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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 23rd July 2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The filing of a terminal disclaimer by itself is not a complete reply to a nonstatutory double patenting (NSDP) rejection. A complete reply requires that the terminal disclaimer be accompanied by a reply requesting reconsideration of the prior Office action. Even where the NSDP rejection is provisional the reply must be complete. See MPEP § 804, subsection I.B.1. For a reply to a non-final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.111(a). For a reply to final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.113(c). A request for reconsideration while not provided for in 37 CFR 1.113(c) may be filed after final for consideration. See MPEP §§ 706.07(e) and 714.13.
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Claims 1 – 18 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1 – 16 of U.S. Patent No. 12,081,368 B2 (368 patent); 1 – 20 of U.S. Patent No. 11,368,337 B2 (337 patent); claims 1 – 20 of U.S. Patent No. 10,715,354 B2 (354 patent); and, claims 1 – 39 of U.S. Patent No. 11,098,918 B2 (918 patent) (the parent patents). Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because of the following explanations.
The 368 patent independent claim 1 (similarly claim 14) cites:
an electrical load control system comprising: a plurality of system controllers, each communicatively coupled to one or more electrical load control devices, each system controller including a data store containing a respective unique local address for each of the one or more communicatively coupled electrical load control devices; wherein the electrical load control devices comprise one or more of an electrical load control-source device or an electrical load control-target device; a plurality of gateway servers, each of the plurality of gateway servers communicatively couplable to one or more of the plurality of system controllers, wherein each of the gateway controllers to: translate messages originating from an electrical load control device communicatively coupled to one of the plurality of system controllers from a first message format that includes the local address of the control device to a second message format that includes data representative of the local address of the electrical load control device and data representative of a unique identifier associated with the respective one of the plurality of system controllers communicatively coupled to the respective electrical load control device; and translate a received message destined for an electrical load control device communicatively coupled to a system controller from the second message format to the first message format; and a composite gateway server communicatively couplable to each of the plurality of gateway servers, wherein the composite gateway server to: translate messages received from a communicatively coupled gateway server and destined for a network connected device from the second message format to a third message format that includes data indicative of a unique identifier associated with the respective communicatively coupled gateway server; and translate messages received from the network connected device and destined for a communicatively coupled gateway server from the third message format to the second message format.
The 337 patent independent claim 1 (similarly claim 13) cites:
a load control management system, comprising: an application; a first application programming interface (API) for communicating between the application and a first load control system comprising a plurality of control devices, wherein each of the plurality of control devices has an associated usage activity; and a second API for communicating between the application and a second load control system comprising a plurality of control devices, wherein each of the plurality of control devices has an associated usage activity; wherein, upon request from the application, a usage activity of at least one of the plurality of control devices of the first load control system is aggregated with a usage activity of at least one of the plurality of control devices of the second load control system, and the aggregated usage activity is provided to the application, wherein to provide the aggregated usage activity to the application, at least one processor is configured to modify at least one uniform resource identifier (URI) associated with at least one of the plurality of control devices of the first load control system or the second load control system before providing the aggregated usage activity to the application.
The 354 patent independent claim 19 (similarly claims 1 and 10) cites:
a load control system comprising: a Composite Gateway, comprising a Resource Database and a Gateway Group Database, wherein the Composite Gateway is a single point of access for a user to communicate with a first Gateway and a second Gateway; the first Gateway comprising a first Logging Database and a first Project Database, wherein the first Gateway actively manages one or more load control devices, and wherein each of the one or more load control device is associated with a respective uniform resource identifier (URI) that indicates that the first Gateway actively manages each of the one or more load control devices; and the second Gateway comprising a second Logging Database and a second Project Database, wherein the second Gateway actively manages one or more other load control devices, and wherein each of the other one or more load control devices is associated with a respective URI that indicates that the second Gateway actively manages each of the one or more other control devices, wherein the Composite Gateway is a single point of access for a user to communicate with a first Gateway and a second Gateway, such that in response to a user’s request message, the Composite Gateway sends a first information request message to the first Gateway and a second information request message to the second Gateway, aggregates information received from the first Gateway and the second Gateway, and sends the aggregated information in response to the user’s request message.
The 918 patent independent Claim 1 (similarly claims 14 and 27) cites:
an apparatus comprising: at least one processor; at least one memory device communicatively coupled to the at least one processor and having software instructions stored thereon that when executed by the at least one processor, direct the at least one processor to: receive a first message from a web application; based on the first message, communicate a second message on a communications connection to a load control system, wherein a uniform resource identifier (URI) is associated with the communications connection, wherein the load control system comprises a control device, and wherein a URI is associated with the control device; responsive in part to communicating the second message to the load control system, receive a third message on the communications connection from the load control system, wherein the third message received from the load control system comprises the URI associated with the control device; modify the URI associated with the control device to include the URI associated with the communications connection to form a modified URI of the control device; based at least in part on the third message received from the load control system, communicate a fourth message to the web application, wherein the fourth message comprises the modified URI of the control device; receive from the web application a fifth message that comprises the modified URI of the control device; and responsive to receiving the fifth message from the web application: remove the URI associated with the communications connection from the modified URI of the control device; and based on the fifth message, communicate a sixth message on the communications connection to the load control system, wherein the communicated sixth message comprises the URI associated with the control device without the URI associated with the communications connection.
