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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
An information disclosure statement was not filed with this application.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Under Prong 1, the claim(s) recite(s) a mental process that can practically be performed in the human mind (e.g., Claim 1: analyzing, determining, obtaining, analyzing). See MPEP § 2106.04(a)(2)(III) (“a claim to ‘collecting information, analyzing it, and displaying certain results of the collection and analysis,’ where the data analysis steps are recited at a high level of generality such that they could practically be performed in the human mind, Electric Power Group v. Alstom, S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1353-54, 119 USPQ2d 1739, 1741-42 (Fed. Cir. 2016)”).
Under Prong 2A, this judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the additional elements “based, at least in part on the analyzing, causing one or more operations to execute that are associated with the network performance issue” merely add insignificant extra-solution activity or constitute merely “applying it.” For example, claim 8 further defines the elements of this clause as merely “generating a ticket,” which aligns with merely displaying results that was found ineligible in Electric Power Group. Electric Power Group, 830 F.3d at 1351 and n.1, 119 USPQ2d at 1740 and n.1. However, the alternative option (“performing one or more workflows to address the network performance issue”) may be held eligible if it improves a specific technological environment.
Under Prong 2B, the claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the additional elements “based, at least in part on the analyzing, causing one or more operations to execute that are associated with the network performance issue” amount to necessary data gathering and outputting. MPEP § 2106.05(g)(3) (“Selecting a particular data source or type of data to be manipulated . . . iii. Selecting information, based on types of information and availability of information in a [cellular network] environment, for collection, analysis and display”).
Therefore, the claims are ineligible.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Non-patent Literature entitled, “Listen to Me if You can: Tracking User Experience of Mobile Network on Social Media” (hereinafter “Qiu”) in view of U.S. Publication No. 2021/0037399 (hereinafter “Jat”)
Regarding claim 1, Qiu teaches: A method, comprising: analyzing one or more user posts to identify a network performance issue within a cellular network (Abstract - In this paper, we are particularly interested in tweets (Twitter messages) that are relevant to mobile network performance.); determining a location of the network performance issue within the cellular network (p. 289:c1:¶2 User information consists of the user profile such as user location to help localize issues reported.); obtaining network data from one or more components within the cellular network based at least in part on the location (p. 289:c2:¶2 The incidents in the report include a wide variety of network and service issues including hardware failures, major maintenance activities, outages due to adverse weather, congestion due to flash crowds (e.g., highway accident causing traffic congestion and unexpected high cellular network congestion), etc. Reading through the incidents report, we first filtered out those non-customer-impacting events from our study, such as planned system upgrade where redundant capacity is in use during the upgrade. We have also excluded very long incidents (e.g., greater than three hours) in the later part of the analysis so that the chance of falsely joining a network or service event to independent customer care tickets and tweets is low.); analyzing the network data to identify additional information about the network performance issue (p. 290:c1:¶1 Then we classify the data into different categories and drill down to the performance-related tweets. Finally, we examine the delay of user feedback, namely, how long it takes for a user to report a problem after he/she experienced it.).
Qiu teaches all of the elements of claim 1, except: based, at least in part on the analyzing, causing one or more operations to execute that are associated with the network performance issue.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: based, at least in part on the analyzing, causing one or more operations to execute that are associated with the network performance issue (Step 360).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of causing one or more operations to execute and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., causing one or more operations to execute).
Regarding claim 2, Qiu teaches: wherein the one or more user posts are from one or more of social media platforms, messaging applications, or websites (Abstract - Twitter messages).
Regarding claim 3, Qiu teaches: wherein analyzing the one or more of the user posts comprises performing one or more of sentiment analysis on at least a portion of the user posts, or keyword detection on text associated with at least the portion of the user posts (Conclusion - It would also be interesting to quantify the severity level of performance related tweets by the scale of the responses and the sentiment in the messages (e.g. to detect urgent issues based on users’ attitude).).
Regarding claim 4, Qiu does not teach: wherein determining the location comprises determining a cell site of the cellular network that has a degraded performance.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: wherein determining the location comprises determining a cell site of the cellular network that has a degraded performance ([0028] distance between the customer and at least one telecommunications network site . . . For example, the KPIs data collection module 220 can collect information of a user's location using his/her social media posts (e.g., tweets, check-ins, posts, etc.).).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of determining a cell site and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., determining a cell site).
Regarding claim 5, Qiu does not teach: confirming the location based on an analysis of at least a portion of the network data.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: confirming the location based on an analysis of at least a portion of the network data ([0028] As another example, the KPIs data collection module 220 collects application level data (e.g., collected using applications related to Internet of Things (IoT) devices, sensors , billing meters, traffic lights, etc.) to identify the user location and/or data related to the performance indicators).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of confirming the location and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., confirming the location).
