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 final office action is prepared in response to amendments and arguments filed by Applicant on April 22, 2026 as a reply to the non-final office action mailed on February 11, 2026.
Claims 1-20, 23-29, 33-34, 37 and 40 have been cancelled.
Claims 41-51 have been added.
Claims 21-22, 30-32, 35-36, 38-39 and 41-51 are pending.
Claims 21-22, 30-32, 35-36, 38-39 and 41-51are rejected.
Response to Arguments
The claim amendments and Applicant’s arguments filed on April 22, 2026 have been carefully considered but deemed unpersuasive in view of Examiner’s updated rejection rationale as set forth in the section “Claim Rejection - 35 USC 102” below.
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).
Claim Objections
Claim 46 is objected to under 37 CFR 1.75 as being a substantial duplicate of claim 30.
When two claims in an application are duplicates or else are so close in content that they both cover the same thing, despite a slight difference in wording, it is proper after allowing one claim to object to the other as being a substantial duplicate of the allowed claim. See MPEP § 608.01(m).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 21-22, 30-32, 35-36, 38-39, 42-48 and 50-51 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being unpatentable over Patel et al. (U.S. 2022/0345984).
Regarding claim 21, Patel disclosed a method, comprising:
obtaining, by a first network device, a first packet (Patel, [0038], “the direct inbound packets may be A-type packets transmitted by the gNodeB 106 to the translation module 208” said direct inbound packets anticipate the “first packet” in the claim and the “translation module 208” anticipates the “first network device” in the claim);
obtaining, by the first network device, a tunnel header based on the first packet (Patel, [0039], “information from the GTP field of an A-type packet may be included in the SRH′ field of the B-type packet obtained from it.” Said “GTP field of an A-type packet” anticipates the “tunnel header” in the claim);
encapsulating, by the first network device, an internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) basic header in the first packet to obtain a second packet, wherein the IPv6 basic header carries the tunnel header (Patel, [0039], “The translation module 208 converts the A-type direct inbound packets to B-type packets” Patel then showed in Fig. 2 that the B-type packet is created by encapsulating the original D packet with an IPv6 header; Patel also disclosed in [0161] that “An IPv6 address is 128 bit. So, in case of GTP4.E (gNodeB address is IPv4), all of the GTP related information can be embedded into a single IPv6 address as follows: SRv6 Locator+gNodeB IPv4 address+QFI+TEID. Where the maximum SRv6 locator length is 56 bits, and the gNodeB address is an IPv4 address of 32 bits, this leaves 8 bits for the QFI and 32 bits for the TED” which means that the GTP tunnel header is embedded in the destination address of the IPv6 basic header); and
sending, by the first network device, the second packet to a second network device (Patel, [0039], “The translation module 208 … transmits the B-type direct inbound packets over the network 210 to the UPF 112 using information included in the outer IP header of the A-type direct inbound packets.”).
Claim 31 lists substantially the same elements as claim 21, in the same method form but from the perspective of a destination device of a packet rather than the source of a packet. Therefore, the rejection rationale for claim 21 applies equally as well to claim 31.
Claim 35 lists substantially the same elements as claim 21, in device form rather than method form. Therefore, the rejection rationale for claim 21 applies equally as well to claim 35.
Claim 38 lists substantially the same elements as claim 21, in device form from the perspective of a destination device of a packet. Neverless the rejection rationale for claim 21 still applied to claim 31.
Regarding claims 22, 32, 36 and 39, Patel disclosed the subject matter according to claims 21, 31, 35 and 38, respectively.
Patel further disclosed wherein the tunnel header comprises a virtual extensible local area network (VXLAN) header, a general packet radio service tunneling protocol (GTP) header, a generic routing encapsulation (GRE) header, an IP-in-IP header, an intra-site automatic tunnel addressing protocol (ISATAP) header, an internet protocol version 4 over internet protocol version 6 (IPv4 over IPv6) header, a network virtualization using generic routing encapsulation (NVGRE) header, a layer 2 tunneling protocol version 3 (L2TPv3), or an MPLS in GRE header (Patel, Figs. 2, 7A-7D, 8 and 9 and Abstract, “The routing module may be programmed to embed GTP information in an SRH header that is used by the first translation module”).
