DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is in response to Applicants Application filed on September 20, 2024. Claims1-18 are pending and presented for examination.
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 9/20/24 and 4/4/25 has been considered by the examiner.
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.
Claim(s) 1 and 3-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Asawa (U.S. Pub. No. 2020/0296054) in view of Dou et al (hereinafter, “Dou”, U.S. Pub. No. 2022/0322488).
As per claims 1, 17 and 18, Asawa discloses an orchestrator apparatus, an application deployment determination method and a non-transitory storage medium to dynamically deploy, to at least one edge server and at least one cloud server, one or more applications to provide one or more services to at least one user equipment, the orchestrator apparatus comprising:
a processor to execute a program (paragraph 0058); and
a memory to store the program which when executed by the processor performs (paragraph 0058):
an app deployment determination process of determining, upon detection of a state in which a determination of deployment of the one or more applications is necessary, the deployment of the one or more applications on a basis of (paragraph 0029 discloses deploying one or more applications to through an orchestrator to a multi-edge computing system and cloud and platform based on available resources along with the cost of usage for application (i.e. deploying application when necessary based on available resources along with the cost of usage): a location of each user equipment to use the one or more services (paragraph 0027 determining the location of the user to use the application); and a requirement of the service (i.e. (i.e. deploying application when necessary based on available resources along with the cost of usage) provided by each application to be deployed (paragraph 0029 discloses deploying one or more applications to through an orchestrator to a multi-edge computing system and cloud and platform based on available resources along with the cost of usage for application.
However, Asawa does not explicitly disclose:
a maximum number of sessions that is an upper limit of the number of sessions allowed to be simultaneously set for each one user equipment to use the one or more services.
Dou discloses a session management method and apparatus comprising:
a maximum number of sessions that is an upper limit of the number of sessions allowed to be simultaneously set for each one user equipment to use the one or more services (paragraphs 0052 and 0091 discloses a maximum number of sessions allowed for a user equipment).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to Asawa by incorporating or implementing a maximum number of sessions allowed for a user equipment for the purpose of improving a Protocol Data Unit (PDU) session establishment success rate and reducing a service data transmission delay.
As per claims 3 and 4, Asawa discloses the orchestrator apparatus wherein:
wherein the app deployment determination process determines, when the one or more services used by the at least one user equipment are changed, whether change to the deployment of the one or more applications is necessary, and changes the deployment when the change is necessary (paragraphs 0027 and 0029).
As per claims 5, 6, 7 and 8, Asawa discloses the orchestrator apparatus wherein when executed by the processor, the program further performs:
a resource information management process of managing a network location of each edge server, an amount of a communication latency between the at least one user equipment and each edge server, a deployment state and a usage state, of a resource of each edge server, and a deployment state and a usage state of, a resource of a mobile network (paragraphs 0027 and 0029 discloses a resource managing server for managing the location between a multi-edge computing system and user equipment for application deployment); and
a policy setting process of holding policies related to the deployment and change to the deployment of, the one or more applications (paragraphs 27, 0035 and 0038 discloses policies established for the multi-edge computing system for deployment of one or more applications), wherein
the app deployment determination process determines the deployment of the one or more applications on a basis of the information managed by the resource information management process, the location information and the maximum number of sessions acquired by the mobile network information acquisition process, the policies, and the requirements (paragraphs 0027 and 0029 discloses a resource managing server for managing the location between a multi-edge computing system and user equipment for application deployment).
However, Asawa does not explicitly disclose:
a mobile network information acquisition process of acquiring, from the mobile network, location information on the at least one user equipment and the maximum number of sessions for each user equipment.
Dou discloses a session management method and apparatus comprising:
a mobile network information acquisition process of acquiring, from the mobile network, location information on the at least one user equipment and the maximum number of sessions for each user equipment (paragraphs 0052, 0091 and 0092 discloses a maximum number of sessions allowed for a user equipment).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to Asawa by incorporating or implementing a maximum number of sessions allowed for a user equipment for the purpose of improving a Protocol Data Unit (PDU) session establishment success rate and reducing a service data transmission delay.
