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 .
Status of Claims
Claims 1-15 are pending in this Office Action.
Claim 1-15 are elected without traverse.
Claim 16 is withdrawn and canceled.
Claims 1-15 are rejected.
Election/Restrictions
Restriction to one of the following inventions is required under 35 U.S.C. 121:
I. Claims 1-15, directed to classifying open-cloud resources in a cluster template, H04L41/5048.
II. Claim 16, directed to receiving energy saving attributes and perform a homing decision based on the energy saving attributes, H04L41/0833.
The inventions are independent or distinct, each from the other because:
Inventions I and II are related as combination and subcombination. Inventions in this relationship are distinct if it can be shown that (1) the combination as claimed does not require the particulars of the subcombination as claimed for patentability, and (2) that the subcombination has utility by itself or in other combinations (MPEP § 806.05(c)).
The combination in claims 1-15 has utility such as in automatic or semi-automatic definitions, e.g. definition templates.
In the instant case, the combination as claimed does not require the particulars of the subcombination as claimed in claim 16 because receiving energy saving attributes and perform a homing decision based on the energy saving attributes in the claimed subcombination are not required by the claimed combination. The subcombination in claim 16 has separate utility such as in reduction of network energy consumption.
The examiner has required restriction between combination and subcombination inventions. Where applicant elects a subcombination, and claims thereto are subsequently found allowable, any claim(s) depending from or otherwise requiring all the limitations of the allowable subcombination will be examined for patentability in accordance with 37 CFR 1.104. See MPEP § 821.04(a). Applicant is advised that if any claim presented in a continuation or divisional application is anticipated by, or includes all the limitations of, a claim that is allowable in the present application, such claim may be subject to provisional statutory and/or nonstatutory double patenting rejections over the claims of the instant application.
Restriction for examination purposes as indicated is proper because all the inventions listed in this action are independent or distinct for the reasons given above and there would be a serious search and/or examination burden if restriction were not required because one or more of the following reasons apply:
the inventions have acquired a separate status in the art in view of their different classification;
the inventions have acquired a separate status in the art due to their recognized divergent subject matter;
the inventions require a different field of search (e.g., searching different classes/subclasses or electronic resources, or employing different search strategies or search queries);
the prior art applicable to one invention would not likely be applicable to another invention;
the inventions are likely to raise different non-prior art issues under 35 U.S.C. 101 and/or 35 U.S.C. 112, first paragraph.
Applicant is advised that the reply to this requirement to be complete must include (i) an election of a invention to be examined even though the requirement may be traversed (37 CFR 1.143) and (ii) identification of the claims encompassing the elected invention.
The election of an invention may be made with or without traverse. To reserve a right to petition, the election must be made with traverse. If the reply does not distinctly and specifically point out supposed errors in the restriction requirement, the election shall be treated as an election without traverse. Traversal must be presented at the time of election in order to be considered timely. Failure to timely traverse the requirement will result in the loss of right to petition under 37 CFR 1.144. If claims are added after the election, applicant must indicate which of these claims are readable upon the elected invention.
Should applicant traverse on the ground that the inventions are not patentably distinct, applicant should submit evidence or identify such evidence now of record showing the inventions to be obvious variants or clearly admit on the record that this is the case. In either instance, if the examiner finds one of the inventions unpatentable over the prior art, the evidence or admission may be used in a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) of the other invention.
Applicant is reminded that upon the cancellation of claims to a non-elected invention, the inventorship must be corrected in compliance with 37 CFR 1.48(a) if one or more of the currently named inventors is no longer an inventor of at least one claim remaining in the application. A request to correct inventorship under 37 CFR 1.48(a) must be accompanied by an application data sheet in accordance with 37 CFR 1.76 that identifies each inventor by his or her legal name and by the processing fee required under 37 CFR 1.17(i).
Applicant’s election without traverse of Invention I in the reply filed on 02/13/2026 is acknowledged.
