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 .
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(s) 1, 8 and 17-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Cho et al. (US 2006/0291480).
Regarding claim 1, Cho et al. disclose a method comprising:
formatting data into a packet that includes: a medium access control (MAC) header (Figure 4 and paragraph 55, Ethernet frame header) and a payload (Figure 4, data in the frame), the MAC header having a source MAC address (Figure 4 and paragraph 55, source MAC address of an Ethernet frame header) and an identifier of a hop limit (Figure 4 and paragraph 55, Hop limit field in the Ethernet frame header); and
transmitting the packet (Paragraph 60, transmitted frame).
Regarding claim 8, Cho et al. disclose wherein formatting the data into the packet comprises:
receiving the packet from a first device (Paragraph 56, frame received from one switch to another);
determining to transmit the packet based on parsing the identifier of the hop limit and comparing the identifier of the hop limit to a threshold (Paragraph 56, hop limit field is compared to a threshold of zero); and
decrementing the identifier of the hop limit to generate a decremented hop limit, wherein transmitting the packet includes transmitting the packet having the decremented hop limit (Paragraph 56, the Hop limit field is used to prevent frame loops. In this case, the Hop limit count is reduced by one whenever the frame passes through each of the switches).
Regarding claim 17, Cho et al. disclose determining that a device performing the transmitting has a child device; and transmitting the packet in response to determining that the device has the child device (Paragraph 22, a switching control module individually mounted to each of the switches, real-time exchange switch state information with other switches whenever switch status is changed, and selecting ports based on the switch state information to forward a frame from directly connected end terminals [child devices] or other switches depending on characteristics of the frame; Paragraph 49, the switching control modules 10, 30, 50, 70 are individually mounted to each switch 110, 120, 130, 140, and perform functions of real-time exchanging switch state information retained by the other switches whenever the information is changed and selecting the ports 111, 112, 121, 122, 131, 132, 141, 142, 113, 114, 123, 124, 133, 134, 143, 144 based on the switch state information to forward frames received from end terminals [child devices] directly connected to it or from other switches depending on characteristics of the frames).
Regarding claim 18, Cho et al. disclose receiving, by a device, a forwarding indication from a router to perform rebroadcasting (Paragraphs 22 and 49, forwarding based on characteristics [forwarding indication] of frames; Paragraph 105, destination MAC address of the received frame is broadcast or multicast causing the switches to flood the frame), wherein transmitting the packet comprises transmitting the packet in response to the forwarding indication, wherein the forwarding indication is included in the packet, and wherein the forwarding indication comprises an address of the device (Paragraphs 22 and 49, forwarding based on characteristics [forwarding indication] of frames; Figure 54, frame including source and destination MAC addresses, the destination MAC address; Paragraph 105, destination MAC address of the received data frame is a unicast address, broadcast address or multicast address, all being forwarding indications).
Regarding claim 19, Cho et al. disclose parsing the packet to determine whether data in the packet indicates that a device performing the transmitting is a forwarding device (Figure 4, destination MAC address in the frame; Paragraph 109, switching controller 11 checks [parsing] the destination MAC address of the current data frame using the frame processing unit 12 and thus determines whether the current data frame should be flooded or not; Paragraph 110, if the current data frame should not be flooded (i.e., the current frame should be switched because the destination MAC address is present in the MAC address table)); and transmitting the packet in response to determining whether the device is a forwarding device (Paragraph 110, the switching controller 11 processes a procedure of forwarding the data frame to a port leading to the destination through the frame processing unit 12 with reference to the MAC address table 20).
Regarding claim 20, Cho et al. disclose determining that the device is a forwarding device based upon determining that a MAC address of the device is included in the packet (Figure 4, destination MAC address in the frame; Paragraph 109, switching controller 11 checks [parsing] the destination MAC address of the current data frame using the frame processing unit 12 and thus determines whether the current data frame should be flooded or not; Paragraph 110, if the current data frame should not be flooded (i.e., the current frame should be switched because the destination MAC address is present in the MAC address table), the switching controller 11 processes a procedure of forwarding the data frame to a port leading to the destination through the frame processing unit 12 with reference to the MAC address table 20).
