Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
2. This communication is in response to the restriction requirement(s) to Application No. 18/711,714 filed on 6/25/26. Claims 1, 4 – 13 has been examined.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
3. 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.
4. Regarding claim 11, The claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because Claim 11 is drawn to a “computer readable carrier medium” comprising instructions. The specification only gives non-limited examples for the meaning of this term (or open-ended explanation of the term). Thus, applying the broadest reasonable interpretation in light of the specification and taking into account the meaning of the words in their ordinary usage as they would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art, the claim as a whole covers a transitory signal, which does not fall within the definition of a process, a machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
5. 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.
6. 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. Claim(s) 1, 4, 6 – 13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over ZHONG GANG ET AL: ("Characterizing Passenger Flow for a
Transportation Hub Based on Mobile Phone Data", IEEE TRANSACTIONS
ON INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS, IEEE, PISCATAWAY,
NJ, USA, vol. 18, no. 6, 1 June 2017 (2017-06-01), pages 1507-1518, Zhong hereafter) in further view of ("3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Services and System Aspects; Telecommunication management; Study on scenarios for Intent driven management services for mobile networks (Release 17)", 3GPP TR 28.812, vol. SA WG5, no. V17.1.0 16 December 2020 (2020-12-16), pages 1-45, 3GPP hereafter).
Regarding claim 1, Zhong teaches A computer-implemented method of configuring a first access point in a wireless telecommunications network, the first access point being one of a first plurality of access points in the wireless telecommunications network, the method comprising:
obtaining time-series performance data for each access point of the first plurality of access points (As illustrated before, each base station has three groups of time series respectively representing the numbers oftotal users, halt users and new users over a day, page 1509; An assumption is proposed in this paper that base stations inside the physical boundary and within 50 meters outside the physical boundary are all confirmed to be in the hubcommunication area. And these base stations compose 'the confirmed base stations set'. There are 136 base stations in this set (shown in Fig.2 (a)), page 1509);
determining a similarity value between the time-series performance data of each access point of the first plurality of access points and the time-series performance data of each other access point of the first plurality of access points using a dynamic time warping technique (Dynamic time warping distance (DTW) [19] is used to measure the difference between the time series of two base stations in this paper, which is called the temporal distance (TD) between them, page 1509);
based on the determined similarity values, identifying a first plurality of clusters of the first plurality of access points (C. Grouping the Confirmed Base Stations We have analyzed the differences between base stations in different districts, utilizing the time series of the confirmed base stations set as references. With these references, the confirmed base stations are expressed by the temporal distances between the base stations and the whole set.
Base Station i = (T_TD;,H_TD;,N_TD;) (1)
Where J'_"J'D;, H_"JV;, N_"JV; are the three categories of temporal distances between base station i and the confirmed base stations set, page 1511). However, does not specifically teach and/or disclose identifying a configuration for the first access point based on an association of the first access point with a first cluster of the first plurality of clusters; and causing the first access point to implement the identified configuration.
In the same field of Endeavor, 3GPP teaches identifying a configuration for the first access point based on an association of the first access point with a first cluster of the first plurality of clusters (section 5.3.9, 6.3.2, 6.4.5 and 6.4.9; specifically RAN cluster); and
causing the first access point to implement the identified configuration (section 6.4.5.2).
It would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skilled in the art at the time of the filing to combine the teachings of 3GPP’s configuration of clusters of network and implementing identified configuration with the system of Zhong. One would be motivated to combine these teachings because it will provide accurate intent driven network deployment.
Regarding claim 4, Zhong with 3GPP teaches The computer-implemented method as claimed in Claim 1, 3GPP further teaches wherein the configuration is determined using a machine learning method using the association of the first access point with the first cluster of the first plurality of clusters as an input, wherein the machine learning method is trained on a dataset identifying historical performance data for each cluster of the first plurality of clusters (section 6.4.5.2; plurality of cluster configuration, machine learning, 4.2.2.3).
Regarding claim 6, Zhong with 3GPP teaches The computer-implemented method as claimed in Claim 1, Zhong further teaches wherein the time-series performance data includes one or more of a measure of connected users or a measure of resource usage (As illustrated before, each base station has three groups of time series respectively representing the numbers of total users, halt users and new users over a day, page 1509).
Regarding claim 7, The computer-implemented method as claimed in Claim 1, wherein the time-series performance data includes a plurality of performance metrics (As illustrated before, each base station has three groups of time series respectively representing the numbers oftotal users, halt users and new users over a day, page 1509; An assumption is proposed in this paper that base stations inside the physical boundary and within 50 meters outside the physical boundary are all confirmed to be in the hubcommunication area. And these base stations compose 'the confirmed base stations set'. There are 136 base stations in this set (shown in Fig.2 (a)), page 1509), and the dynamic time warping technique is a multivariate dynamic time warping technique (Dynamic time warping distance I DTW1 l 19] is used to measure the difference between the time series of two base stations, page 1509).
Regarding claim 8, Zhong with 3GPP teaches The computer-implemented method as claimed in Claim 1, Zhong further teaches wherein the identified configuration is one or more of: a capacity of the first access point (capacity of each base station, page 159), a handover parameter of the first access point, or an energy saving mode of the first access point.
Regarding claim 9, Zhong with 3GPP teaches The computer-implemented method as claimed in Claim 1, Zhong further teaches wherein the wireless telecommunications network is a cellular telecommunications network (cellular service, page 1508).
Regarding claim 10, The computer-implemented method as claimed in Claim 9, Zhong further teaches wherein the first access point is a first sector of a base station (The results illustrate that Group 1 contains 73 base stations, Group 2 contains 47 base stations, and Group3 contains 16 base stations. The percentage of unique users in each group is respectively 58.8%, 63.2%, 10.2% compared to that of the whole set, and the total percentage is over 100% because a
unique user in the whole set may appear in different groups, page 1511).
Regarding claim 11, A computer program comprising instructions which, when the program is executed by a computer, cause the computer to carry out the method of Claim 1 (3GPP teaches computer code or Zhong’s operating system 4.2.2.3).
Regarding claim 12, A computer readable carrier medium comprising the computer program of Claim 11 (3GPP computer code, memory or Zhang’s operating system 4.2.2.3).
Regarding claim 13, A data processing apparatus comprising a processor adapted to perform the method of Claim 1 (processor, 4.2.2.3).
Allowable Subject Matter
8. Claim 5 is objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
9. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TANMAY K SHAH whose telephone number is (571)270-3624. The examiner can normally be reached Mon - Fri - 8:00 - 5:00.
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, Chieh Fan can be reached at 571-272-3042. 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.
TANMAY K. SHAH
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2632
/TANMAY K SHAH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2632
Prosecution Insights