Drawings
The drawings are objected to because Figs. 1-13, 15, 16 are either not legible or missing numerical identifier or labels. Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. The figure or figure number of an amended drawing should not be labeled as “amended.” If a drawing figure is to be canceled, the appropriate figure must be removed from the replacement sheet, and where necessary, the remaining figures must be renumbered and appropriate changes made to the brief description of the several views of the drawings for consistency. Additional replacement sheets may be necessary to show the renumbering of the remaining figures. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
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) 1-15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shete (US 20240106709) in view of Xie (US 20250048342), and further in view of Di Domenico (US 20200244701).
1, 8. Shete teaches:
A method comprising: – in paragraphs [0008]-[0156] (A method of providing energy savings policy-based guidance for O-Cloud components (e.g., NFs deployed over the O-Cloud, O-Cloud Infrastructure, underlying O-Cloud hardware) from the Non-RT RIC via SMO anchored functionalities)
defining features of a policy in an open-cloud domain; – in paragraphs [0008]-[0156] (An rApp (i.e., one or more rApps) subscribes to FCAPS (fault, configuration, accounting, performance, security) data over the O1 interface and the O2 interface from E2 nodes and O-Cloud services (IMS/DMS), respectively, such as CPU Utilization for NFs, bare metal power consumption, CPU load, memory load, CPU frequency, etc.)
defining a policy and a policy criteria associated with the features of the policy; – in paragraphs [0008]-[0156] (At step S202, the rApp trains at least one AI/ML model and/or executes at least one pre-defined algorithm with data retrieved over the O1 and O2 interfaces, to produce a policy intent for energy savings in different schemes for respective nodes. Examples of policy intents include CPU frequency change, CPU load reductions, suspension of ongoing processes in O-Cloud, relocation of an application to another set of servers, putting unused servers to sleep state, etc.)
Shete does not explicitly teach:
mapping the policy to at least one operating mode of an open-cloud resource.
However, Xie teaches:
mapping the policy to at least one operating mode of an open-cloud resource; – in paragraphs [0006]-[0447] (The different energy saving policies may correspond to a determined energy saving mode, where the determined energy saving mode may include one of: an energy saving mode of carrier/cell switch off/on; an energy saving mode of radio frequency (RF) channel reconfiguration; selection of an advanced sleep mode; or PA bias control.)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Shete with Xie to include mapping the policy to at least one operating mode of an open-cloud resource, as taught by Xie, in paragraph [0125], to provide a technique for energy saving performance optimization in an O-RAN based communication system i.
Combination of Shete and Xie teaches:
classifying the open-cloud resources in a cluster template; and transmitting the features, the policy, the policy criteria, and the mapping of the policy to a service management and orchestrator or an open-cloud.
However, Di Domenico teaches:
classifying the open-cloud resources in a cluster template; and – in paragraphs [0004]-[0117] (An affinitization component 418 is configured to determine an extent of similarity among nodes in an enterprise network, and in some embodiments group those nodes into “profiles” or collections of similar-acting nodes.)
transmitting the features, the policy, the policy criteria, and the mapping of the policy to a service management and orchestrator or an open-cloud. – in paragraphs [0004]-[0117] (A enterprise management configuration server 130 can be configured to distribute security policy configurations to one or more management servers 120, or different security policies (or portions of a common security policy, as discussed further below) to different management servers. A security policy generation component 424 is configured to generate, based on the arrangement and settings defined using the configuration user interface of the enterprise security management configuration tool, an exportable file that can be ingested by the management server 120 of FIG. 1, for population of the configuration database 122 and subsequent dispersion of security policy settings throughout the enterprise network.)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Shete and Xie with Di Domenico to include classifying the open-cloud resources in a cluster template; and transmitting the features, the policy, the policy criteria, and the mapping of the policy to a service management and orchestrator or an open-cloud, as taught by Shete, in paragraphs [0001]-[0048], to provide technique for optimizing or influencing orchestration and management of the O-Cloud or operation and maintenance of O-RAN elements.
