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 § 102(a)1
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 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 the appropriate paragraphs of pre-AIA 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 –
(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of application for patent in the United States.
Claim(s) 1-6,8-13,15-16 are/is rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102(a)1 as being clearly anticipated by Gell et al (US 20140153392 A1) hereinafter as Gell.
Regarding claim(s) 1,8, Gell discloses a method for scheduling radio resources for a plurality of industrial devices in an industrial environment, the method being performed by a network node in a wireless communication network (See Fig(s). 1-2, abstract), the method comprising:
receiving input data comprising one or more of: device characteristic information of the plurality of industrial devices (See Fig(s). 12, See ¶ 178-179), information indicating a state of each industrial device (See Fig(s). 10, See ¶ 173), and information related to one or more command messages to be transmitted to the industrial devices (See Fig(s). 1-2, Fig. 1 with core network 102 communicating with devices 104, 120, etc., See ¶ 6. a communication network, including a transceiver module configured to monitor data communication in the communication network, and a processor coupled to the transceiver and configured to receive, from at least one terminal node, application information related to at least one application data stream associated with at least one application operating in the at least one terminal node…command messaging is accomplished via ACK/NACK protocol See ¶ 143);
estimating data traffic among the plurality of industrial devices using the input data (See Fig(s). 4, See ¶ 61-62, 132-133, For example, a history of resource availability may be stored in a resource estimation module. A correlation of resource availability to time of day, day of week, and other events may allow an application agent to predict whether future resources will be larger or smaller than current resources.);
and scheduling the radio resources for the plurality of industrial devices in accordance with the data traffic among the plurality of industrial devices (See Fig(s). 4, See ¶ 35, Traffic within a CoS is often treated similarly for the purpose of scheduling resource allocations. See ¶ 135-136, APP-agent cooperative communications may be used to adjust scheduling of communications from an access node.).
Regarding claim(s) 2, 9, Gell discloses wherein the input data is received from one or more of: a repository associated with the industrial environment (See ¶ 1-2, See ¶ 8, a method for management of application quality in a communication network, the method including the steps of receiving, from at least one terminal node, application information related to at least one application data stream associated with at least one application operating in the at least one terminal node, updating, based on the application information, a relationship map that includes a relationship between each of the at least one application data stream and an access node).
Regarding claim(s) 3,10, Gell discloses wherein the device characteristic information comprises one or more of: one or more properties of the industrial devices (See ¶ 204, The terminal node characteristics data set may include, but is not limited to, a user attention metric which indicates a level of attention that the user is giving to the associated terminal node, a user service level agreement (S LA) which indicates the SLA assigned to the user of the terminal node and a terminal node type metric indicating the type of terminal node being used (e.g. tablet, smartphone, feature phone, large display TV, industrial M2M module, etc). In an aspect, characteristics assessment module 1220 may access the operating system of the associated terminal node to obtain information from which it can determine some or all of the current terminal node characteristics data.).
Regarding claim(s) 4,11 Gell discloses wherein the information indicating the state of each industrial device comprises one or more of: a connection with each industrial device (See ¶ 173, a master application operates in each of TNs 1071 and 1072 wherein the master application operates to detect and characterize application downlink stream activity of downlink data streams being sent to the TN and to characterize the current terminal node state. ).
Regarding claim(s) 5,12, Gell discloses wherein the step of receiving the input data comprises: transmitting a request message for the input data to one or more of: the repository, the plurality of industrial devices, and the industrial controller ; and receiving the input data in response to the request message. (See ¶ 78, The MAC layer modules may, for example, exchange resource requests and grants based on a storage of information.) .
Regarding claim(s) 6,13, Gell discloses wherein the step of estimating the data traffic among the plurality of industrial devices using the input data comprises: obtaining information related to ongoing communications among the plurality of industrial devices (See ¶ 171); acquiring latency requirement for the one or more command messages (See ¶ 234); analyzing the information related to ongoing communications among the plurality of industrial devices (See ¶ 171, current resource expectations, and historical data (e.g., resources requested versus resources used) in accordance with the latency requirement for the one or more command messages; and estimating the data traffic among the plurality of industrial devices based on the analysis ( See Fig(s). 4, See ¶ 61-62, 132-133, For example, a history of resource availability may be stored in a resource estimation module. A correlation of resource availability to time of day, day of week, and other events may allow an application agent to predict whether future resources will be larger or smaller than current resources.).
Regarding claim(s) 15, Gell discloses a network node (See Fig(s). 1, node 110).
Regarding claim(s) 16, Gell discloses a computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium, having thereon a computer program comprising program instructions, the computer program is loadable into a data processing unit and configured to cause execution of the method of claim 1 when the computer program is run by the data processing unit (See Fig(s). 2, with processor 281).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim(s) 7,14 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 Raj Jain whose telephone number is (571) 272-3145. The examiner can normally be reached on M-Th ~8 ~6.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Derrick Ferris can be reached on 571-272-3123. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/RAJ JAIN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2411
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