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.
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.
Claim(s) 2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cho et al. as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Lu et al. (US 2002/0194350).
Regarding claim 2, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above as well as wherein the method is performed by a device having the source MAC address, wherein the packet does not include the network address (Cho et al., Figure 4, frame exchanged between switches [device], the frame having source MAC and not including a network address).
Cho et al. do not disclose that the device has a network address. However, Lu et al. disclose an IP packet having a MAC header including a source MAC address and having an IP header including a source IP address of a device, all for transporting a packet from one location to another (Lu et al. Paragraph 8). In Cho et al., the IP header is not used when transmitting the frame in Layer 2 from one switch to another, leading to exclusion of the network address while the device is still known to have an associated network address for Layer 3 routing according to Lu et al.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Lu et al. order to further transport the packet (Lu et al., Paragraph 8).
Claim(s) 3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cho et al. as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Nagesh et al. (US 2019/0095316).
Regarding claim 3, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above as well as wherein the method is performed by a device having the source MAC address (Cho et al., Figure 4, frame exchanged between switches [device], the frame having source MAC).
Cho et al. do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Nagesh et al.: the device having a network address, wherein the MAC header includes the networking address (Nagesh et al., Paragraph 29, the header information may be determined from the remote system [device] itself, and include Ethernet header information including the address, e.g. internet protocol (IP) address, MAC address and other network address details of the remote system).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Nagesh et al. in order to provide tracing capabilities (Nagesh et al., Title and Abstract).
Claim(s) 4 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cho et al. as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Del Prado Pavon et al. (US 8,494,001).
Regarding claim 4, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above but do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Del Prado Pavon et al.: wherein the packet does not include a destination address (Del Prado Pavon et al., Claim 7, MAC data frame compressed to exclude destination from MAC header portion).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Del Prado Pavon et al. in order to increase throughput and efficiency (Del Prado Pavon et al., Column 2 lines 26-27).
Claim(s) 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cho et al. as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Seok (US 2015/0271137).
Regarding claim 6, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above but do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Seok: wherein the MAC header further includes packet duplicate detection information (Seok, Paragraphs 238 and 257, MAC header including Sequence Control field for duplicate detection).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Seok in order to reduce MAC overhead (Seok, Paragraph 257).
Claim(s) 7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cho et al. as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Cho et al. (US 2006/0092985), hereinafter referred to as Cho II.
Regarding claim 7, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above but do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Cho II: wherein the MAC header includes data identifying the packet as time critical, and wherein the payload includes the data identifying the packet as time critical (Cho II, Figures 6 and 7, Paragraph 56, time-critical control information is inserted in a sync data slot as illustrated in FIG. 6 [payload] or set as flag information indicating the presence of the time-critical control information as illustrated in FIG. 7 [MAC header, depending on a time-critical control information transmitting method adopted by the system).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Cho II in order to enable time-critical information transmission in a synchronous system (Cho II, Title).
Claim(s) 10-12 and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cho et al. as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Hu (US 2021/0289564).
Regarding claim 10, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above but do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Hu: operating according to a protocol in which a set of slots repeats in a time domain, wherein the set of slots includes a broadcast slot, a unicast slot, and a time critical slot (Hu, Figure 3A, repetition in time domain of set of slots including non-prioritized slots 304 [broadcast/unicast] and prioritized slots 302 [time critical]), wherein transmitting the packet comprises transmitting the packet in the time critical slot after a random back-off time from the start of the time critical slot has elapsed (Hu, Paragraph 28, The channel access for the latency sensitive traffic during the priority slots can be modified to use new EDCA parameters and can include a second back-off timer that the station devices can use to access the channel during the priority slots).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Hu in order to provide prioritized access and support latency sensitive applications (Hu, Paragraph 28).
