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 .
Claim Status
Claims 1-18 and 26 are currently pending. Claims 19-25 are cancelled.
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group I (claims 1-20 and 26) and Species I (claims 1-18 and 26) in the reply filed on 07-16-2026 is acknowledged.
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(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.
Claim(s) 1-6, 8-10, 18 and 26 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) or (a)(2) as being anticipated by BELT (US 2021/0264799).
Regarding claims 1 and 26,
Belt teaches an apparatus for violation detection, comprising:
memory([0112] teaches a memory media 1025); and one or more processors ([0112] teaches an oversight processor) coupled to the memory and configured to:
detect, at a first network entity, a violation of an area restriction by an aerial device([0158] teaches "determining whether the current position of the UAV (a) is approaching a violation of or is already violating the UAV's operational envelope or (b) is deviating from the flight path defined in the flight plan.... and/or (iii) the current position of the UAV violates the UAV's operational envelope,"; 1242d in fig. 12; [0023] teaches, "The operational envelope can specify airspace at a site of operation in which the UAV is permitted to fly. Stated another way, the operational envelope can specify airspace at the site of operation to which (e.g., autonomous) operation of the UAV is bound." ; at least 324 in [0049] is interpreted as corresponding to "a first network entity" as broadly recited); and
trigger a notification to a second network entity based on the violation of the area restriction, the notification causing a warning notification to be sent regarding the violation of the area restriction ([0159] teaches that if the method 1240 proceeds to block 1244 from subblock 1242d, the UAV can be configured to take one or more emergency actions. In some embodiments, the oversight processor of the UAV communicates with the flight controller over a uni-directional communications line to trigger an alert or alarm; at least 321 in [0049] is interpreted as corresponding to "A second network entity" as broadly recited; [0057] teaches, "The microcontroller 431 of the control tower 130 is also configured to receive, over the network communications interface 433... (b) data (e.g., positional, directional, altitude, pressure, and/or other data) from the UAV 120...").
Regarding claim 2,
Belt teaches that the notification comprises a network exposure function (NEF) notification; and to trigger the notification, the one or more processors are configured to provide information about the aerial device violating the area restriction to a network exposure function (NEF) (see flight manager 110 including webserver portal 219 per [0042] which teaches flight manager 110 receives positional information and other information from UAV 120, control tower 130 and navigation beacons 140 and uses this information to identify emergencies and make flight related decisions; [0042]-[0043] teaches that 219 provides a user interface and further teaches that oversight processor detects violations and can trigger alerts or alarms).
Regarding claim 3 ,
Belt teaches that the first network entity comprises a radio access network entity (RAN) entity, and wherein the second network entity comprises an access management function (AMF) entity ([0035] teaches that various components of the system 100 can include “n” number of radios or communication devices to create “n” level redundancy for communication and/or localization.)
Regarding claim 4,
Belt teaches that the one or more processors are further configured to perform aerial device monitoring without a solicitation for monitoring by a third party controller, wherein the violation is detected based on the aerial device monitoring ([0049] teaches that the oversight processor 324 continually monitors the UAV's 120 position in space and compares the position to operational envelope parameters; [0148] teaches that UAV 120 autonomously performs its flight operations and continuously evaluates conditions during flight ; (B) fig. 1A teaches at least a flight manager, interpreted as corresponding to an access management function entity, as broadly recited).
Regarding claim 5,
Belt teaches that the aerial device monitoring is agnostic of an identifier of the aerial device ([0049] teaches that the monitoring operation comprises obtaining the UAV's position, comparing the position to the envelope parameters and determining whether the UAV is operating within or outside of said parameters. belt does not teach that a UAV identifier is required as an input to perform this monitoring operation).
Regarding claim 6,
Belt teaches that the one or more processors are further configured to: receive, at the second network entity, the notification; and trigger, at the second network entity, the warning notification via an NEF notification service based on the notification ([0048] teaches that the flight controller 321 can stop the UAV 120 and cause the UAV 120 to hover in place until the flight controller 321 receives a navigational command from the user and/or the flight manager 110 that will not cause the UAV 120 to breach the operational envelope.)
Regarding claim 8,
Belt teaches that the one or more processors are further configured to receive, from a third party controller, an indication of an area associated with the area restriction, wherein the detection of the violation is performed based on the indication of the area ([0166] teaches that the navigation beacons, control tower, and flight manager can continuously capture data related to (and/or can continuously monitor environmental conditions of) the site of operation while the UAV executes the flight plan. In these embodiments, the flight manager can identify external emergencies that can jeopardize the safe and/or successful execution of the flight plan based at least in part on the captured data and/or environmental conditions. As such, the flight manager can generate commands for the UAV to execute in response to identifying an external emergency and can transmit these commands to the UAV.)
