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.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to the previously applied rejections claims have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 1-3, 10-12, and 19-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over 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,” In view of Krishan (US Pub. No. 2022/0060547).
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: the NF consumer triggering a service communication proxy (SCP) to discover one or more NF producer candidates from a network repository function (NRF) (Page 2, 5.34.3, particularly, “The AMF is responsible of detecting when to add or remove ab I-SMF for a PDU session. For this purpose the AMF gets from NRF information about the Service Aea of SMF(s)…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…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.” “selected SMF” reading on “one or more NF producer candidates from a network repository function”);
receiving, from the SCP, at least NF profile information for a first candidate 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.”, and
the request message for the service operation comprises an indicator indicating that the SCP shall return NF profile information for at least one candidate 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.”)
However, Huawei does not explicitly disclose triggering the SCP to transmit to the NRF a NF discovery request, and
wherein triggering the SCP to transmit the NF discovery request to the NRF comprises transmitting to the SCP a request message for a service operation.
But, Krishan discloses triggering a service communication proxy (SCP) to discover one or more NF producer candidates from a network repository function (NRF) by triggering the SCP to transmit to the NRF a NF discovery request (Abstract, particularly, “A method for optimized NF discovery and routing includes, at an SCP, receiving a discovery request message or generating a discovery request message in response to a received service request message with a 3gpp-Sbi-Discovery header. The SCP modifies the discovery request message to identify as unhealthy at least one service endpoint and service name combination associated with at least one producer NF instance capable of providing a service identified in the discovery request message or the service request message The SCP forwards the discovery request message to the NRF.”) and
triggering the SCP to transmit the NF discovery request to the NRF comprises transmitting to the SCP a request message for a service operation (Abstract, “The SCP modifies the discovery request message to identify as unhealthy at least one service endpoint and service name combination associated with at least one producer NF instance capable of providing a service identified in the discovery request message or the service request message The SCP forwards the discovery request message to the NRF.”)
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Huawei and Krishan in order to provide a known and reliable means of optimized NF discovery (Krishan, [0001]).
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, the teachings of Huawei and Krishan as combined for the same reasons in claim 1’s rejection and further disclose the request message for the service operation further comprises: a set of mandatory parameters a set of preferred parameters; and an indication of an action to be performed by the SCP in the event that the NF producer candidates, discovered by the SCP the NRF match the set of mandatory parameters, but do not match at least one of the preferred parameters (Huawei, Page 2, 5.34.3, particularly, “SMF selection parameter include DNN and the UE location information as preferred parameter” and Krishan, Abstract and [0017]).
As to claims 3 and 12, the teachings of Huawei and Krishan as combined for the same reasons in claim 1’s rejection and further disclose the request message for the service operation further comprises a preferred parameter indication of one or more preferred parameters in the set of preferred parameters and, the indication of the action indicates that the SCP should perform the action as a result of the SCP determining that the NF produces candidates do not match at least one of the indicated one or more preferred parameters (Huawei, Page 2, 5.34.3, particularly, “SMF selection parameter include DNN and the UE location information as preferred parameter” and Krishan, Abstract and [0017]).
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
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any extension fee pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the date of this final action.
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 on 9:30am-6:00pm.
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/THOMAS J DAILEY/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2458
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