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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-20 are pending.
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 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.
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 1-7,11-17, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Krishan et al (US Pub. No. 2023/0007456), hereafter, “Krishan Pub” in view of Krishan et al (US Pat. 11,283,883), hereafter, “Krishan Pat.”
As to claim 1, Krishan Pub discloses a policy control function (PCF) system, comprising: one or more processors; and a memory having stored thereon instructions that, upon execution by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to (Abstract):
receive, from a binding support function (BSF), a first request including a cookie custom attribute value (Fig. 6 and [0094], “In step 601, a notification (e.g., a PUT operation or related message) for indicating a potentially stale binding record from BSF 200 to PCF 112. For example, a notification may be directed to a notification URL associated with PCF 112 and may include a binding resource ID for indicating a binding record along with related context data (e.g., a cookie or AVP indicating an SMF URL, a UDR URL, and/or a CHF URL).”);
look up an N7 session corresponding to the first Rx session request in a primary table using the cookie custom attribute value (Fig. 6 and [0095], particularly, “For example, PCF 112 may maintain or access a local data store containing active binding or related session records, where the data store uses a binding resource ID as a lookup key. In this example, PCF 112 may obtain a binding resource ID from a notification and may use the binding resource ID to lookup a record in the local data store.” With [0034] disclosing “N7”); and
provide a response message to the BSF based on the N7 session (Fig. 6 and [0096]-[0097], particularly, “In step 603, a response message (e.g., an HTTP 204 No Content message) indicating the binding record is active may be sent from PCF 112 to BSF 200. In this example, the response message may be configurable between BSF 200 and PCF 112 (or other network entities) and usable for indicating that the binding record is active (and should not be deleted) or that the binding record is inactive (and should be deleted).”).
However, Krishan Pub does not explicitly disclose the first request is specifically a Rx session request.
But, Krishan Pat discloses a policy control function (PCF) system, comprising: one or more processors; and a memory having stored thereon instructions that, upon execution by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to:
receive, from a binding support function (BSF), a first Rx session request (Fig. 5, labels “PCF” and “BSF,” and column 10, line 56-column 11, line 20; particularly, “In line 6 of the message flow diagram, Diameter gateway 504 sends an Rx-AAR-I proxy message to Diameter gateway 510 of PCF 102… In line 13, Diameter gateway 510 sends the Rx-AAA-I message to Diameter gateway 504.”)
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Krishan Pat and Krishan Pub in order to utilize a known and reliable means in order to extend the system to a broader variety of systems and entities.
As to claim 11, it is rejected by a similar rationale by that set forth in claim 1’s rejection.
As to claim 2 and 12, the teachings of Krishan Pub and Krishan Pat as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 1’s rejection further disclose receive an N7 session creation request; generate the cookie custom attribute value in response to the N7 session creation request; and send a binding request to the BSF in response to the N7 session creation request, the binding request including the cookie custom attribute value (Krishan Pub, Fig. 4 and [0062]-[0070]).
As to claim 3 and 13, the teachings of Krishan Pub and Krishan Pat as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 1’s rejection further disclose receive the N7 session creation request from a session management function (SMF); and generate the cookie custom attribute value as a session management policy identifier (smPolicyld) value (Krishan Pub, Fig. 5, [0079]-[0082]).
As to claim 4 and 14, the teachings of Krishan Pub and Krishan Pat as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 1’s rejection further disclose receive a second Rx session request not including the cookie custom attribute value; look up a primary key value from a secondary table using identifying information from the second Rx session request as a secondary key; and look up a second N7 session corresponding to the second Rx session request in the primary table using the primary key value (Krishan Pub, Fig. 6 and [0094]-[0096], see also [0114], and Krishan Pat, Fig. 5 and column 10, line 56-column 11, line 20).
As to claim 5 and 15, the teachings of Krishan Pub and Krishan Pat as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 1’s rejection further disclose maintain a plurality of secondary tables for looking up the primary key value, the plurality of secondary tables using different potential identifying information elements from Rx session requests as secondary keys; and determine which secondary table from the plurality of secondary tables to use based on which information is included in the second Rx session request (Krishan Pub, Fig. 6 and [0094]-[0096], see also [0114], and Krishan Pat, Fig. 5 and column 10, line 56-column 11, line 20).
As to claim 6 and 16, the teachings of Krishan Pub and Krishan Pat as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 1’s rejection further disclose determine whether the BSF supports a cookie custom feature based on an NF profile obtained from a network repository function (NRF) (Krishan Pub, Fig. 6, [0004]-[0005], and [0094]-[0096].
As to claim 7 and 17, the teachings of Krishan Pub and Krishan Pat as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 1’s rejection further disclose send the binding request including the cookie custom attribute value to the BSF when the BSF supports the cookie custom feature; and do not send the cookie custom attribute value with the binding request when the BSF does not support the cookie custom feature (Krishan Pub, Fig. 6, [0004]-[0005], and [0094]-[0096]).
As to claim 20, the teachings of Krishan Pub and Krishan Pat as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 1’s rejection further disclose the first Rx session request includes an initial authorization authentication request (AAR- I) message; and the response message includes an application authentication answer (AAA) message (Krishan Pat, Fig. 5 and column 10, line 56-column 11, line 20).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 8-10, 18, and 19 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 THOMAS J DAILEY whose telephone number is (571)270-1246. The examiner can normally be reached 9:30am-6:00pm.
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/THOMAS J DAILEY/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2458
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