DETAILED ACTION
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 .
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.
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 non-obviousness.
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US Pub. 2023/0308853 to Ding et al. (hereinafter Ding) in view of US Pub. 2024/0211237 to R et al. (hereinafter R).
In regard claim 1, Ding teaches or discloses a system for providing canary upgrade for a Radio Access Network (RAN) (see Fig. 1, paragraph [0037], RAN) comprising:
a Control Unit (CU) comprising a Control Plane (CU-CP) and a Control Unit User Plane (CU-UP), the CU-CP coupled to the CU-UP (see paragraphs [0058], [0060], and [0067], a xNB (6G NB) may include a CU-CP, multiple CU-UPs, and multiple DUs on the communication plane. CU-CP refers to the Control plane of the control unit and CU-UP refers to the user plane of the control unit);
a Distributed Unit (DU) coupled to the CU-UP (see paragraphs [008], [0059], and [0067], the CU-CP is connected to the DU through the F1-C interface, and CU-UP is connected to the DU through the F1-U interface. DU refers to the distributed unit);
a Canary Upgrade deployment controller providing canary deployment across Containerized Network Functions (CNF) including the CU-CP, the CU-UP and the DU where canary deployment is supported for each CNF individually (see paragraphs [0144], with the trend of Telco network cloudification, the cellular network is foreseen to be built with flexibility and scalability by virtualized network functions (VNFs) or containerized network functions (CNFs) running on general purpose hardware); and
an evaluation interface providing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at the canary level facilitating evaluation of a CNF (see paragraph [0314], Edge Application Server Service KPIs provide information about service characteristics provided by the Edge Application Server).
Ding may not explicitly teach or disclose a Canary Upgrade deployment controller.
However, R teaches or discloses a Canary Upgrade deployment controller (see paragraphs [0062], a system 100 for performing tenant provisioning to enable controlled and staged deployment of new versions of workload, application, or service across multiple clusters according to some embodiments herein. The tenant provisioning module 106 performs Cluster Provisioning, Tenant Management and Canary Upgrade of Workload across clusters. The control plane includes provisioning, off-boarding, License upgrade, plugin/ DB upgrade, cluster installation and cluster movement. The provisioning cluster control plane component includes a data plane including a compute cluster and a database cluster for performing functions).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to modify computing workload management in next generation cellular networks of Ding by including a Canary Upgrade deployment controller suggested by R. This modification would provide to enable controlled and staged deployment of new version of workload, application, or service across multiple clusters read in paragraph [0005].
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-13 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PHIRIN SAM whose telephone number is (571)272-3082. The examiner can normally be reached Mon - Fri, 10:30am - 5pm.
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, Ayaz R. Sheikh can be reached at (571) 272 - 3795. 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.
Date: 06/22/2026
/PHIRIN SAM/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2476
Prosecution Insights