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 4/4/2025.
Claims 1-18 are pending.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) filed on 1/23/2025 and 9/4/2025 have been considered by Examiner.
Claim Objections
Claim 10 is objected to because of the following informalities: the terms “The communication apparatus” at the end of the limitation “a memory coupled to the at least one processor…” should be deleted, since it appears to be a typographical error. Appropriate correction is required.
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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-2, 4-6, 10-11, 13-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Boettger (USPAN 2016/0353316).
Consider claims 1 and 10, Boettger discloses a communication method (see paragraph 155 and figure 9 (reproduced below for convenience), wherein disclosed is said method) and a corresponding communication apparatus, comprising: at least one processor; and a memory coupled to the at least one processor and configured to store executable instructions for execution by the at least one processor to instruct the at least one processor to (see figures 4-5, wherein disclosed is said communication apparatus comprising said processor and memory):
determine that a first data frame is lost; and discard a first data packet received from an upper layer, wherein the first data packet is a part of or all data packets in a second data frame, the second data frame is located after the first data frame, and the second data frame is associated with the first data frame (see paragraph 155: “Because RLC retransmissions are not performed for VoLTE communications (as noted above), if one RLC packet segment is lost then the entire RTP (or audio packet) is lost. The RLC packet segment may be lost either due to congestion in the RLC buffer or due to bad RF conditions, whereby a maximum number of HARQ ReTXs has been reached and the decoding at the eNB still fails, resulting in the UE receiving a NACK from the eNB. Accordingly, in one set of embodiments, congestion and excessive battery consumption may be avoided by discarding an (entire) RTP (e.g. audio) packet for which a single RLC packet segment has failed to reach the eNB, as it would not be possible for the eNB or the MT (Mobile Termination) UE (i.e. destination UE) to reconstruct the audio packet if an RLC packet segment of that packet has been lost. Discarding such RTP packets may further help with congestion and may improve use of the NW resources.”; also, see paragraph 169: “At 908, the UE may determine if at least one of the monitored packet segments has remained too long in a second buffer associated with a third layer (lower than the second layer), for example whether at least one MAC PDU corresponding to the RLC packet segment has gone through a specified number of retransmission tries from an HARQ buffer and yet failed to reach the eNB. If that RLC packet segment (or MAC PDU corresponding to the RLC packet segment) has failed to reach the eNB, it is beneficial to drop all RLC packet segments that make up the previously segmented RTP packet, since the packet cannot be reconstructed by the eNB and/or mobile terminating UE. Accordingly, if at least one of the monitored packet segments has remained too long in the second buffer (“Yes” branch taken at 908), the UE may discard the packet segment, as well as all the other multiple packet segments associated with the previously segmented RTP (e.g. audio) packet (910)”).
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Consider claims 2 and 11, Boettger discloses that the second data frame is associated with the first data frame comprises: all data packets in the first data frame and the second data frame are transmitted in a same time unit; or all data packets in the first data frame and the second data frame are data packets before arrival of a data packet in a third data frame, wherein a data radio bearer (DRB) or quality of service (QOS) flow to which the third data frame is mapped is different from a DRB or QoS flow to which the second data frame is mapped (see paragraphs 155 and 169: “discarding an (entire) RTP (e.g. audio) packet for which a single RLC packet segment has failed to reach the eNB,” which therefore makes it implicit that the packets in the first and second data frames or segments are transmitted in a same time unit).
Consider claims 4 and 13, Boettger discloses that the determining, by a first device, that a first data frame is lost comprises: when a timer that corresponds to a second data packet and that is maintained by a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) entity of the first device expires, and the second data packet is not successfully transmitted, determining, by the PDCP entity of the first device, that the first data frame is lost, wherein the second data packet is a part of or all data packets in the first data frame (see paragraph 140: “PDC discard timer. This is related to the delay between generation of a packet and actual transmission of the generated packet. That is, it is the time duration for which a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) packet's corresponding Radio Link Control (RLC) packet segments are stored in the RLC buffer before being transmitted. The discard timer specifies an upper limit or maximum time period/duration for which a packet (or packet segment) may remain in the RLC buffer before the packet is dropped. E.g. according to the VoLTE QCI 1 specification, this time limit is ˜100 ms. If the (e.g. audio) packet remains in the RLC buffer longer than the allotted maximum time period/duration specified by the protocol (e.g. 100 ms in case of VoLTE), i.e. if the presence of the packet (segment) in the RLC buffer exceeds the allowed maximum time duration, the packet (segment) is dropped”).
