DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . This action is in response to the communication filed on 6/27/2024. Claims 1-20 are pending.
Examiner Note
The examiner is here to serve, to assist, and to help applicant to the very best of his ability. The Primary Patent Examiner position is a position of serving and it is an honor to externally serve the applicant and attorney and to internally serve junior examiners and supervisors. The goal of the examiner is to work with and assist applicant to move cases along as efficiently as possible.
Applicant is encouraged to call examiner to schedule an interview if applicant has any questions about this action, wants to discuss any possible paths forward, has proposed amendments to the claims to run by the examiner, or for any other issues that applicant would like to discuss.
Examiner can normally be reached at (571) 270-3863 or michael.keller@uspto.gov, Monday-Friday, from about 6 AM - 10 PM EST and if your call is missed examiner will try to return call quickly, thank you.
Priority
This application is effectively filed 6/27/2024. The assignee of record is DISH Wireless L.L.C. The listed inventor(s) is/are: Sohi, Gurpreet; Patel, Sagar; Goswami, Sundeep; Chenumolu, Siddhartha.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) (IDS) submitted on 7/14/2026 is/are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the IDS(s) is/are being considered by the examiner.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-8, 11-16, & 19-20 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 provided that all other rejections under 35 USC 101/112 (if any) are obviated upon upcoming amendments/arguments without raising new issues that necessitate further consideration/search.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1-2, 9-10, & 17-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Singh et al. (US 20240340216 A1, filed 4/4/2023; hereinafter Sin) in view of Tapia (WO 2017214271 A1, published 12/14/2017; hereinafter Tap).
For Claim 1, Sin teaches a method (Sin ¶ 0018 systems, methods, and/or computer program products) comprising:
receiving an indication of a test failure associated with a test of a wireless communication system (Sin event 114C from Fig. 1.
Sin ¶ 0042 … In an example implementation of an embodiment of the concepts and technologies disclosed herein, however, an error, fault, or failure may occur between the gNB and the user equipment 118 during the communication. As a result of the error, fault, or failure, the gNB (e.g., the network device 116C shown in FIG. 1) may be configured to generate a CTR/PCMD event 114C….
Please see screenshot of Sin Fig. 1 below, thank you:
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storing one or more packet capture files associated with the test failure (Sin ¶ 0027-0029 teaches event-based analytics tool storing event data, please see the paragraphs below, thank you:
[0027] The following detailed description is directed to event-based analytics tool for networks. A network can host and/or can include an event-based analytics tool. In some embodiments, the event-based analytics tool can be hosted and/or executed by an application server, a server computer, and/or other computing resources that can operate on and/or in communication with the network. In various embodiments of the concepts and technologies disclosed herein, the network also can include a data lake. The data lake can include data storage resources and compute resources that can configured to obtain, from one or more network devices and via a bus, one or more events that can be associated with the one or more network devices of the network, to analyze the one or more events, to generate, based on the one or more events, correlated event data, and to store in a temporary or persistent data storage device or functionality, the correlated event data. In some embodiments, the data lake can publish or release the correlated event data to the event-based analytics tool instead of, or in addition to, storing the correlated event data.
[0028] The event-based analytics tool can be configured to obtain (e.g., by being provided with, by requesting and obtaining in response, and/or by pulling or obtaining via an API or the like), the correlated event data. In some embodiments, the correlated event data can include a table of data such as an EBM table, which can have one or more links for accessing other data. In particular, the event-based analytics tool can be configured to obtain (e.g., by using a link in the EBM table) one or more instances of PCAP data from a troubleshooting device such as an NGXP server, and/or one or more logs or log entries (or other data structures) from a searchable log database such as an ELK stack or the like. The event-based analytics tool can be configured to obtain the PCAP data and the logs via one or more APIs, in some embodiments. It should be understood that this example is illustrative, and therefore should not be construed as being limiting in any way.
