through router 108, so any messages to the IP devices must go through router 108. Figure 4, step 410, Paragraph 36, one IP device needing its IP address determined and a process is started that queries by ARP a new IP address in subset and repeating the query (i.e., updates). Paragraph 82, gateway device including an interface to receive data from different premises management devices); and
transmit, to the one or more network management servers using one of the one or more input-output interfaces, an additional accounting message containing the updated IP address of the host obtained from the external source (Kitani, Paragraphs 74-77, the ARP learning module learns ARP information such as the IP addresses and MAC addresses assigned for communication. The ARP information learning module then notifies (i.e., accounting message) the manager (i.e., network management server) of the learned ARP information (i.e., the IP to MAC information) via the network).
For motivation, please refer to claim 11.
11. Claim 12 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gutt et al. (US 2007/0286210) in view of Kitani et al. (US 2009/0154461) and Johnson et al. (US 2017/0041247).
Regarding claim 12, the limitations of claim 11 have been addressed. Gutt and Kitani did not explicitly disclose:
wherein the one or more processors are configured to perform an authentication operation to authenticate the host with the one or more network management servers and wherein the one or more processors are configured to obtain the IP address of the host after the host is authenticated with the one or more network management servers.
However, in an analogous art, Johnson disclosed wherein the one or more processors are configured to perform an authentication operation to authenticate the host with the one or more network management servers and wherein the one or more processors are configured to obtain the IP address of the host after the host is authenticated with the one or more network management servers (Paragraph 40, first Wi-Fi operator includes an Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting proxy server. Paragraph 44, the UE sends an EAP start message to the AP to initiate authentication using EAP. Paragraph 45, in response to the EAP start message, the AAA server exchanges authentication messages with the AAA proxy server in the WAG that includes RADIUS protocols. Paragraphs 46-47, on successful authentication, an EAP success message is sent. The UE is then able to request an IP address).
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Gutt and Kitani with Johnson because the references involve determining IP addresses, and as such, are within the same environment.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the authentication of Johnson with the teachings of Gutt and Kitani in order to allow for transparent and secure authentication (Johnson, Paragraph 78).
12. Claims 16, 17, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gutt et al. (US 2007/0286210) in view of Martin et al. (US 6,614,788).
Regarding claim 16, Gutt disclosed:
A network device that is operable with connected hosts and that lacks locally maintained Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the connected hosts, the network device comprising (Paragraph 10, gateway 110 obtains the Ethernet address, also called a MAC Id, of each device. Paragraph 26, the gateway device queries addresses to check by sending a request. The response includes an Ethernet address of the device for which the IP address has been assigned. As the gateway is querying for the MAC/IP pair, it lacks that information):
one or more input-output interfaces (Paragraph 82, gateway device including an interface to receive data from different premises management devices);
memory circuitry (Paragraph 94, memory on the gateway); and
one or more processors (Paragraph 96, processor) coupled to the memory circuitry and configured to:
receive, from an external Layer 3 network device via one of the one or more input-output interfaces, a message that includes network layer information of a given host of the connected hosts (Paragraph 10, gateway 110 obtains the Ethernet address, also called a MAC Id, of each device. Paragraph 26, the gateway device queries addresses to check by sending a request. The response includes an Ethernet address of the device for which the IP address has been assigned. Paragraph 13, the gateway sending out a message that asks which Ethernet address is using the IP address of the other device. As shown in Figure 1, the gateway 110 connects to IP devices A/B through router 108 (i.e., Layer 3 network device), so any messages to the IP devices must go through router 108. Figure 4, step 410, Paragraph 36, one IP device needing its IP address determined);
use the network layer information of the given host in the received message to perform an operation (Paragraph 78, performing a communication services transaction, Internet transaction, or a transaction between a vendor and vendee).
Gutt did not explicitly disclose remove the network layer information of the given host from local storage on the network device after the network layer information of the given host in the received message is used to perform the operation.