Regarding claim 9,
Belt teaches that the one or more processors are further configured to perform aerial device monitoring within an area associated with the area restriction, wherein the violation by the aerial device is detected based on the aerial device monitoring([0049] teaches that processor 324 continually monitors UAV 120's position and compares it to the operational envelope parameters, the operational envelope establishing geographic and altitude restrictions on UAV operations. [0158] teaches that oversight processor 324 evaluates the UAV's current position and trajectory to determine whether the UAV is violating an operational envelope).
Regarding claim 10,
Belt teaches that the one or more processors are configured to detect detecting that the aerial device has deviated from a flight path by a threshold distance ([0158] teaches determining that the UAV is deviating from the flight path defined in the flight plan by more than one or more deviation thresholds.)
Regarding claim 18,
Belt teaches that the one or more processors are configured to detect the violation independently of any location information provided by the aerial device ([0025] teaches that the oversight processor of the UAV can (a) oversee operation of the flight controller by independently analyzing data collected by and/or provided to the UAV, and (b) intercede when it detects that the UAV has or is about to violate the operational envelope; [0065] teaches that operational envelope information may be provided by a camera to a beacon, independent from information which is provided by the aerial device itself).
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.
Claim(s) 7 and 14-16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over BELT (US 2021/0264799) in view of XU (US 2022/0353631).
Regarding claim 7,
Belt teaches the apparatus of claim 6, but fails to expressly teach that the NEF notification service triggers an application function (AF) service to send the warning notification.
XU teaches that an NEF notification service triggers an application function (AF) service to send the warning notification ([0118] teaches a step 16a, wherein monitoring the moving of the UAV into or out of the geo-fencing area, the AMF entity can notify the NEF entity of information indicating the moving of the UAV into or out of the geo-fencing area, such that the NEF entity can further notify the UTM for the UTM to implement corresponding management and control measures over the UAV.)
Before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to modify the Belt system per the teachings of Xu such that the networks NEF notifies an application-side UAV management service which then sends a warning notification for the purpose of delivering the detected event to a service responsible for managing the UAV and to enable timely coordinated responses to a determined violation.
Regarding claim 14,
Xu teaches that the first network entity is a base station dedicated to aerial device monitoring for violation detection ([0109] teaches that the geo-fencing area information of the terminal device can be transmitted to the terminal device, the base station, the AMF entity, and the SMF entity, so that the 3GPP network can better serve access management and control of terminal device (such as the unmanned aerial vehicle device). )
Regarding claim 15,
Xu teaches that the base station is different than a serving base station of the aerial device ([0054] teaches a variety of base stations such as a Base Transceiver Station (BTS) in a GSM or a CDMA, a base station such as NodeB (NB) in a WCDMA, an evolutional base station such as an Evolutional Node B (eNB or eNodeB) in an LTE, a relay station or an access point, a base station such as a gNB in an NR network).
Regarding claim 16,
Xu teaches that the one or more processors are further configured to identify the aerial device using coordination with a serving network of the aerial device ([0058] teaches that a UTM relies on UAV position information provided by the 3GPP network, e.g., an identifier of a cell where the UAV is located in the 3GPP network).
Claim(s) 13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over BELT (US 2021/0264799) in view of BERGGREN (US 2022/0321647).
Regarding claim 13,
Bely teaches the apparatus of claim 1, but fails to teach the further recited features.
BERGGREN teaches detecting the violation such that the one or more processors are configured to perform uplink (UL) channel quality estimation based on one or more signal transmissions from the aerial device (see [0189]-[0204]; [0190] teaches determining whether a UE is an aerial UE. [0191] teaches a power control setting in Uplink (UL) transmission; [0192] Predicting beamforming parameters (e.g., best beam) and/or compressed channel state information (CSI); [0193] Prediction of random access parameters; [0194] Link adaptation, such as preferred selection of modulation and coding scheme; [0195] Mobility operations, e.g., the model output can include any of: [0196] Prediction of channel quality for a non-serving RAN node (e.g., transmitting a secondary carrier) or other performance metrics, such as [0197] Radio channel estimation in uplink and downlink; [0198] Channel quality indicator (CQI) estimation/selection; [0199] Signal to noise estimation for uplink and downlink; [0200] Signal to noise and interference estimation; [0201] Reference signal received power (RSRP) estimation, and [0202] Reference signal received quality (RSRQ) estimation. [0203] teaches prediction of forecasted signal quality/strength degradation; [0204] UE localization, e.g., predicted UE position.)
Before the effective filing date of the invention, it would have been obvious to modify belt per the teachings of Berggren for the purpose of providing radio-condition information for evaluating the aerial device and would have predictably supported the monitoring and detection process.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 11, 12 and 17 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 DIONNE PENDLETON whose telephone number is (571)272-7497. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9a-5pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Davetta Goins can be reached at 571-272-2957. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/DIONNE PENDLETON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2689
