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 . This Office Action is in reply to 10/07/2024 with a preliminary amendment filed on 06/03/2025. Claimed priority is granted from CN202210364905.1, file on 04/08/2022.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 10/25/2024 and 04/23/2025 was filed after the mailing date of the original application filed on 10/07/2024. 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 Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
The claim is long and presented as a run-on, a continuous sentence with multiple embedded clauses, hard to interpret. It contains ambiguous language, unclear functional relationships, and grammatical inconsistencies such that a person of ordinary skill in the art would not be able to determine the metes and bounds of the claimed invention with reasonable certainty.
a) Ambiguous use of “based on” is a problematic language in line 9 of the claim:
“determining... an updated transmission path based on the first update threshold and transmission performance...”.
It is unclear whether the transmission performance is compared to the threshold
whether both are used independently
whether the threshold is merely a parameter or an actual trigger
These are some of the multiple interpretations of this claim limitation. It fails to specify how the “first update threshold” is used in relation to the “transmission performance” to obtain the “updated transmission path”, thereby rendering the scope of the determination unclear.
b) There is a circular and undefined meaning of “threshold”:
“the first update threshold indicates a threshold for updating a segment routing path...”. The term is indefinite as it is presented circularly. The threshold for updating does not explain:
What parameter is measured
What condition must be satisfied
How the update occurs
There is no objective boundary provided in the claim language. The claim does not define the operational meaning of the “first update threshold”, and fails to specify the condition under which the threshold is satisfied.
c) There is a lack of explicit comparison or trigger condition. There is no comparing performance to threshold, or determining whether a condition is met leaving the claim unclear when an update occurs and what event triggers the update. The claim apparently fails to recite a condition or comparison that governs when an updated transmission path is selected, thereby failing to clearly define the boundaries of the claimed method.
d) The claim expresses ambiguity in the “each of the at least one first segment list”. The phrase is grammatically inconsistent:
“each of” implies plurality
“at least one” includes singular
The scope of the phrase is unclear and renders the scope of the claim ambiguous.
e) The phrase “transmission performance” is unclear and for the least, very broad. It is indefinite as the Examiner is unsure whether it pertains to bandwidth, latency, packet loss, composite metric or throughput, lending to different interpretations. The term lacks sufficient clarity, as the claim does not specify what performance metric is being evaluated.
f) The phrase “indicated by each of the segment list” in ”transmission performance of a segment routing path indicated by each of the at least one first segment list”, is ambiguous. It is unclear whether performance is simply measured per path or further aggregated across paths. Is the transmission performance associated with individual segment lists or a collection evaluation.
g) There is an unclear relationship between policy and threshold. threshold in included “active path information”. The claim language is indefinite as it is unclear whether threshold applies to each segment list, all segment lists collectively, or the entire policy
A is indefinite when it contains words or phrases whose meaning is unclear such that a person of ordinary skill in the art cannot determine the scope of the invention with reasonable certainty (see Nautilus v, Biosig, 572 U.S. 898). By this rationale, claim 1 is rejected.
Independent claims 14 and 20 are rejected for the same reasons as independent claim 1. The claims have similar structure. Dependent claims 2-13, and 15-18 are rejected for the same reason as the independent claims. By this rationale, claims 1-20 are rejected.
Applicant is advised to review the entire application for errors (typographical, grammatical and logical), and correct the same.
CONCLUSION
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jude Jean-Gilles whose telephone number is 571-272-3914. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri, from 9:00AM-5:00PM.
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/JUDE JEAN GILLES/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2459
March 31, 2026