However, in an analogous art, Martin disclosed remove the network layer information of the given host from local storage on the network device after the network layer information of the given host in the received message is used to perform the operation (Column 7, Lines 29-44, Figure 11, the client sends an allocation request to the RADIUS front end and then returns a response which allocates an IP address to a user and sends an accounting message identifying the user and the allocated IP address. An LDAP message is sent to the directory service to create/update an IP address to user allocation record in the directory. On log off (i.e., done performing the operation), an accounting message is sent to the RADIUS front end, which is then sends an LDAP message to the directory service to clear (i.e., remove) the IP address to user allocation record for that user. Figure 10C showing the directory service as part of the RADIUS and DHCP front ends within a directory server 144 (i.e., local)).
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Gutt with Martin because the references involve assigning IP addresses, and as such, are within the same environment.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the removal of the network layer information of Martin with the teachings of Gutt in order to keep the mappings between IP addresses and hostname/username in an easy to access, single location (Martin, Column 8, Lines 3-7).
Regarding claim 17, the limitations of claim 16 have been addressed. Gutt and Martin disclosed:
wherein the one or more processors are configured to transmit, to the external Layer 3 network device using one of the one or more input-output interfaces, a request message containing a command, wherein the received message is responsive to the request message, and wherein the network layer information of the given host is identified based on an execution of the command at the external Layer 3 network device (Gutt, Paragraph 13, asking which Ethernet address is using the IP address of the device. Paragraph 26, the gateway device queries addresses to check by sending a request. Paragraphs 14-15, ARP request asking who is 192.168.0.1? (i.e., command)).
13. Claims 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gutt et al. (US 2007/0286210) in view of Martin et al. (US 6,614,788) and Huang et al. (US 2022/0104004).
Regarding claim 18, the limitations of claim 16 have been addressed. Gutt and Martin did not explicitly disclose:
wherein the one or more processors are configured to transmit, to the external Layer 3 network device using one of the one or more input-output interfaces, a request message containing a subscription request identifying a subscription target, wherein the received message is a reply message responsive to the subscription request, and wherein the subscription target includes the network layer information of the given host.
However, in an analogous art, Huang disclosed wherein the one or more processors are configured to transmit, to the external Layer 3 network device using one of the one or more input -output interfaces, a request message containing a subscription request identifying a subscription target, wherein the received message is a reply message responsive to the subscription request, and wherein the subscription target includes the network layer information of the given host (Paragraph 18, the network exposure device enables the server to subscribe to be notified whenever the UE IP address and port assigned to the UE device has changed and been detected. The gateway device sends an updated subscriber ID message if the gateway device changes an IP address allocated to the UE device).
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Gutt and Martin with Huang because the references involve determining IP addresses, and as such, are within the same environment.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the subscription request of Huang with the teachings of Gutt and Martin in order to improve and expand services (Huang, Paragraph 1).
Regarding claim 19, the limitations of claim 18 have been addressed. Gutt, Martin, and Huang disclosed:
wherein the subscription target identifies curated network layer information for the network device maintained on the external Layer 3 network device (Huang, Paragraph 18, the network exposure device enables the server to subscribe to be notified whenever the UE IP address and port assigned to the UE device has changed (i.e., curated network layer information) and been detected) or identifies a database maintained on the external Layer 3 network device containing network layer information for hosts connected to a plurality of network devices, including the network device.
For motivation, please refer to claim 18.
Regarding claim 20, the limitations of claim 18 have been addressed. Gutt, Martin, and Huang disclosed:
where the reply message is an initial reply message containing an initial state of the network layer information of the given host in the subscription target or is an update reply message containing an updated state of the network layer information of the given host in the subscription target (Huang, Paragraph 18, the network exposure device enables the server to subscribe to be notified whenever the UE IP address and port assigned to the UE device has changed (i.e., updated) and been detected).
For motivation, please refer to claim 18.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Steven C. Nguyen whose telephone number is (571)270-5663. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7AM - 3PM and alternatively, through e-mail at Steven.Nguyen2@USPTO.gov.
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/S.C.N/Examiner, Art Unit 2451
/Chris Parry/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2451
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