Regarding claim 6, Qiu does not teach: wherein obtaining the network data from the one or more components within the cellular network based at least in part on the location comprises obtaining key performance indicator data that indicates information about current network conditions.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: wherein obtaining the network data from the one or more components within the cellular network based at least in part on the location comprises obtaining key performance indicator data that indicates information about current network conditions ([0028] The KPIs data collection module 220 collects/receives/accesses one or more of the following data records associated with the performance indicators (which can be stored in the capacity gain database 255): location specific records (LSR), call data records (CDRs), timing advance values, RF signal data, distance between the customer and at least one telecommunications network site, strength of signal, quantity of data used, type of device of the customer, applications data (e.g., application type, name, owner, manager, data sent/received/used/saved, bandwidth used, APIs accessed, etc.), source of usage records (for example, telecommunications service provider, third-party, application owner, etc.).).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of obtaining key performance indicator data and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., obtaining key performance indicator data).
Regarding claim 7, Qiu does not teach: wherein analyzing the network data comprises determining a health of one or more components deployed at one or more cell sites based, at least in part, on the location.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: wherein analyzing the network data comprises determining a health of one or more components deployed at one or more cell sites based, at least in part, on the location (Abstract - For each solution deployed at a cell site, the method computes values of the following composite gain metrics: weighted gain and offload index. The method then can rank the solutions based on the computed composite gain metric values so that an optimum solution can be selected.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of determining a health and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., determining a health).
Regarding claim 8, Qiu does not teach: wherein causing the one or more operations to execute comprises notifying a user of the network performance issue, generating a ticket associated with the network performance issue, or performing one or more workflows to address the network performance issue.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: wherein causing the one or more operations to execute comprises notifying a user of the network performance issue, generating a ticket associated with the network performance issue, or performing one or more workflows to address the network performance issue (Step 360).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of causing one or more operations to execute and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., causing one or more operations to execute).
Regarding claim 9, Qiu teaches: A system to facilitate performance a cellular network, comprising: one or more electronic processors; components installed within the cellular network, wherein the components include radio units (RUs), distributed units (DUs), and centralized units (CUs); and a network performance manager installed a location that is remote from cell sites of the cellular network, the network performance manager configured to perform actions using the one or more electronic processors, including to: analyze one or more user posts to identify a network performance issue within a cellular network (Abstract - In this paper, we are particularly interested in tweets (Twitter messages) that are relevant to mobile network performance.); determine a location of the network performance issue within the cellular network (p. 289:c1:¶2 User information consists of the user profile such as user location to help localize issues reported.); obtain network data from one or more components within the cellular network based at least in part on the location (p. 289:c2:¶2 The incidents in the report include a wide variety of network and service issues including hardware failures, major maintenance activities, outages due to adverse weather, congestion due to flash crowds (e.g., highway accident causing traffic congestion and unexpected high cellular network congestion), etc. Reading through the incidents report, we first filtered out those non-customer-impacting events from our study, such as planned system upgrade where redundant capacity is in use during the upgrade. We have also excluded very long incidents (e.g., greater than three hours) in the later part of the analysis so that the chance of falsely joining a network or service event to independent customer care tickets and tweets is low.); analyze the network data to identify additional information about the network performance issue (p. 290:c1:¶1 Then we classify the data into different categories and drill down to the performance-related tweets. Finally, we examine the delay of user feedback, namely, how long it takes for a user to report a problem after he/she experienced it.).
Qiu teaches all of the elements of claim 1, except: based, at least in part on the analyzing, cause one or more operations to execute that are associated with the network performance issue.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: based, at least in part on the analyzing, cause one or more operations to execute that are associated with the network performance issue (Step 360).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of causing one or more operations to execute and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., causing one or more operations to execute).
Regarding claim 10, Qiu teaches: wherein the one or more user posts are from one or more of social media platforms, messaging applications, or websites (Abstract - Twitter messages).
Regarding claim 11, Qiu teaches: wherein analyzing the one or more of the user posts comprises performing one or more of sentiment analysis on at least a portion of the user posts, or keyword detection on text associated with at least the portion of the user posts (Conclusion - It would also be interesting to quantify the severity level of performance related tweets by the scale of the responses and the sentiment in the messages (e.g. to detect urgent issues based on users’ attitude).).
Regarding claim 12, Qiu does not teach: wherein determining the location comprises determining a cell site of the cellular network that has a degraded performance.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: wherein determining the location comprises determining a cell site of the cellular network that has a degraded performance ([0028] distance between the customer and at least one telecommunications network site . . . For example, the KPIs data collection module 220 can collect information of a user's location using his/her social media posts (e.g., tweets, check-ins, posts, etc.).).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of determining a cell site and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., determining a cell site).
Regarding claim 13, Qiu does not teach: wherein obtaining the network data from the one or more components within the cellular network based at least in part on the location comprises obtaining key performance indicator data that indicates information about current network conditions.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: wherein obtaining the network data from the one or more components within the cellular network based at least in part on the location comprises obtaining key performance indicator data that indicates information about current network conditions ([0028] The KPIs data collection module 220 collects/receives/accesses one or more of the following data records associated with the performance indicators (which can be stored in the capacity gain database 255): location specific records (LSR), call data records (CDRs), timing advance values, RF signal data, distance between the customer and at least one telecommunications network site, strength of signal, quantity of data used, type of device of the customer, applications data (e.g., application type, name, owner, manager, data sent/received/used/saved, bandwidth used, APIs accessed, etc.), source of usage records (for example, telecommunications service provider, third-party, application owner, etc.).).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of obtaining key performance indicator data and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., obtaining key performance indicator data).
