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 .
Claims 1-15 are pending.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The IDS statements filed to date have been considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
In claim 13, the limitation “the AI configuration information” lacks an antecedent basis.
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.
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, 3-4, 6, 8-9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumar, US 2022/0272597, (“Kumar”), in view of Lee et al., US 2022/0368570, (“Lee”).
Independent Claims
Regarding claim 1, Kumar teaches “A communication method, comprising:
receiving, by a terminal device, first configuration information from a source network device, wherein the first configuration information indicates configuration information of a target network device (Fig. 3, step 3, paragraph no. 0064, “In a second action, the source gNB may perform a target handover preparation … In a third action, the source gNB may transmit, to the UE, a radio resource control (RRC) reconfiguration message that indicates conditional handover execution conditions, and a conditional handover target cells configuration, which may indicate the first conditional target gNB and the second conditional target gNB”);
receiving, by the terminal device, a first message from the source network device, wherein the first message indicates to hand over the terminal device to the target network device (Fig. 3, step 3; paragraph no. 0064, “In a second action, the source gNB may perform a target handover preparation. The source gNB may perform the target handover preparation with multiple conditional target gNBs, such as the first conditional target gNB and the second conditional target gNB. In a third action, the source gNB may transmit, to the UE, a radio resource control (RRC) reconfiguration message that indicates conditional handover execution conditions, and a conditional handover target cells configuration, which may indicate the first conditional target gNB and the second conditional target gNB”); and
sending, by the terminal device, a second message to the target network device, wherein the second message is used for handing over the terminal device to the target network device” (Fig. 3, step 5; paragraph no. 0065, “In a fifth action, the UE may connect to the first conditional target gNB, which may involve performing a synchronization and a random access channel (RACH) procedure with the first conditional target gNB. In a sixth action, the UE may transmit an RRC reconfiguration complete message to the first conditional target gNB”).
While Kumar teaches receiving by a terminal device from a source base station/gNB, configuration information of a first conditional target gNB, it does not teach that the configuration information is a “AI configuration information” as required by claim 1.
Lee teaches that a UE receives, as part of a handover operation, a pre-trained NN model from a target gNB, see paragraph no. 0090. The pre-trained NN model effectively serves as an AI configuration information of the target gNB. Hence, Lee remedies the deficiencies of Kumar.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Kumar by incorporating the teachings of Lee to facilitate the handover operation from the source base station to the target base station via the use of a NN/AI model configuration, by the UE, of the target base station.
Regarding independent claim 6, this independent claim is a corresponding apparatus (i.e. UE) claim of the method claim 1 and recites similar subject matter. As such, the rationale behind the above rejection of claim 1 applies with equal force to this independent claim and as further amplified below to highlight the minor differences between the claims.
Regarding further independent claim 6, see Fig. 2, UE 120 for the claimed structural elements of the claim.
Dependent Claims
Regarding claims 3 and 8, Kumar does not teach but Lee teaches “wherein the Al configuration information comprises at least one of the following items: a neural network structure, a parameter value, a data set size, an optimizer, a learning rate, or a quantity of iterations” (the “parameter value” alternative limitation is taught in paragraph no. 0053, “the forwarded information relating to the pre-trained NN model, such as the pre-trained NN model (e.g., weights and/or NN model configuration information”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Kumar and Lee by incorporating the teachings of Lee to facilitate the use of the AI/NN model by the terminal by receiving certain parameters, such as weights to be used, to operate the AI/NN model at the terminal.
Regarding claims 4 and 9, Kumar teaches “wherein before the receiving, by the terminal device, a first message from the source network device, the method further comprises:
sending, by the terminal device, first information to the source network device (Fig. 3, step 1, Measurement report is sent by the UE).
Kumar does not teach but Lee teaches “wherein the first information comprises at least one of Al quality of service requirement information of the terminal device, Al performance information of the source network device, Al performance information of the target network device, AI capability information of the terminal device, or a verification data set of the terminal device” (the “AI capability information of the terminal device” alternative is taught by Lee, see paragraph no. 0090, “Optionally UE may also signal support for NN model training as part of UE capabilities signaling to the network”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Kumar and Lee by incorporating the teachings of Lee to enable the UE to transmit its AI/NN model capabilities to the network, thereby facilitating the use of the proper AI/NN model by the UE and the network.
