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
This office action is in response to the application filed on 09/25/2024.
Claims 1-3, 5-6, 8-12, 14-23 are currently pending.
Claims 4, 7, 13, 24-25 are canceled in a preliminary amendment.
Claims 1, 3, 5-6, 9-112, 14-15, 17-23 are currently amended.
Claims 2, 6, 18, 22 are objected to as being dependent upon rejected base claims.
Claims 1, 3, 5, 8-12, 14-17, 19-21, 23 are rejected.
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.
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 nonobviousness.
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.
Claims 1, 3, 8-10, 14-17, 23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable Youngkyo Baek et al (US 20260101233 A1) in view of Peyman Talebi Fard et al (US 20200267785 A1).
For Claim 1, Baek discloses a method for processing a service, performed by an access and mobility management function (AMF) (Baek teaches, in ¶ 0078, that the 5GC may include network entities, such as an access and mobility management function (AMF) 220, an SMF 230, a UPF 240, a PCF 250, or a unified data management (UDM)), comprising: determining policy control function (PCF) selection reference information (Baek teaches, in ¶ 0078, that The XR service-related information may be provided to the NEF of the 5G system by the AF/AS and be transferred from the NEF to the PCF …the XR service-related information transferred from the AF/AS to the NEF and the XR service-related information transferred from the PCF to the SMF, UPF, and NG-RAN may be divided, and are collectively referred to herein as XR service-related information), wherein the PCF selection reference information comprises at least one of extended reality media (XRM) service indication information or an XRM group identifier (Baek teaches, in ¶ 0099, that SMF1 sends a request for the XR service-related information to be applied to the AF specific SF group, which is information about the service flows and the UE to which the multi-modality service is to be applied in the XR service, to the PCF. The PCF identifies whether it has XR service-related information to be applied to UE1 and, if having the corresponding XR service-related information, provides it to SMF1); and a PCF based on at least one of the XRM service indication information or the XRM group identifier (Baek teaches, in ¶ 0087, that FIGS. 4A and 4B illustrate selection of an SMF for an XR service in steps 303 to 306 and transfer of XR service-related information from the AF/AS through the PCF to the UPF and NG-RAN to apply QoS for multi-modality service).
Baek fails to expressly disclose selecting a PCF.
However, Fard, in the analogous art, discloses selecting a PCF (Fard teaches, in ¶ 0202, that if the AMF 155 decides to initiate PCF 135 communication, e.g. the AMF 155 has not yet obtained access and mobility policy for the UE 100 or if the access and mobility policy in the AMF 155 are no longer valid, the AMF 155 may select 925 a PCF 135).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system in Baek with the selection of a PCF taught in Fard. The motivation is to comply with the QoS policy profile of the multi-modal data.
For Claim 3, Baek discloses a method, wherein selecting a PCF based on at least one of the XRM service indication information or the XRM group identifier comprises one of followings: wherein the local policy comprises at least one of the XRM service indication information or and the XRM group identifier (Baek teaches, in ¶ 0078, that The XR service-related information may be provided to the NEF of the 5G system by the AF/AS and be transferred from the NEF to the PCF …the XR service-related information transferred from the AF/AS to the NEF and the XR service-related information transferred from the PCF to the SMF, UPF, and NG-RAN may be divided, and are collectively referred to herein as XR service-related information).
Baek fails to expressly disclose selecting the PCF based on a local policy.
However, Fard, in the analogous art, discloses selecting the PCF based on a local policy (Fard teaches, in ¶ 0202, that if the AMF 155 decides to initiate PCF 135 communication, e.g. the AMF 155 has not yet obtained access and mobility policy for the UE 100 or if the access and mobility policy in the AMF 155 are no longer valid, the AMF 155 may select 925 a PCF 135).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system in Baek with the selection of a PCF taught in Fard. The motivation is to comply with the QoS policy profile of the multi-modal data.
For Claim 8, Baek discloses all of the claimed subject matter with the exception of performing a terminal policy association for a terminal with an already selected PCF, and taking the already selected PCF as the PCF for another terminal, wherein the terminal policy association is performed for the another terminal.