Regarding claim 11, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above but do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Hu: operating according to a protocol in which a set of slots repeats in a time domain, wherein the set of slots includes a broadcast slot, a unicast slot, and a time critical slot (Hu, Figure 3A, repetition in time domain of set of slots including non-prioritized slots 304 [broadcast/unicast] and prioritized slots 302 [time critical]), wherein transmitting the packet comprises transmitting the packet in the time critical slot in response to determining that the packet is a time critical packet (Hu, Paragraph 28, The channel access for the latency sensitive traffic during the priority slots can be modified to use new EDCA parameters and can include a second back-off timer that the station devices can use to access the channel during the priority slots) and wherein in the time domain, the time critical slot immediately precedes the broadcast slot ant he unicast slot immediately follows the broadcast slot (Hu, Figure 3A, prioritized slots 302 [time critical] immediately preceding non-prioritized slots 304 [broadcast, unicast]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Hu in order to provide prioritized access and support latency sensitive applications (Hu, Paragraph 28).
Regarding claim 12, Hu discloses wherein transmitting the packet comprises transmitting a portion of the packet during the broadcast slot (Figure 3C and paragraph 74 case 2 364, the wireless device 150 can perform downlink and/or uplink transmission using the first type of traffic during a prioritized time slot 112 for the duration of the prioritized time slot 112 and at the boundary between the prioritized time slot 112 and next time slot 112 that is a non-prioritized time slot 112, the transmit opportunity can be ended or stopped for the wireless device 150. In some embodiments, the transmit opportunity can be extended [portion during the broadcast slot] into the non-prioritized time slot 112 if the wireless node 102 determines that the non-prioritized time slot 112 is available or un-occupied).
Regarding claim 15, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above as well as receiving the packet from a device (Cho et al., Figure 4, frame exchanged between switches [device]) but do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Hu: determining whether the packet is a time critical packet (Hu, Paragraph 28, The channel access for the latency sensitive traffic during the priority slots can be modified to use new EDCA parameters and can include a second back-off timer that the station devices can use to access the channel during the priority slots); exempting the packet from waiting for a backoff time period in response to determining whether the packet is a time critical packet (Hu, Paragraph 91, prioritized access restriction); receiving another packet from the device (Hu, Paragraph 91, regular traffic associated with another wireless device); and in response to determining that the another packet is not a time critical packet (Hu, Paragraph 91, regular traffic associated with another wireless device), transmitting the another packet after waiting for a random backoff time (Hu, Paragraph 91, The first timer 126 can include or correspond to a back-off timer configured to enable or provide prioritized access to the assigned time slot…the time boundary can include a time period (e.g., X amount of time before prioritized access begins, X amount of time after prioritized access begins or ends) when regular traffic or traffic associated with another wireless device 150 is prevented or not allowed to access the assigned time slot).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Hu in order to provide prioritized access and support latency sensitive applications (Hu, Paragraph 28).
Claim(s) 13, 21, 22 and 24 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cho et al. as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Hu and further in view of Khoshnevisan et al. (US 12, 143,257).
Regarding claim 13, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above but do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Hu: operating according to a protocol in which a set of slots repeats in a time domain, wherein the set of slots includes a broadcast slot, a unicast slot, and a time critical slot (Hu, Figure 3A, repetition in time domain of set of slots including non-prioritized slots 304 [broadcast/unicast] and prioritized slots 302 [time critical]), wherein transmitting the packet comprises transmitting the packet in the time critical slot in response to determining that the packet is a time critical packet (Hu, Paragraph 28, The channel access for the latency sensitive traffic during the priority slots can be modified to use new EDCA parameters and can include a second back-off timer that the station devices can use to access the channel during the priority slots).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Hu in order to provide prioritized access and support latency sensitive applications (Hu, Paragraph 28).