Claim(s) 2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Asawa (U.S. Pub. No. 2020/0296054) in view of Dou et al (hereinafter, “Dou”, U.S. Pub. No. 2022/0322488) and in further view of Takamura et al (hereinafter, “Takamura”, JP 2011-103567, submitted on IDS by Applicant).
As per claim 2, Asawa in view of Dou discloses the invention substantially as claims discussed above,
However, Asawa in view Dou do not explicitly disclose wherein:
the app deployment determination process determines, when the at least one user equipment is handed over, whether change to the deployment of the one or more applications is necessary, and changes the deployment when the change is necessary.
Takamura discloses session management method and apparatus comprising:
the app deployment determination process determines, when the at least one user equipment is handed over, whether change to the deployment of the one or more applications is necessary, and changes the deployment when the change is necessary (paragraphs 0030-0031and 0068-0070 discloses a terminal in a mobile communication network is handed over and determining whether a change to a server for the deployment of the application to another is server based on network communication quality between the post-handover terminal and the server).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to modify Asawa in view Dou by incorporating or implementing a user equipment handoff for application deployment in order to provide a better quality of network communication between the user equipment and server.
As per claim 9, the claim contains limitations found within that of claims 1 and 5, and the same rationale of rejection is used where applicable.
As per claim 10, the claim contains limitations found within that of claims 1, 2 and 5, and the same rationale of rejection is used where applicable.
As per claim 11, the claim contains limitations found within that of claims 1, 2, 3 and 5, and the same rationale of rejection is used where applicable.
As per claim 12, the claim contains limitations found within that of claims 1, 2, 4 and 5, and the same rationale of rejection is used where applicable.
As per claim 13, the claim contains limitations found within that of claims 1, 2 and 5, and the same rationale of rejection is used where applicable.
As per claim 14, the claim contains limitations found within that of claims 1, 2 and 6, and the same rationale of rejection is used where applicable.
As per claim 15, the claim contains limitations found within that of claims 1, 2 and 7, and the same rationale of rejection is used where applicable.
As per claim 16, the claim contains limitations found within that of claims 1, 2 and 8, and the same rationale of rejection is used where applicable.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Worsley et al (U.S. Pub. No. 2023/0138867) discloses distributing an application across a plurality of locally connected computing subdomains. The subdomains can include a mixture of general and special purpose computing subdomains, such as for example, a main computer and an associated smart network interface devices or systems, such as for example a smart network interface card (NIC). The subdomains can each run hypervisors that are bridged to allow a single virtual machine to operate across the subdomains.
Macias (U.S. Pat. No. 11,452,122) discloses automatically directs user equipment (UE) away from a “home” multi-access edge computing (MEC) cluster to a different MEC cluster when the home MEC cluster cannot support service while the UE is outside a regional area. A MEC cluster may receive an application service request for MEC services from a UE device outside a regional service area of the MEC cluster. The MEC cluster may determine if service level requirements for the application service request can be met by the MEC cluster.
Chauhan et al (U.S. Pub. No. 2022/0052961) discloses discovering resources in a multi-access computing environment. The method may include receiving application parameters for an application to be serviced using multi-access edge computing (MEC) resources.
Jeuk et al (U.S. Pub. 2020/0244722) discloses selecting an edge cloud of a plurality of edge clouds to be used for performing one or more network operations for at least one endpoint device. In certain aspects, the selection may be based on an indication of at least one of an amount of available resources or capabilities associated with each of the plurality of edge clouds.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LASHONDA T JACOBS-BURTON whose telephone number is (571)272-4004. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:30 am - 5:00 pm.
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/LASHONDA JACOBS-BURTON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2457
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April 4, 2026
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