However, Fard, in the analogous art, discloses performing a terminal policy association for a terminal with an already selected PCF, and taking the already selected PCF as the PCF for another terminal, wherein the terminal policy association is performed for the another terminal (Fard teaches, in ¶ 0204, that the new AMF 155 may perform a policy association establishment 930 during registration procedure. If the new AMF 155 contacts the PCF 135 identified by the (V-) PCF ID received during inter-AMF 155 mobility, the new AMF 155 may include the PCF-ID in the Npcf AMPolicyControl Get operation).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system in Baek with the selection of a PCF taught in Fard. The motivation is to comply with the QoS policy profile of the multi-modal data.
For Claim 9, Baek discloses all of the claimed subject matter with the exception of sending, to the PCF, an access management (AM) policy control association creation request message, wherein the AM policy control association creation request message comprises at least one of the service indication information or and the group identifier.
However, Fard, in the analogous art, discloses sending, to the PCF, an access management (AM) policy control association creation request message, wherein the AM policy control association creation request message comprises at least one of the service indication information or and the group identifier (Fard teaches, in ¶ 0204, that the new AMF 155 may perform a policy association establishment 930 during registration procedure. If the new AMF 155 contacts the PCF 135 identified by the (V-) PCF ID received during inter-AMF 155 mobility, the new AMF 155 may include the PCF-ID in the Npcf AMPolicyControl Get operation).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system in Baek with the selection of a PCF taught in Fard. The motivation is to comply with the QoS policy profile of the multi-modal data.
For Claim 10, Baek discloses all of the claimed subject matter with the exception of receiving at least one of the following messages sent by the PCF: an AM policy control association creation response message; access and mobility policy association information; a policy control request for an AM policy association; an event subscription report.
However, Fard, in the analogous art, discloses receiving at least one of the following messages sent by the PCF: an AM policy control association creation response message; access and mobility policy association information; a policy control request for an AM policy association; an event subscription report (Fard teaches, in ¶ 0232, that the new AMF may perform a UE policy association establishment procedure as depicted in FIG. 26. The new AMF may send a Npcf UEPolicyControl Create request message to the PCF. The PCF may send a Npcf_UEPolicyControl Create Response to the (new) AMF).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system in Baek with the selection of a PCF taught in Fard. The motivation is to comply with the QoS policy profile of the multi-modal data.
For Claim 14, Baek discloses a method, wherein the XRM service indication information comprises multiple different pieces of XRM service indication information of a same terminal (Baek teaches, in ¶ 0171, that To indicate to the PCF that a plurality of service flows (service flow1 and service flow2) of one UE are service flows supporting multi-modality service along with each service flow, the AF specific service flow group ID or common ID may be configured in the PCF of the 5G system in step 902 of FIG. 9.).
For Claim 15, Baek discloses all of the claimed subject matter with the exception of receiving an AM policy control association creation request message sent by an AMF.
However, Fard, in the analogous art, discloses receiving an AM policy control association creation request message sent by an AMF (Fard teaches, in ¶ 0232, that the new AMF may perform a UE policy association establishment procedure as depicted in FIG. 26. The new AMF may send a Npcf UEPolicyControl Create request message to the PCF. The PCF may send a Npcf_UEPolicyControl Create Response to the (new) AMF).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system in Baek with the selection of a PCF taught in Fard. The motivation is to comply with the QoS policy profile of the multi-modal data.
For Claim 16, Baek discloses all of the claimed subject matter with the exception of sending at least one of the following messages to the AMF: an AM policy control association creation response message; access and mobility policy association information; a policy control request for an AM policy association; an event subscription report.
However, Fard, in the analogous art, discloses sending at least one of the following messages to the AMF: an AM policy control association creation response message; access and mobility policy association information; a policy control request for an AM policy association; an event subscription report (Fard teaches, in ¶ 0232, that the new AMF may perform a UE policy association establishment procedure as depicted in FIG. 26. The new AMF may send a Npcf UEPolicyControl Create request message to the PCF. The PCF may send a Npcf_UEPolicyControl Create Response to the (new) AMF).
