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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-8, 10-17, and 19-22 are pending.
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.
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim 1-3, 10-12, and 19-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Huawei et al ("eSBA SMF and PCF selection-option 2", 3GPP TSG-SA WG2 Meeting #134, S2-1908043, June 24-28, 2019, Sapporo, Japan (6 pages); cited on IDS dated 9/10/2024), hereafter, “Huawei.”
As to claim 1, Huawei discloses a method performed by a network function (NF) consumer (Page 2, 5.34.3, “the AMF” reading on “a network function (NF) consumer”) the method comprising:
transmitting to a service communication proxy (SCP) a request message for a service operation wherein the request message for the service operation-at least comprises an indication that the SCP shall return required NF profile information of at least one NF producer discovered by the SCP (Page 2, 5.34.3, particularly, “If delegated discovery is used, the AMF first sends the SMF selection parameters and service request message to SCP together with an indication that the SCP does not send the service request to the selected SMF, and an indication that the selected NF profile is required.” “selected SMF” reading on “at least one NF producer”); and
receiving, from the SCP, the required NF profile information of the at least one NF producer (Page 2, 5.34.3, particularly, “The SCP selects the SMF based on the selection parameters and rejects the service request together with the selected SMF and its SMF profile. The AMF determines whether the selected SMF support the UE location. If yes, the AMF sends the request to the SMF via SCP.”)
As to claims 10 and 19-22, they are rejected by a similar rationale by that set forth in claim 1’s rejection.
As to claims 2 and 11, Huawei discloses the request message for the service operation further comprises: a first set of mandatory parameters and a second set of preferred parameters; and an indication of an action of the SCP performed when NF producer candidates, which are discovered by the SCP from a Network Repository Function, NRF, and which match the first set of mandatory parameters, do not match at least one of the second set of preferred parameters (Page 2, 5.34.3, particularly, “SMF selection parameter include DNN and the UE location information as preferred parameter”).
As to claims 3 and 12, Huawei discloses the request message for the service operation further comprises: a preferred parameter indication of one or more preferred parameters in the second set, wherein the indication of the action of the SCP indicates the action of the SCP performed when the NF producer candidates do not match at least one of the one or more preferred parameters indicated by the preferred parameter indication (Page 2, 5.34.3, particularly, “SMF selection parameter include DNN and the UE location information as preferred parameter”).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-8 and 13-17 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
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
US Pub. No. 2022/0038545 - The method involves receiving a service request message at a service communication proxy (SCP) and from a consumer network function (NF). A lookup is performed in a preferred NF location routing rules database at the SCP using a parameter extracted from the message by the SCP. The routing rule corresponding to the parameter is located in the rules database. A producer NF is selected to process the service request based on application of the routing rule. The message is routed to the producer NF. A list of NFs is obtained from NFs registered with the SCP or querying a network function repository function (NRF).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to THOMAS J DAILEY whose telephone number is (571)270-1246. The examiner can normally be reached 9:30am-6:00pm.
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/THOMAS J DAILEY/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2458