Claim(s) 2 and 7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumar and Lee as applied to claims 1, 6 above, and further in view of Pantelidou et al., US 2023/0297882, (“Pantelidou”).
Regarding claims 2 and 7, Kumar does not teach but Lee teaches “wherein the Al configuration information of the target network device is preconfigured Al configuration information” (see paragraph no. 0090 which discloses a pre-trained NN model).
Kumar does not teach but Pantelidou teaches “the first configuration information indicates to activate the preconfigured Al configuration information” (paragraph no. 0106).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Kumar and Lee by incorporating the teachings of Lee and Pantelidou to facilitate the use of the AI/NN model by the terminal, via the receipt of an activation message from the network.
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.
Claim(s) 11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Kumar, US 2022/0272597, (“Kumar”).
Regarding claim 11, Kumar teaches “A communication apparatus (Fig. 2, UE 120; Fig. 3, UE 300), comprising at least one processor, and one or more memories coupled to the at least one processor and storing programming instructions for execution by the at least one processor to perform operations comprising:
receiving a first message from a source network device, wherein the first message indicates to hand over the communication apparatus to a target network device (Fig. 3, step 3; paragraph no. 0064, “In a second action, the source gNB may perform a target handover preparation. The source gNB may perform the target handover preparation with multiple conditional target gNBs, such as the first conditional target gNB and the second conditional target gNB. In a third action, the source gNB may transmit, to the UE, a radio resource control (RRC) reconfiguration message that indicates conditional handover execution conditions, and a conditional handover target cells configuration, which may indicate the first conditional target gNB and the second conditional target gNB”); and
sending a second message to the target network device, wherein the second message is used for handover to the target network device” (Fig. 3, step 5; paragraph no. 0065, “In a fifth action, the UE may connect to the first conditional target gNB, which may involve performing a synchronization and a random access channel (RACH) procedure with the first conditional target gNB. In a sixth action, the UE may transmit an RRC reconfiguration complete message to the first conditional target gNB”).
Claim(s) 12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumar in view of Bega et al., US 2024/0046148, (“Bega”).
Regarding claim 12, Kumar does not teach but Bega teaches “wherein Al configuration information of the source network device is preconfigured Al configuration information” (paragraph no. 0004, “Then, the 5GS distributes the trained AI/ML inference model to each UE”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Kumar by incorporating the teachings of Bega to proactively trigger a handover based on the output of the AI/ML inference model, as suggested by Bega in paragraph no. 0004.
Claim(s) 13-14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumar in view of Lee.
Regarding claim 13, Kumar does not teach but Lee teaches “wherein the Al configuration information comprises at least one of the following items: a neural network structure, a parameter value, a data set size, an optimizer, a learning rate, or a quantity of iterations” (the “parameter value” alternative limitation is taught in paragraph no. 0053, “the forwarded information relating to the pre-trained NN model, such as the pre-trained NN model (e.g., weights and/or NN model configuration information”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Kumar by incorporating the teachings of Lee to facilitate the use of the AI/NN model by the terminal by receiving certain parameters, such as weights to be used, to operate the AI/NN model at the terminal.
Regarding claim 14, Kumar teaches “before the receiving a first message from a source network device, sending first information to the source network device (Fig. 3, step 1, Measurement report is sent by the UE).
Kumar does not teach but Lee teaches “wherein the first information comprises at least one of Al quality of service requirement information of the communication apparatus, Al performance information of the source network device, Al performance information of the target network device, AI capability information of the communication apparatus, or a verification data set of the communication apparatus” (the “AI capability information of the communication apparatus” alternative is taught by Lee, see paragraph no. 0090, “Optionally UE may also signal support for NN model training as part of UE capabilities signaling to the network”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Kumar by incorporating the teachings of Lee to enable the UE to transmit its AI/NN model capabilities to the network, thereby facilitating the use of the proper AI/NN model by the UE and the network.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5, 10, and 15 are 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.
The prior art of record does not teach or fairly suggest “wherein the Al quality of service requirement information of the terminal device comprises at least one of the following items: Al computing amount information, inference precision information, or inference latency information” within the claimed context of “sending, by the terminal device, first information to the source network device” (see, e.g., claim 4 from which claim 5 depends).
Conclusion
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/WON TAE C KIM/Examiner, Art Unit 2414
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