Fard also teaches, in ¶ 0266, that the SMF 160 may perform a session management policy modification 1250 procedure to report some event to the PCF 135 that has previously subscribed.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system in Baek with the selection of a PCF taught in Fard. The motivation is to comply with the QoS policy profile of the multi-modal data.
For Claim 17, Baek discloses a method (Baek teaches, in ¶ 0139, that the AMF receiving the NAS message (i.e., PDU session establishment request message) may send a request to the NSSF and/or NRF based on the XR dedicated S-NSSAI and DNN ID received from UE1 or previously allocated NSI ID and select an SMF appropriate for the XR service of UE1).
Baek fails to expressly disclose sending a registration request, wherein the registration request comprises PCF related information.
However, Fard, in the analogous art, discloses sending a registration request to a NRF, wherein the registration request comprises PCF related information (Fard teaches, in ¶ 0204, that the new AMF 155 may perform a policy association establishment 930 during registration procedure. If the new AMF 155 contacts the PCF 135 identified by the (V-) PCF ID received during inter-AMF 155 mobility, the new AMF 155 may include the PCF-ID in the Npcf AMPolicyControl Get operation).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system in Baek with the selection of a PCF taught in Fard. The motivation is to comply with the QoS policy profile of the multi-modal data.
For Claim 23, please refer to the rejection of Claim 1, above.
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable Youngkyo Baek et al (US 20260101233 A1) in view of Peyman Talebi Fard et al (US 20200267785 A1) as applied to claim 3 above, and further in view of Fangyuan Zhu et al (WO 2021/159523 A1).
For Claim 5, Baek and Fard disclose all of the claimed subject matter with the exception that the NRF stores registration information of the PCF and the PCF selection reference information.
However, Zhu, in the analogous art, discloses installing the access and mobility policy association information, and subscribing a policy control trigger request upon receiving a subscription request (Zhu teaches, on page 24, Step 410a: Based on the PCF ID returned by the NRF, the AMF sends a UE Policy Association Establishment (UE Policy Association) request to the PCF. Also, the AMF requests the NRF to find a suitable PCF according to the new Allowed NSSAI determined in step 406).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system in Baek and Fard with the PCF ID returned by the NRF taught in Zhu. The motivation is to enable the AMF to obtain the policy from the PCF according to the PCF ID information.
Claims 11-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable Youngkyo Baek et al (US 20260101233 A1) in view of Peyman Talebi Fard et al (US 20200267785 A1) as applied to claim 10 or 1 above, and further in view of Lasse Olsson (US 20220217524 A1).
For Claim 11, Baek and Fard disclose all of the claimed subject matter with the exception of installing the access and mobility policy association information, and subscribing a policy control trigger request upon receiving a subscription request.
However, Olsson, in the analogous art, discloses installing the access and mobility policy association information, and subscribing a policy control trigger request upon receiving a subscription request (Olsson teaches, in ¶ 0069, that The AMF deploys the Access and mobility related policy information which includes storing the Service Area Restrictions and Policy Control Request Trigger of AM Policy Association, provisioning Service Area Restrictions to the UE and provisioning the RFSP index and Service Area Restrictions to the NG-RAN).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system in Baek and Fard with the UE level session related policy taught in Olsson. The motivation is to use the UE level session related policy control as a trigger for the AMF to initiate communication with access and mobility PCF (i.e. amPCF) [Olsson: ¶ 0009].
For Claim 12, Baek and Fard disclose all of the claimed subject matter with the exception of sending at least one of the following to a radio access network: a radio access type frequency selection priority index; a user equipment-aggregated maximum bit rate; a list of user equipment-slice-maximum bit rate; a service area restriction.
However, Olsson, in the analogous art, discloses sending at least one of the following to a radio access network: a radio access type frequency selection priority index; a user equipment-aggregated maximum bit rate; a list of user equipment-slice-maximum bit rate; a service area restriction (Olsson teaches, in ¶ 0059, that The AMF may determine a UE-AMBR for the UE by selecting one of the first UE-AMBR from the UDM and the second UE-AMBR from the PCF).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system in Baek and Fard with the UE level session related policy taught in Olsson. The motivation is to use the UE level session related policy control as a trigger for the AMF to initiate communication with access and mobility PCF (i.e. amPCF) [Olsson: ¶ 0009].