The current application independent Claim 1 (similarly claims 7 and 13) cites:
an electric load control system composite gateway, comprising: first communication interface circuitry communicatively couplable to a first network; second communication interface circuitry communicatively couplable to a second network, the second network including a plurality of electric load control system gateways; control circuitry communicatively couplable to the first communication interface circuitry and to the second communication interface circuitry, the control circuitry to: assign a unique uniform resource identifier (URI) to each of the plurality of electric load control system gateways; receive a first packet via the first communication interface circuitry; and responsive to receipt of a first packet via the first communication interface circuitry: determine whether the first packet includes one or more URI prefixes assigned to respective ones of the plurality of electric load control system gateways; responsive to the determination that the first packet includes one or more URI prefixes assigned to respective ones of the plurality of electric load control system gateways: forward, via the second network, the first packet to the respective electric load control system gateway assigned to each of the one or more URI prefixes.
The current application claim 5 (similarly claims 11 and 17) cites:
the electric load control system composite gateway of claim 3: wherein the first communication interface circuitry communicatively couples to the first network using a first network protocol; wherein the second communication interface circuitry communicatively couples to the second network using a second network protocol different from the first network protocol; and wherein the control circuitry to further: translate the received first packet from the first network protocol to the second network protocol.
From the above underlined portions of the current (child) application and its parent patents, they are related to multiple (e.g. electrical) load control systems may be that a user has to interact with the multiple systems individually wherein the unique identifiers (e.g. URI) being modified or translated from one format to another format for effective communications and for applying authorization policies, routing policies, and/or aggregation policies.
Therefore, proper terminal disclaimer is required.
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Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1, 7 and 13 are patentable over a most relevant prior art of Mela et al (US 2004/0125757 A1).
Claim 1. Mela shows and 3: gateway), comprising:
first communication interface circuitry communicatively couplable to a first network (figs. 2 and 3: interface B/C42 connected to client B/C20);
second communication interface circuitry communicatively couplable to a second network (figs. 2 and 3: interface B/C41 connected to client B/C10),
control circuitry communicatively couplable to the first communication interface circuitry and to the second communication interface circuitry ([0025] – [0026]: applications).
However, Mela does not further describe features of:
the second network including a plurality of electric load control system gateways;
the control circuitry to:
assign a unique uniform resource identifier (URI) to each of the plurality of electric load control system gateways;
receive a first packet via the first communication interface circuitry; and
responsive to receipt of a first packet via the first communication interface circuitry:
determine whether the first packet includes one or more URI prefixes assigned to respective ones of the plurality of electric load control system gateways;
responsive to the determination that the first packet includes one or more URI prefixes assigned to respective ones of the plurality of electric load control system gateways:
forward, via the second network, the first packet to the respective electric load control system gateway assigned to each of the one or more URI prefixes.Furthermore, the invention specifically requires an electric load system with multiple gateways wherein each of the gateways are uniquely assigned a URI.
Therefore, it is not obvious to further combine Mela with other relevant prior art (see Conclusion section) to make a reasonable rejection.
Independent claims 7 and 13 are similar to independent claim 1 above.The claims would be allowable if the requested terminal disclaimer is filed by the applicant and subsequently, approved by the Office.
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Conclusion
The prior art made of record is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure.
Wurth, US 2018/0234329 A1: a computer-implemented method comprising obtaining a specification of a first test, the specification of the first test comprising a set of requests for testing server operation according to a first protocol; and building a specification of a second test, the specification of the second test comprising requests and corresponding expected server responses for testing server operation according to a second protocol, the building comprising: selecting and processing a request of the set of requests of the first test, the processing the selected request comprising: identifying, based on an expected response in response to the selected request, dependencies of the expected response, the dependencies being resources indicated by the expected response or dependencies of those resources, that are requested in one or more related additional requests of the set of requests of the first test; and adding, to the specification of the second test, the selected request, and indicating the expected response and the identified dependences as being a corresponding expected server response, in response to the selected request, from a server operating according to the second protocol.
Scoda, US 2012/0066582 A1: a document transformation apparatus comprising one or more processors; a memory coupled to the one or more processors which are configured to execute programmed instructions stored in the memory comprising: obtaining a document to process based on at least a URL of the document to process in an HTTP request URL; generating an XML source representing the document to process; identifying one or more XML processors associated with at least a portion of the HTTP request URL from a plurality of stored associations; transforming the XML source with each of the identified one identified XML processors; and providing the generated document in an HTTP response to the I-ITTP request URL.
Toporek et al, US 7,359,395 B2: a method comprising receiving, at a first gateway, a client request for a base web object, wherein the base web object identifies a referenced web object therein; forwarding the client request to a second gateway; receiving, from the second gateway, a pre-fetch announcement for the referenced web object including a request match header, wherein the request match header comprises a matching program, wherein the matching program comprises a data locator for the referenced web object, one or more operation codes and one or more operands; receiving the referenced web object from the second gateway; receiving a second client request for the referenced web object, wherein the second client request includes a request header including second data locator; and matching the second client request to the referenced web object by applying the matching program against the request header of the second client request and executing the one or more operation codes in the matching program.
Lyons et al, US 6,094,665 A: a computer program product which causes a computer to correct a uniform resource identifier (URI) in a noisy source document by finding and correcting potential errors within a URI before turning the URI into a hyperlink.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Xavier Szewai Wong whose telephone number is 571.270.1780. The examiner can normally be reached on 11:30 am - 8:30 pm Mon to Fri.
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/XAVIER S WONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2415 27th June 2026
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