Regarding claims 30, 43, 46 and 51, Patel disclosed the subject matter according to claims 21, 38, 21 and 35 respectively.
Patel further disclosed wherein the tunnel header is carried in a destination address field of the IPv6 basic header (Patel disclosed in [0161] that “An IPv6 address is 128 bit. So, in case of GTP4.E (gNodeB address is IPv4), all of the GTP related information can be embedded into a single IPv6 address as follows: SRv6 Locator+gNodeB IPv4 address+QFI+TEID. Where the maximum SRv6 locator length is 56 bits, and the gNodeB address is an IPv4 address of 32 bits, this leaves 8 bits for the QFI and 32 bits for the TED.” ).
Regarding claim 42, Patel disclosed the network device according to claim 39.
Patel further disclosed wherein the tunnel header comprises the GTP header (Patel, [0161], “all of the GTP related information can be embedded into a single IPv6 address …”)
Regarding claims 43 and 50, Patel disclosed the subject matter according to claims 38 and 31, respectively.
Patel further disclosed wherein the tunnel header is carried in a destination address field of the IPv6 basic header (Patel, [0161], “all of the GTP related information can be embedded into a single IPv6 address”).
Regarding claims 44 and 47, Patel disclosed the subject matter according to claims 43 and 46, respectively.
Patel further disclosed wherein the tunnel header is multiplexed with prefix information or an IPv6 segment routing (SRv6) locator in the destination address field of the IPv6 basic header (Patel, [0161], “An IPv6 address is 128 bit. So, in case of GTP4.E (gNodeB address is IPv4), all of the GTP related information can be embedded into a single IPv6 address as follows: SRv6 Locator+gNodeB IPv4 address+QFI+TEID. Where the maximum SRv6 locator length is 56 bits, and the gNodeB address is an IPv4 address of 32 bits, this leaves 8 bits for the QFI and 32 bits for the TED.”).
Regarding claims 48 and 46, Patel disclosed the subject matter according to claims 45 and 43, respectively.
Patel further disclosed wherein a 65th bit to a 128th bit in the destination address field of the IPv6 basic header carries the tunnel header (Patel, [0161], “An IPv6 address is 128 bit. So, in case of GTP4.E (gNodeB address is IPv4), all of the GTP related information can be embedded into a single IPv6 address as follows: SRv6 Locator+gNodeB IPv4 address+QFI+TEID. Where the maximum SRv6 locator length is 56 bits, and the gNodeB address is an IPv4 address of 32 bits, this leaves 8 bits for the QFI and 32 bits for the TED.”)
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 of this title, 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.
Claims 41 and 49 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as obvious over Patel et al. (U.S. 2022/0345984), in view of Pignataro et al. (U.S. 2017/0250907).
Regarding claims 41 and 49 , Patel disclosed the subject matter according to claims 39 and 22, respectively.
Patel might not have explicitly disclosed that the tunnel header comprises the VXLAN header.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Pignataro disclosed methods and systems that facilitate data plane signaling of a packet as a candidate for capture at various network nodes within an IPv6 network that is used to provide “underlay network services for carrier and transport protocols such as EVPN “Ethernet VPN”, NVO3 “network virtualization overlays”, VxLAN “Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN)”, among others, where L2 frames or L3 packets can be encapsulated with an IPv6 header” (Pignataro, Abstract and [0002, 0044]).
Pignataro’s disclosure would have made it obvious that the tunnel header in Patel could also be the VXLAN header.
One of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention (AIA ), would have been motivated to combine Patel and Pignataro because both references disclosed the needs for routing data packets over iIPv6 network using IPv6 encapsulation and SRv6 technologies (Patel, Title, Abstract and Fig. 1; Pignataro, [0002, 0044]).
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 extension fee 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 SHIRLEY X ZHANG whose telephone number is (571)270-5012. The examiner can normally be reached 8:30am - 5:00pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Joon H Hwang can be reached at 571-272-4036. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/SHIRLEY X ZHANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2447
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