Claims 19-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable Fangyuan Zhu et al (WO 2021/159523 A1) in view of Youngkyo Baek et al (US 20260101233 A1).
For Claim 19, Zhu discloses method for processing a service, performed by a network repository function (NRF) (Zhu teaches on Page 32, Step 703: The old AMF requests the NRF to find a suitable PCF according to the first NSSAI and SUPI), comprising:
selecting a policy control function (PCF) (Zhu teaches on Page 32, Step 704: The NRF determines a suitable PCF, and sends the PCF ID (PCF ID) to the old AMF); sending the PCF selected to an access and mobility management function (AMF) (Zhu teaches on Page 32, Step 704: The NRF determines a suitable PCF, and sends the PCF ID (PCF ID) to the old AMF).
Zhu fails to express at least one of extended reality media (XRM) service indication information or an XRM group identifier.
However, Baek, in the analogous art, discloses at least one of extended reality media (XRM) service indication information or an XRM group identifier (Baek teaches, in ¶ 0087, that FIGS. 4A and 4B illustrate selection of an SMF for an XR service in steps 303 to 306 and transfer of XR service-related information from the AF/AS through the PCF to the UPF and NG-RAN to apply QoS for multi-modality service).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system in Zhu with the XR service-related information taught in Baek. The motivation is to implement services with complexity beyond the limit of the UE operation capability by way of ultrahigh performance communication and computing resources.
For Claim 20, Zhu disclose method, wherein selecting a PCF based on at least one of XRM service indication information or an XRM group identifier comprises: selecting the PCF based on configuration information, wherein the configuration information comprises at least one of the XRM service indication information or the XRM group identifier; or selecting the PCF based on subscription data, wherein the subscription data comprises at least one of the XRM service indication information or the XRM group identifier (Zhu teaches on Page 15, that the parameters used by the AMF to select the PCF include the subscription permanent identifier (SUPI), allowed NSSAI (Allowed NSSAI), and so on. After the AMF selects the PCF, it initiates the AM policy association establishment process to request the PCF to obtain the AM policy).
For Claim 21, Zhu disclose method, receiving a registration request of the PCF, wherein the registration request comprises PCF related information (Zhu teaches on Page 33, Step 707a: Based on the PCF ID returned by the NRF, the old AMF sends a UE Policy Association Establishment (UE Policy Association) request to the PCF).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 6, 18, 22 are objected to as being dependent upon rejected base claims, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Claims 2, 6 18, 22 are considered allowable because the prior art does not teach limitations including:
“determining one or more terminals supporting a same XRM service capability or a same XRM group identifier, based on at least one of the XRM service indication information or the XRM group identifier; and selecting a same PCF for the one or more terminals supporting the same XRM service capability or the same XRM group identifier,” in addition to other claim limitations as recited, in various permutations, in independent claim 2.
“sending the access and mobility policy association information to a binding support function (BSF), wherein the access and mobility policy association information comprises at least one of a terminal identifier, a PCF identifier, an XRM service indication information and the XRM group identifier,” in addition to other claim limitations as recited, in various permutations, in independent claim 18.
“storing registration information of the PCF and PCF selection reference information, and marking the PCF as an available PCF, wherein the PCF selection reference information comprises at least one of the XRM service indication information or the XRM group identifier,” in addition to other claim limitations as recited, in various permutations, in independent claim 22.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. TSUDA et al (US 20260197784 A1) teaches a communication device that includes circuitry for supporting extended reality (XR) services. The communication device forwards a Protocol Data Unit (PDU) session establishment request for an XR service, and the PCC Rule is provided from a PCF to a SMF in association with a Session Management (SM) Policy Association during a PDU session establishment procedure that corresponds to the PDU session establishment request. The communication device configures a discontinuous reception (DRX) based on the XR traffic period information and transmits the configured DRX to a user equipment.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MOHAMED A KAMARA whose telephone number is (571)270-5629. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9AM-4PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, CHARLES JIANG can be reached on 5712707191. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MOHAMED A KAMARA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2412
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