Regarding claim 14, Qiu does not teach: wherein analyzing the network data comprises determining a health of one or more components deployed at one or more cell sites based, at least in part, on the location.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: wherein analyzing the network data comprises determining a health of one or more components deployed at one or more cell sites based, at least in part, on the location (Abstract - For each solution deployed at a cell site, the method computes values of the following composite gain metrics: weighted gain and offload index. The method then can rank the solutions based on the computed composite gain metric values so that an optimum solution can be selected.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of determining a health and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., determining a health).
Regarding claim 15, Qiu does not teach: wherein causing the one or more operations to execute comprises notifying a user of the network performance issue, generating a ticket associated with the network performance issue, or performing one or more workflows to address the network performance issue.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: wherein causing the one or more operations to execute comprises notifying a user of the network performance issue, generating a ticket associated with the network performance issue, or performing one or more workflows to address the network performance issue (Step 360).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of causing one or more operations to execute and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., causing one or more operations to execute).
Regarding claim 16, Qiu teaches: A non-transitory computer-readable medium configured to facilitate performance a cellular network, wherein the non-transitory computer-readable medium, when executed by a computer, causes the computer to: analyze one or more user posts to identify a network performance issue within a cellular network (Abstract - In this paper, we are particularly interested in tweets (Twitter messages) that are relevant to mobile network performance.); determine a location of the network performance issue within the cellular network (p. 289:c1:¶2 User information consists of the user profile such as user location to help localize issues reported.); obtain network data from one or more components within the cellular network based at least in part on the location (p. 289:c2:¶2 The incidents in the report include a wide variety of network and service issues including hardware failures, major maintenance activities, outages due to adverse weather, congestion due to flash crowds (e.g., highway accident causing traffic congestion and unexpected high cellular network congestion), etc. Reading through the incidents report, we first filtered out those non-customer-impacting events from our study, such as planned system upgrade where redundant capacity is in use during the upgrade. We have also excluded very long incidents (e.g., greater than three hours) in the later part of the analysis so that the chance of falsely joining a network or service event to independent customer care tickets and tweets is low.); analyze the network data to identify additional information about the network performance issue (p. 290:c1:¶1 Then we classify the data into different categories and drill down to the performance-related tweets. Finally, we examine the delay of user feedback, namely, how long it takes for a user to report a problem after he/she experienced it.).
Qiu teaches all of the elements of claim 1, except: based, at least in part on the analyzing, cause one or more operations to execute that are associated with the network performance issue.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: based, at least in part on the analyzing, cause one or more operations to execute that are associated with the network performance issue (Step 360).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of causing one or more operations to execute and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., causing one or more operations to execute).
Regarding claim 17, Qiu teaches: wherein the one or more user posts are from one or more of social media platforms, messaging applications, or websites (Abstract - Twitter messages).
Regarding claim 18, Qiu teaches: wherein analyzing the one or more of the user posts comprises performing one or more of sentiment analysis on at least a portion of the user posts, or keyword detection on text associated with at least the portion of the user posts (Conclusion - It would also be interesting to quantify the severity level of performance related tweets by the scale of the responses and the sentiment in the messages (e.g. to detect urgent issues based on users’ attitude).).
Regarding claim 19, Qiu does not teach: wherein determining the location comprises determining a cell site of the cellular network that has a degraded performance.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: wherein determining the location comprises determining a cell site of the cellular network that has a degraded performance ([0028] distance between the customer and at least one telecommunications network site . . . For example, the KPIs data collection module 220 can collect information of a user's location using his/her social media posts (e.g., tweets, check-ins, posts, etc.).).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of determining a cell site and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., determining a cell site).
Regarding claim 20, Qiu does not teach: wherein causing the one or more operations to execute comprises notifying a user of the network performance issue, generating a ticket associated with the network performance issue, or performing one or more workflows to address the network performance issue.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Jat teaches: wherein causing the one or more operations to execute comprises notifying a user of the network performance issue, generating a ticket associated with the network performance issue, or performing one or more workflows to address the network performance issue (Step 360).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Qiu to include the feature of causing one or more operations to execute and a combination of Qiu with Jat renders the claim prima facie obvious within the described scope of the prior art and any indicated differences within the level of one of ordinary skill in the art (e.g., telecommunications engineer) according to a combination of known prior art elements with known methods to yield predictable results. MPEP 2143(I)(A) (e.g., causing one or more operations to execute).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Non-patent Literature entitled, “Learning a QoE Metric from Social Media and Gaming Footage” (Alvarez)
Non-patent Literature entitled, “Measuring Online Service Availability Using Twitter” (Motoyama)
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JUSTIN BARRY whose telephone number is (571)272-0201. The examiner can normally be reached 8:00am EST to 5:00pm EST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jinsong HU can be reached at (571) 272-3965. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JAB/ Examiner, Art Unit 2643
/JINSONG HU/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2643
