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 .
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.
Priority
The instant application is the national stage entry under 35 U.S.C. 371 of Application No. PCT/IB2023/056777, filed on 29 June 2023, having claims 1-19. This application also claims priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) to India Patent Application No. 202221037229, filed 29 June 2022.
In a preliminary amendment, Applicant has amended claims 1-10, 13, 14, and 16-19. Claims 1-19 have been examined.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 10 December 2024 was filed before the mailing date of the first action on the merits. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claim 19 is objected to because of the following informalities: The claim does not end with a period character (‘.’).
Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claims 1, 2, 5, 6, 10, 11, 14, 15, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by U.S. Patent Application No. 2013/0031575 to Gallant et al. (hereinafter Gallant).
As per claim 1, Gallant discloses a system for optimizing service outage impact (see paragraph 68) in a network (see abstract), the system comprising:
one or more processors; and a memory operatively coupled with the one or more processors (see paragraph 47), wherein said memory stores instructions which, when executed, cause the one or more processors to:
receive at least one data packet (see paragraphs 17, 19), comprising one or more parameters (paragraph 21 and subsequent table; paragraph 40 and subsequent table), from one or more computing devices associated with one or more active users within at least one cell (see paragraphs 16-17);
analyze the at least one data packet to identify one or more patterns of a time series, and correlate with the one or more parameters (see paragraph 22; also, compilation of time-based statistics, see paragraphs 40-46 and table);
predict a lean hour of the one or more computing devices based on time series forecasting of the at least one data packet (see paragraph 45); and
perform changes in a configuration of the one or more computing devices in the lean hour to minimize the one or more active users and optimize service outage impact in the network (automated policy changes and rules applied to network, see paragraph 41; outage protocol, see page 68).
As per claim 2, Gallant further discloses the one or more parameters comprise at least one of: a network Key Performance Indicator, an alarm, and a fault (KPI, see paragraph 26).
As per claim 5, Gallant further discloses wherein the one or more processors are configured to: verify whether a status of the one or more computing devices corresponds to the lean hour; and schedule an activity time for the one or more computing devices based on the lean hour, wherein the activity time pertains to executing network service impacting configuration change operations in the one or more computing devices (automated changes to policy and policies can be used to proactively limit or control usage via capabilities such as transcoding in the any device is in the busy hours, see paragraphs 41 and 45; this inherently necessitates a determination that a device is in and is subject to a peak period).
As per claim 6, Gallant further discloses the network service impacting configuration change operations comprise at least one of: a firmware upgrade, a network equipment reconfiguration, a network service migration, and an optimization of a network capacity (equipment reconfiguration, see paragraph 45).
As per claim 10, Gallant discloses method for optimizing service outage impact in a network (see abstract and paragraph 68), the method comprising:
receiving, by one or more processors (see paragraph 47), at least one data packet (see paragraphs 17, 19), comprising one or more parameters (paragraph 21 and subsequent table; paragraph 40 and subsequent table), from one or more computing devices associated with one or more active users within at least one cell (see paragraphs 16-17);
analyzing, by the one or more processors, the at least one data packet to identify one or more patterns of a time series, and correlate with the one or more parameters (see paragraph 22; also, compilation of time-based statistics, see paragraphs 40-46 and table); and
predicting, by the one or more processors, a lean hour of the one or more computing devices based on time series forecasting (see paragraph 45); and
performing, by the one or more processors, changes in a configuration of the one or more computing devices in the lean hour by minimizing the one or more active users and optimizing service outage impact in the network(automated policy changes and rules applied to network, see paragraph 41; outage protocol, see page 68).
As per claim 11, Gallant further discloses the one or more parameters comprise at least one of: a network Key Performance Indicator (KPI), an alarm, and a fault.
As per claim 14, Gallant further discloses verifying, by one or more processors, whether a status of the one or more computing devices corresponds to the lean hour; and scheduling, by one or more processors, an activity time for the one or more computing devices based on the lean hour, wherein the activity time pertains to executing network service impacting configuration change operations in the one or more computing devices.
As per claim 15, Gallant further discloses the network service impacting configuration change operations comprise at least one of: a firmware upgrade, a network equipment reconfiguration, a network service migration, and an optimization of a network capacity.
As per claim 19, Gallant discloses a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising machine executable instructions that are executable by one or more processors (see paragraph 47) to:
receive at least one data packet (see paragraphs 17, 19) comprising one or more parameters from one or more computing devices associated with one or more active users in a cell (see paragraphs 16-17);
analyze the at least one data packet to identify one or more patterns of a time series, and correlate with the one or more parameters (paragraph 21 and subsequent table; paragraph 40 and subsequent table);
predict a lean hour of the one or more computing devices based on time series forecasting of the at least one data packet (see paragraph 45); and
perform changes in a configuration of the one or more computing devices in the lean hour to minimize the one or more active users and optimize service outage impact in a network(automated policy changes and rules applied to network, see paragraph 41; outage protocol, see page 68).