2, 9. The method according to claim 1, – refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
Shete teaches:
wherein the features comprise: a power savings rate of an amount of power saved by the policy during a predetermined period of time, a resource availability or open-cloud resources, a time window during which the policy or the at least one operating mode can be activated, or a location of a cloud site that supports virtual radio access network functions. – in paragraphs [0008]-[0156] (An rApp (i.e., one or more rApps) subscribes to FCAPS (fault, configuration, accounting, performance, security) data over the O1 interface and the O2 interface from E2 nodes and O-Cloud services (IMS/DMS), respectively, such as CPU Utilization for NFs, bare metal power consumption, CPU load, memory load, CPU frequency, etc.)
3, 10. The method according to claim 1, – refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
Shete teaches:
wherein the policy and the policy criteria are defined based on a value, threshold, or range. – in paragraphs [0008]-[0156] (At step S202, the rApp trains at least one AI/ML model and/or executes at least one pre-defined algorithm with data retrieved over the O1 and O2 interfaces, to produce a policy intent for energy savings in different schemes for respective nodes. Examples of policy intents include CPU frequency change, CPU load reductions, suspension of ongoing processes in O-Cloud, relocation of an application to another set of servers, putting unused servers to sleep state, etc.)
4, 12. The method according to claim 1, – refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
Xie teaches:
wherein the at least one operating mode is a consolidated range of energy consumption achieved by different policies applied together, and wherein the at least one operating mode comprises performance, balance, or eco. – in paragraphs [0006]-[0447] (The different energy saving policies may correspond to a determined energy saving mode, where the determined energy saving mode may include one of: an energy saving mode of carrier/cell switch off/on; an energy saving mode of radio frequency (RF) channel reconfiguration; selection of an advanced sleep mode; or PA bias control.)
5, 13. The method according to claim 1, – refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
Di Domenico teaches:
further comprising: grouping the policy with additional policies based on similarities or conditions that satisfy the policy criteria. – in paragraphs [0004]-[0117] (Determine a common security policy to apply to each of the nodes within the at least one profile.)
6, 14. The method according to claim 1, – refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
Di Domenico teaches:
wherein classification of the open-cloud resources or cluster nodes is based on at least one of the following: the operating mode, or a cluster label, wherein the cluster label is an attribute defined in a deployment descriptor of a network function deployment. – in paragraphs [0004]-[0117] (An affinitization component 418 is configured to determine an extent of similarity among nodes in an enterprise network, and in some embodiments group those nodes into “profiles” or collections of similar-acting nodes.)
7, 15. The method according to claim 1, – refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
Di Domenico teaches:
wherein the cluster template identifies a group of open-cloud resources or cluster nodes provisioned in a static mode node group or a dynamic mode node group. – in paragraphs [0004]-[0117] (An affinitization component 418 is configured to determine an extent of similarity among nodes in an enterprise network, and in some embodiments group those nodes into “profiles” or collections of similar-acting nodes.)
11. The apparatus according to claim 8, – refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
Xie teaches:
wherein the policy criteria is defined by at least one of the following: on/off, any/do not care, or emoji and neutral. – in paragraphs [0006]-[0447] (The different energy saving policies may correspond to a determined energy saving mode, where the determined energy saving mode may include one of: an energy saving mode of carrier/cell switch off/on; an energy saving mode of radio frequency (RF) channel reconfiguration; selection of an advanced sleep mode; or PA bias control. An energy saving configuration including information indicating one or more time units that are switched off, wherein the time unit includes at least one of one or more symbols, one or more slots, one or more subframes, or one or more radio frames.)
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MUHAMMAD RAZA whose telephone number is (571)272-7734. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday, 7:00 A.M.-5:00 P.M..
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Vivek Srivastava can be reached on (571)272-7304. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MUHAMMAD RAZA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2449