Cho et al. in view of Hu do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Khoshnevisan et al.: wherein a first repetition of the set of slots is performed in a first channel of a frequency domain (Khoshnevisan et al., Claim 1, transmit, at a first frequency, a first plurality of consecutive repetitions of the set of repetitions in accordance with the frequency hopping configured for the set of repetitions, wherein each of the first plurality of consecutive repetitions is transmitted in a respective slot of a first set of consecutive slots), and in which a subsequent repetition of the set of slots is performed in a second channel of the frequency domain (Khoshnevisan et al., Claim 1, transmit, at a second frequency different from the first frequency and after transmission of the first plurality of consecutive repetitions, a second plurality of consecutive repetitions of the set of repetitions in accordance with the frequency hopping configured for the set of repetitions, wherein each of the second plurality of consecutive repetitions is transmitted in a respective slot of a second set of consecutive slots, at the second frequency).
Therefore, 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 of Cho et al. and Hu with the cited disclosure from Khoshnevisan et al. in order to improve communication reliability (Khoshnevisan et al., Column 9 lines 58-59).
Regarding claim 21, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above but do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Hu: operating according to a protocol in which a set of slots repeats in a time domain, wherein the set of slots includes a broadcast slot, a unicast slot, and a time critical slot (Hu, Figure 3A, repetition in time domain of set of slots including non-prioritized slots 304 [broadcast/unicast] and prioritized slots 302 [time critical]), wherein transmitting the packet is performed in the time critical slot (Hu, Paragraph 28, The channel access for the latency sensitive traffic during the priority slots can be modified to use new EDCA parameters and can include a second back-off timer that the station devices can use to access the channel during the priority slots).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Hu in order to provide prioritized access and support latency sensitive applications (Hu, Paragraph 28).
Cho et al. in view of Hu do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Khoshnevisan et al.: during a subsequent repetition of the set of slots (Khoshnevisan et al., repetition of sets of slots for transmission), determining to send an asynchronous transmission (Khoshnevisan et al., Column 14 lines 58-67, techniques described herein may be used for either synchronous or asynchronous operations/transmissions).
Therefore, 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 of Cho et al. and Hu with the cited disclosure from Khoshnevisan et al. in order to improve communication reliability (Khoshnevisan et al., Column 9 lines 58-59).
Regarding claim 22, Cho et al. in view of Hu in view of Khoshnevisan et al. disclose sending the asynchronous transmission in the broadcast slot after a backoff duration (Hu, Figure 3A and paragraph 91, non-prioritized slots 304 used for transmitting regular traffic using back-off timer; Khoshnevisan et al., Column 14 lines 58-67, both synchronous and asynchronous transmission).
Regarding claim 24, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above as well as a protocol omitting unicast, wherein transmitting the packet includes transmitting the packet during a broadcast (Cho et al., Paragraph 105, When the destination MAC address of the received frame…unicast MAC address that is not present in the MAC address table, the switches 110, 120, 130, 140 flood [broadcast] the frame).
Cho et al. do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Hu: operating according to a protocol in which a set of slots repeats in a time domain and having broadcast slots and unicast slots (Hu, Figure 3A, repetition in time domain of set of slots including non-prioritized slots 304 [broadcast/unicast] and prioritized slots 302 [time critical]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Hu in order to provide prioritized access and support latency sensitive applications (Hu, Paragraph 28).
Cho et al. in view of Hu do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Khoshnevisan et al.: a set of slots repeating across a plurality of channels in a frequency domain (Khoshnevisan et al., Claim 1, sets of slots across different frequencies).
Therefore, 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 of Cho et al. and Hu with the cited disclosure from Khoshnevisan et al. in order to improve communication reliability (Khoshnevisan et al., Column 9 lines 58-59).
Claim(s) 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cho et al. as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Jorgensen (US 2003/0067903).