Claim 18 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by U.S. Patent Application No. 2020/0015046 to Wong et al. (hereinafter Wong).
Wong discloses a user equipment (UE) (see abstract and paragraph 34), comprising:
one or more processors; and a memory operatively coupled with the one or more processors (see paragraph 70), wherein said memory stores instructions which, when executed, cause the one or more processors to:
identify one or more temporary service disruptions during a configuration process (identification of peak hours, when one skilled in the art would recognize that disruptions can come from higher demand, see paragraphs 28, 33 and 38);
transmit at least one data packet including one or more parameters to a system, wherein the one or more parameters comprise at least one of: a network Key Performance Indicators (KPI), an alarm, and a fault (capacity analysis updates using KPI, see paragraphs 40 and 41); and
receive and execute one or more instructions from the system during a predicted lean hour based on time series forecasting to optimize service outage impact in a network (new users are onboarded when peak hours not in effect, see paragraph 28).
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.
Claims 3 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gallant as applied to claims 1 and 10 above, and further in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0064820 to Park et al. (hereinafter Park).
Gallant does not disclose that the one or more patterns comprise at least one of: a trend, a seasonality, a white noise, and a random noise.
Park discloses the use of a data trend analysis (see paragraphs 48-50) to help limit excessive costs for operation and maintenance of systems (see paragraph 4).
Therefore it would have obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to modify the invention of Gallant by using data trend analysis when analyzing collected data, to limit excessive costs for operation and maintenance of systems.
Claims 4 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gallant as applied to claims 1 and 10 above, and further in view of Park yet further in view of Wong.
Gallant discloses that the one or more processors are configured to: receive the at least one data packet from the one or more computing devices based on a predefined time (data can be collected on a per-time-interval basis, see paragraph 22), but does not specifically state that the predefined time pertains to an aggregation of the at least one data packet in an hourly bin on a daily basis.
Park discloses that data may be collected at one hour intervals (see paragraph 36) for purposes of determining trend analysis, while Wong discloses that determinations regarding network utilizations may be made daily (see paragraph 39).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to have modified the invention of Gallant to have to an aggregation of the at least one data packet in an hourly bin on a daily basis, as per Park and Wong, for purposes of determining trend analysis.
Claims 7 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gallant as applied to claims 1 and 10 above, and further in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0283354 to Ouimet.
Gallant discloses the predicting of lean hours, but does not disclose the obtaining of the time series forecasting based on sorting the at least one data packet, and eliminate one or more outliers to predict the lean hour of the one or more computing devices.
Ouimet discloses the sorting of data (see paragraph 80), followed by the identification of outliers (see paragraphs 80-81 and 87), in order to remove bad or incomplete data (see paragraph 10).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to have modified the invention of Gallant by sorting data and removing outliers, as per Ouimet, in order to remove bad or incomplete data.
Claims 8 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gallant as applied to claims 1 and 10 above, and further in view of Wong.
Gallant does not disclose that the lean hour of the one or more computing devices is predicted based on one or more categories of the one or more active users of the one or more computing devices, and wherein the one or more categories comprise at least one of: a lightly loaded category, a moderately loaded category, and a heavily loaded category.
Wong discloses user subscription based upon one or more speed (i.e. load) tiers (see abstract) in which offerings are made based upon historical patterns of users with reference to speed-tier classes at peak hours (see paragraph 28) with different categories of qualities of rate offerings (e.g. first speed tier, second speed tier, etc., which correspond to light and moderate loads, see paragraph 46). One skilled in the art would recognize that this allows for an optimal revenue stream, considering the available user base.
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to modify the invention on Gallant, to provide multiple tiers of service, as per Wong, to allow for an optimal revenue stream, considering the available user base.
Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gallant as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0382581 to Campbell et al. (hereinafter Campbell).
Gallant does not disclose that the time series pertains to a set of one or more observations, with each observation associated with a specific time index.
Campbell discloses a networked system (see abstract) in which data being aggregated for analysis are given timestamps (see paragraph 81). Campbell further discloses that this is useful in measuring latency (see paragraph 74).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to modify the invention on Gallant by timestamping data, as per Campbell, as this is useful in measuring latency.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MATTHEW E HENEGHAN whose telephone number is (571)272-3834. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8-5.
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/MATTHEW E HENEGHAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3992
