DETAILED ACTION
Status of Case
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This Office Action is in response to the claims filed on 10/2/2024.
Claims 1-18 are pending.
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 1-2 and 10-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li (USPN 11,800,410) in view of Wang (USPN 7,477,616) and Vemuri (USPAN 2026/0129096).
Consider claims 1 and 10, Li disclose a method of operating a low power Wi-Fi device (see figure 4, reproduced below for convenience; also, see col. 11 lines 7-53), and a corresponding low power Wi-Fi device, comprising: a Wi-Fi network interface; a processing unit; and a memory device in communication with the processing unit comprising instructions, which when executed by the processing unit, enable the low power Wi-Fi device (see col. 1 lines 42-48: Wi-Fi radios; see col. 11 lines 7-11: performing communication on a plurality of Wi-Fi channels; also, see figure 2, wherein disclosed is said device comprising said Wi-Fi network interface, processor, and memory) to:
initialize in a first mode; and switch to a second lower power mode between the low power Wi-Fi device and another device (see col. 11 lines 41-45: “In certain embodiments, the wireless device can switch, change, transition, and/or modify the plurality of receivers from the second low-power state to the first low-power state (e.g., to allow for a faster wake-up and/or channel selection after performing medium contention)”).
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Li does not specifically disclose switching to a second power mode when a subscription has been established.
Wang discloses switching to a second power mode when a subscription has been established (see claim 1: each of the stations switch from the power save mode to the wake mode (i.e., switching to a second power mode) at a corresponding service period start time and remain in the wake mode for a corresponding service period interval, where the “service period” start time and service period interval are taken as a subscription).
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 invention of Li and combine it with the noted teachings of Wang. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method for stations to participate in frame transmission without having to contend for a channel and unnecessarily use power (see col. 1 lines 62-65 of Wang).
Li does not specifically disclose communication with a Matter Controller.
Vemuri discloses communication with a Matter Controller (see paragraph 28: “This may occur via a low power mesh network protocol referred to as Thread, and/or the open-source Matter application layer protocol. In a common implementation, for instance, Thread may be used as a wireless communication method for controlling various Matter devices. The IoT ecosystem 10 of FIG. 1 may therefore be considered a Matter network”; thus, IoT Hub 11 in figure 1 is taken as a Matter Controller).
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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 invention of Li and combine it with the noted teachings of Vemuri. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method for managing and controlling a networked IoT ecosystem having one or more IoT hubs and a plurality of networked smart devices (see paragraph 3 of Vemuri).
Consider claims 2 and 11, Li does not specifically disclose returning to the first mode from the second lower power mode when the subscription is terminated
Wang discloses returning to the first mode from the second lower power mode when the subscription is terminated (see claim 1: each of the stations switch from the power save mode to the wake mode (i.e., switching to a second power mode) at a corresponding service period start time and remain in the wake mode for a corresponding service period interval; thus, since they remain in the wake mode only for the service period interval, they return to the first mode when the subscription is terminated (i.e., when the service period interval is completed)).
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 invention of Li and combine it with the noted teachings of Wang. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method for stations to participate in frame transmission without having to contend for a channel and unnecessarily use power (see col. 1 lines 62-65 of Wang).
Claims 3-4 and 12-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li (USPN 11,800,410) in view of Wang (USPN 7,477,616), Vemuri (USPAN 2026/0129096), and LoGalbo (USPAN 2006/0140186).
Consider claims 3 and 12, although Li discloses a first mode in which the low power Wi-Fi device wakes (see above), Li does not specifically disclose that the low power device wakes for every “Delivery Traffic Indication Message” (DTIM) beacon.
LoGalbo discloses that the low power device wakes for every “Delivery Traffic Indication Message” (DTIM) beacon (see paragraph 19: the stations wake up at the DTIM beacon).
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 invention of Li and combine it with the noted teachings of LoGalbo. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method for having reliable delivery of multicast packets without requiring stations to stay awake to ensure reception of pertinent packets (see paragraph 7 of LoGalbo).
Consider claims 4 and 13, although Li discloses a first mode in which the low power Wi-Fi device wakes (see above), Li does not specifically disclose that the low-power device processes broadcast messages that follow the DTIM beacon.
LoGalbo discloses that the low-power device processes broadcast messages that follow the DTIM beacon (see paragraph 19: the station only need to wake up at the DTIM beacon, hear (i.e. process) the broadcast packets, and immediately return to low power mode).
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 invention of Li and combine it with the noted teachings of LoGalbo. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method for having reliable delivery of multicast packets without requiring stations to stay awake to ensure reception of pertinent packets (see paragraph 7 of LoGalbo).
Claims 9 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li (USPN 11,800,410) in view of Wang (USPN 7,477,616), Vemuri (USPAN 2026/0129096), and Dasgupta (USPN 8,463,900).
Consider claims 9 and 18, although Li discloses that a power consumption in the second lower power mode is less than the power consumption in the first mode (see above), Li does not specifically disclose that the power consumption is less than 20% of the power consumption of the first mode.
Dasgupta discloses power consumption that is less than 20% of power consumption of another mode (see col. 14 lines 14-17: less than 20-40% lower power consumption).
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 invention of Li and combine it with the noted teachings of Dasgupta. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method that provides efficient server consolidation for maximum power savings (see col. 1 lines 37-39 of Dasgupta).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-8 and 14-17 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
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jamal Javaid whose telephone number is 571-270-5137 and email address is Jamal.Javaid@uspto.gov.
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/JAMAL JAVAID/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2412
Prosecution Insights