Regarding claim 14, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above as well as receiving the packet from a device (Cho et al., Paragraph 56, frame received from one switch to another), but do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Jorgensen:
determining whether the packet is a time critical packet (Jorgensen, Paragraph 129, time critical packet is known by their relative priority and type); and
moving the packet to a front of a processing queue based on whether the packet is a time critical packet (Paragraph 129, Priority queuing simply reorders data packets in the queue based on their relative priorities and types, so that data from more latency- and jitter-sensitive traffic can be moved to the front of the queue); or
moving the packet to a front of a transmission queue based on whether the packet is a time critical packet (Paragraph 129, Priority queuing simply reorders data packets in the queue based on their relative priorities and types, so that data from more latency- and jitter-sensitive traffic can be moved to the front of the queue).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Jorgensen in order to avoid causing a constant delay to all traffic and to prioritize time critical traffic (Jorgensen, Paragraph 129).
Claim(s) 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cho et al. as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Hu, and further in view of Shin et al. (US 2010/0278156).
Regarding claim 16, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above as well as receiving the packet from a device (Cho et al., Figure 4, frame exchanged between switches [device]) but do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Hu: determining whether the packet is a time critical packet (Hu, Paragraph 28, The channel access for the latency sensitive traffic during the priority slots can be modified to use new EDCA parameters and can include a second back-off timer that the station devices can use to access the channel during the priority slots); exempting the packet from waiting for a backoff time period in response to determining whether the packet is a time critical packet (Hu, Paragraph 91, prioritized access restriction); for a subsequent packet, determining that the subsequent packet is not a time critical packet (Hu, Paragraph 91, regular traffic associated with another wireless device).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Hu in order to provide prioritized access and support latency sensitive applications (Hu, Paragraph 28).
Cho et al. in view of Hu do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Shin et al.: applying a backoff time period, based on a rank of a device performing transmitting, to the subsequent packet (Shin et al., Paragraph 24, nodes set the backoff time differently, according to the priority ranking of data to be transmitted by each node, such that they may be controlled to first transmit data having higher priority; Paragraph 34, data priority ranking, with a corresponding backoff time, is mapped to a node transmitting the data. The node obviously has a rank corresponding to the data priority).
Therefore, 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 of Cho et al. and Hu with the cited disclosure from Shin et al. in order further perform prioritized transmission of time sensitive data (Shin et al., Paragraphs 10, 24, 34).
Claim(s) 25 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cho et al. as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Pang et al. (US 2021/0234768).
Regarding claim 25, Cho et al. disclose the claimed invention above but do not disclose the following limitations that are disclosed by Pang et al.: subsequent to transmitting the packet, receiving a subsequent packet including a network-layer header, a transport-layer header, and a second MAC header, wherein the network-layer header includes a second identifier of a second hop limit; and transmitting the subsequent packet to another device according to a destination identified in the network-layer header and a port identified in the transport-layer header (Pang et al., Paragraph 19, ingress [received] packet having layer 2 header values [MAC header] and layer 3 header values with a hop limit, forwarded/egressed to a destination address via destination port [Paragraph 11]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Cho et al. with the cited disclosure from Pang et al. in order to predict forwarding destinations (Pang et al., Paragraph 29).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5, 9 and 23 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: regarding claim 5, the prior art does not disclose or adequately suggest vendor payload information in a MAC header, the vendor payload information including source MAC address, hop limit identifier, payload, and vendor ID that includes data configured to identify how to interpret the vendor payload information; regarding claim 9, the prior art discloses the claimed invention except for in response to failing to transmit the packet during the time critical slot, transmitting the packet during the broadcast slot; regarding claim 23, the prior art discloses the claimed invention except for suspending asynchronous transmission in response to determining that a subsequent packet is a time critical packet.
Conclusion
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/OTIS L THOMPSON, JR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2477
July 20, 2026
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