[0029] The event-based analytics tool can be configured to analyze the correlated event data, the PCAP data, and the logs to generate one or more signatures and/or other prediction models for particular faults, errors, or the like. The signatures can define, for particular errors or faults, known or expected or predicted causes. The signatures also can define one or more events that are known or expected or predicted to be captured by the data lake when a particular error or fault occurs on the network and/or in a device or other entity associated with the network. Thus, it can be appreciated that the event-based analytics tool can determine, based on some event detected in the future (e.g., after the signatures are generated), a known, predicted, or probable error, fault, or the like; a predicted and/or probable root cause; and/or possible remediation actions or triggers that can or should be taken to remediate the root cause(s). The signatures can be stored by the event-based analytics tool at a local data storage device (e.g., the server computer) and/or at one or more remote data storage devices.);
performing, by a machine learning model, a root cause analysis of the test failure using the one or more packet capture files (Sin ¶ 0049 the event-based analytics tool 106 can be configured to apply one or more machine learning algorithms, artificial intelligence, or the like to the correlated event data 108, the PCAP data 122, and the logs 126 to create the signatures 120. The event-based analytics tool 106 also can be configured to use the signatures 120 to determine, based on a future event 114, PCAP data 122, log 126, correlated event data 108, and/or a combination thereof, a probable or possible root cause associated with the event 114 (e.g., the cause of the events 114 as indicated by the signatures 120).);
Sin does not explicitly teach determining a configuration update for the wireless communication system based on a result of the root cause analysis; and generating an output that indicates the configuration update.
However, Tap teaches determining a configuration update for the wireless communication system based on a result of the root cause analysis (Tap ¶ 0055 analyze the performance data using a trained machine learning model to determine a root cause for the issue affecting the one or more user devices.
Tap ¶ 0058 The auto fix module 214 can be operatively connected to a solutions database to retrieve a solution therefrom and can provide a suggestion for resolving each quality of service issue using a machine learning model
Tap ¶ 0071-0072 the “course of action” and “network fix” solutions of Tap are interpreted to be equivalent to the claimed configuration update.
Please see screenshot of Tap Fig. 4 below, thank you:
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Examiner notes that clarifications to the claimed “configuration update” may be one possible way to overcome the current rejection.
If applicant has any follow-up questions applicant encouraged to reach out to examiner at 571 270 3863 or michael.keller@uspto.gov, examiner will be happy to help applicant work to move the case forward and provide any clarifying interpretations or answer any questions- thank you); and
generating an output that indicates the configuration update (Tap ¶ 0072 The courses of action may be presented by the network fix application 118 to a user via an application user interface. The information on the root cause and/or the solution to the root cause may be visualized with reference to specific subscribers, specific user devices, specific geolocations, specific geographical areas, specific network cells, and/or so forth. As indicated in block 407, the courses of action or the network fix for each node associated with a problem is implemented in an order of priority based on the network fix prioritization. The remediation action may also include sending another alert message to a network engineer.).
Tap and Sin are analogous art because they are both related to root cause anaylsis.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to use the resolution techniques of Tap with the system of Sin to improve the quality of service provided to the subscribers (Tap ¶ 0071).
For Claim 2, Sin-Tap teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising: training a plurality of machine learning models using the one or more packet capture files (Tap ¶ 0049-0053); and storing a plurality of training results, associated with training the plurality of machine learning models, in a machine learning model database (Tap Fig. 1, ¶ 0018-0019, 0039-0040).
For Claim(s) 9 & 17, the claim(s) is/are substantially similar to claim 1 and therefore is/are rejected for the same reasoning set forth above.
For Claim(s) 10 & 18, the claim(s) is/are substantially similar to claim 2 and therefore is/are rejected for the same reasoning set forth above.
Citation of Pertinent Prior Art
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure is listed below, thank you:
i. US 20250362990 A1
Please see PTO-892 for additional listing of relevant prior art made of record but not relied upon, thank you.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning communications from the examiner should be directed to Michael Keller at (571)270-3863 or michael.keller@uspto.gov. If attempts to reach the examiner are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Moo Jeong can be reached on 571-272-9617.
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/MICHAEL A KELLER/
Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2418
Prosecution Insights