Consider claims 5 and 14, Boettger discloses that the second data packet is not successfully transmitted meets at least one of the following: a PDCP service data unit (SDU) or PDCP protocol data unit (PDU) corresponding to the second data packet has not been delivered to a radio link control (RLC) entity; the PDCP PDU is delivered to the RLC entity, and an RLC SDU corresponding to the PDCP PDU or a segment of the RLC SDU is not sent; after the RLC SDU corresponding to the PDCP PDU or the segment of the RLC SDU is transmitted most recently, the first device receives an RLC negative acknowledgment (NACK) corresponding to the RLC SDU or the segment of the RLC SDU; or after at least one media access control (MAC) PDU corresponding to the PDCP PDU is transmitted most recently, the first device receives a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) NACK corresponding to the at least one MAC PDU (see paragraph 140: “PDC discard timer. This is related to the delay between generation of a packet and actual transmission of the generated packet. That is, it is the time duration for which a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) packet's corresponding Radio Link Control (RLC) packet segments are stored in the RLC buffer before being transmitted. The discard timer specifies an upper limit or maximum time period/duration for which a packet (or packet segment) may remain in the RLC buffer before the packet is dropped. E.g. according to the VoLTE QCI 1 specification, this time limit is ˜100 ms. If the (e.g. audio) packet remains in the RLC buffer longer than the allotted maximum time period/duration specified by the protocol (e.g. 100 ms in case of VoLTE), i.e. if the presence of the packet (segment) in the RLC buffer exceeds the allowed maximum time duration, the packet (segment) is dropped”).
Consider claims 6 and 15, Boettger discloses that the discarding, by the first device, a first data packet received from an upper layer comprises: discarding, by the PDCP entity of the first device, the first data packet received from the upper layer (see paragraph 140: “PDC discard timer. This is related to the delay between generation of a packet and actual transmission of the generated packet. That is, it is the time duration for which a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) packet's corresponding Radio Link Control (RLC) packet segments are stored in the RLC buffer before being transmitted. The discard timer specifies an upper limit or maximum time period/duration for which a packet (or packet segment) may remain in the RLC buffer before the packet is dropped. E.g. according to the VoLTE QCI 1 specification, this time limit is ˜100 ms. If the (e.g. audio) packet remains in the RLC buffer longer than the allotted maximum time period/duration specified by the protocol (e.g. 100 ms in case of VoLTE), i.e. if the presence of the packet (segment) in the RLC buffer exceeds the allowed maximum time duration, the packet (segment) is dropped”).
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 3 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Boettger (USPAN 2016/0353316) in view of Cherian (USPAN 2014/0036679).
Consider claims 3 and 12, Boettger discloses that the first device is a terminal device and a second device is a network device (see above), but does not disclose sending, by the first device, capability reporting information to the second device, wherein the capability reporting information indicates that the first device supports proactive frame discarding; and receiving, by the first device, configuration information from the second device, wherein the configuration information is for configuring a proactive frame discarding function.
Cherian discloses sending, by the first device, capability reporting information to the second device, wherein the capability reporting information indicates that the first device supports proactive frame discarding; and receiving, by the first device, configuration information from the second device, wherein the configuration information is for configuring a proactive frame discarding function (see paragraph 58: “The catch-all filter may be implemented using rules set at RSVP signaling. A new field to the TFT may be added that indicates whether a "catch-all-discard" function (discard attribute/information element/function) should be enabled or not. Alternatively, a new configuration option may be added to an IP Configuration Protocol (IPCP) or to a vendor specific network control protocol (VSNCP) indicating whether a "catch-all-discard" function should be enabled or not for a particular PDN gateway (P-GW).”).
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 Boettger and combine it with the noted teachings of Cherian. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method for selectively discarding packets to be transmitted in a packet data network (see paragraph 3 of Cherian).
Claims 7 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Boettger (USPAN 2016/0353316) in view of Liu (USPAN 2020/0100156).
Consider claims 7 and 16, Boettger discloses discarding, by the first deice, a first data packet received from an upper layer (see above), but does not disclose discarding by a service data adaptation protocol (SDAP) entity.
Liu discloses discarding packets by a service data adaptation protocol (SDAP) entity (see paragraph 106: “a UE discards UL data packets in the released DRB if a new configured DRB has a different UL SDAP header configuration (e.g., the released DRB uses SDAP headers and the new DRB does not use SDAP headers) and a different QFI-to-DRB mapping than the released DRB. Also, in previously known techniques, if the old configuration uses UL SDAP headers and the new configuration does not use UL SDAP headers, then the receiving gNB treats the SDAP headers (i.e., from the packets configured using the old configuration) as user data, and hence, the upper layer (e.g., TCP/UDP/IP) protocol will find the data format invalid and discard the packets.”).
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 Boettger and combine it with the noted teachings of Liu. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method for avoiding out of order uplink data reception upon data radio bearer (DRB) release (see paragraph 2 of Liu).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 8-9 and 17-18 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