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 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 15-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter which are process, machine, manufacture and composition of matter. Claims 15 and claim 16 recite “a computer program product” and “a computer readable medium”. Applicant’s specification is silent as to whether the “computer readable medium” excludes “transitory media”. Based on applicant’s specification being silent the broadest reasonable interpretation of “computer readable medium” includes “transitory media”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
This application includes one or more claim limitations that do not use the word “means,” but are nonetheless being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because the claim limitation(s) uses a generic placeholder that is coupled with functional language without reciting sufficient structure to perform the recited function and the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier. Such claim limitation(s) is/are: “ a slice controller configured to perform a slice admission control mechanism” in claim 12.
Because this/these claim limitation(s) is/are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, it/they is/are being interpreted to cover the corresponding structure described in the specification as performing the claimed function, and equivalents thereof.
If applicant does not intend to have this/these limitation(s) interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, applicant may: (1) amend the claim limitation(s) to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph (e.g., by reciting sufficient structure to perform the claimed function); or (2) present a sufficient showing that the claim limitation(s) recite(s) sufficient structure to perform the claimed function so as to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites “based on the slice utility gain, determining a decision on the admission of the slice admission request” in lines 26-27. In the preceding lines of claim 1 it is clear that an “slice admission request” is to be determined. In lines 11-12 and 15-16, claim 1 recites “to admit the slice admission request”. In lines 19-20, claim 1 recites “if the slice admission request is admitted”. By using “the admission” it appears that a preceding “slice admission request” has been admitted. It is unclear, whether the decision is made because the “slice admission request” encompass plural requests because of the language “at least one slice admission request” in line 5.
Dependent clams 2-11 incorporate the same inconsistencies. The language of each dependent claim should also be considered when making appropriate corrections.
Claim 12 is an independent claim incorporating features of claim 1 above. Claim 12 is rejected on the same rationale.
Claim Objections
Claims 1-12 are objected to because of the following informalities:
There are mismatched terminology with respect to “user equipment”. Please see below:
In claim 1, line 5, first occurrence of “at least one user equipment” but in line 23, the claim references “the user equipment”.
Claim 1, line 10, first occurrence “each network slice” but in line 11, “the network slice”. [It appears “the network slice” is a respective network slice. Appropriate correction is required.
Dependent claims 2-11 incorporate the objection and should be reviewed for further inconsistencies and variations. Appropriate correction is also suggested.
Claim 12 is an independent claim incorporating features of claim 1. Claim 12 is objected to on the same rationale. Appropriate correction is also suggested.
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) 13-16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Seed et al., US 20250212105 A1 (hereafter referred to as Seed) in view of Jha et al., US 20220225227 A1 (hereafter referred to as Jha).
Claim 13, Seed teaches an admission request method performed by a user equipment for emitting a slice admission request for at least one selected network slice (p. 27, “the NSCE client may initiate request(s) to allocate one or more new network slices for use by the UE and its VAL client(s)”) in a communication network system deploying a plurality of network slices, said slice admission request containing at least data related to slice request parameters (Table 2, “If/when criticality requirements of the UE and/or individual VAL client(s) on the UE change (e.g. from non-critical to critical), the NSCE client may be notified such that any required network slice management operations may be performed. For example, the NSCE client may initiate switching from network slices that do not support critical communication services over to network slices that do and vice versa. Alternatively, the NSCE client may initiate modification of a network slice to enable or disable critical communication services within the slice.”), the admission request method comprising steps of:
receiving slice demand loads respectively associated to the plurality of the network slices (p. 25, “At Step 2, in addition to any context information that the NSCE client receives from VAL client(s), the NSCE client may also collect additional context information applicable to the management of network slices such as but not limited to the context shown in Table 3. The collecting of this information may be initiated by the NSCE client.”), each slice demand load being related to consumed network resources in the corresponding network slice if the slice admission request is admitted (From Table 3, “network slice The status of network slice(s) such as whether or not network slice(s) status allocated to the UE are currently available for use by the UE and/or if any of the slices have incurred a fault condition (e.g., have become overloaded).” And Table 5, “The NSCE client may detect that VAL client(s) on the network UE require a certain type of network slice that is not slice(s) currently allocated to the UE. The NSCE client may also detect that a network slice allocated to the UE is the required type, however, it lacks sufficient resources and/or privileges that allow the VAL client(s) on the UE to use the network slice to perform their required communication with VAL server(s) or VAL client(s) on other UE(s). The NSCE client may detect that the resources are insufficient based on requirements other than communications, e.g. compute resources for offloaded processes to the slice.” “The NSCE client may detect that network slice(s) allocated utilized to a UE may be currently over or under sized/provisioned network for the current needs and requirements of the VAL client(s) slice(s) of UE. The NSCE client may also predict that the network slice(s) currently allocated to a UE may become over or under sized/provisioned in the future based on the predicted requirements of the VAL client(s) of UE.”),
based on at least said received slice demand loads, adapting slice request parameters of the slice admission request, so as to request network resources from the at least one selected network slice of the plurality of network slices (p. 32, “At Step 9, if after querying the current network slice instances and the NSCE server determines there are no slice instance(s) currently available and/or accessible that meet the minimum requirements of the UE(s) and their VAL client(s) specified in the request, the NSCE server may initiate one or more requests to trigger the allocation and/or modification of one or more network slice instances for use by the UE(s), their VAL client(s) and/or the VAL server(s) of interest to the VAL client(s).”),
emitting the slice admission request based on said adapted slice request parameters (p. 32, “To trigger the allocation and/or modification of one or more network slice instances, the NSCE server may issue one or more requests to other functions in the system such as core network functions (e.g., NEF, NSACF, etc.), OAM functions responsible for managing network slices and/or VAL servers. Within the request(s), the NSCE server may include information and context such as but not limited to the elements proposed in Table 1, Table 3, Table 6 and/or Table 7.”).
Seed does not specifically teach said selected network slice having a corresponding slice demand load below a predetermined load threshold value. However, in the same field of endeavor, Jha teaches selected network slice having a corresponding slice demand load below a predetermined load threshold value (p. 18, “a Slice-Segment resource manager (SS-RM) may be used at slice-segments to monitor slice-resource use or exhaustion. The SS-RM may be configured to proactively act to avoid resource exhaustion. For example, when load or congestion on a slice-resource approaches a threshold, the SS-RM is configured to enforce restrictions on applications to limit maximum occupancy of slice-resources based on usage priorities of applications or to direct new traffic to an alternate slice.”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Seed by incorporating predetermined threshold from Jha to promote resiliency and increase reliability. The motivation would use information from monitored resources that critical to network slice and thereby prevent congestion or overload.
Claim 14, Seed-Jha teaches a user equipment configured for emitting a slice admission request for at least one selected network slice in a communication network system deploying a plurality of network slices, said user equipment (Seed, p. 107, “FIG. 5G illustrates an example communications system 111 in which the methods and apparatuses described and claimed herein may be an aspect of. As shown, the example communications system 111 may include wireless transmit/receive units (WTRUs) A, B, C, D, E, F…”) comprising at least:
a user processing unit (Seed, p. 101, processor 91), and
a user non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions stored thereon, which, when executed by the user processing unit (Seed, p. 101, “Computing system 90 may comprise a computer or server and may be controlled primarily by computer readable instructions, which may be in the form of software, wherever, or by whatever means such software is stored or accessed. Such computer readable instructions may be executed within a processor 91, to cause computing system 90 to do work.”), configure the user equipment to perform the admission request method according to claim 13.
Claim 15, Seed-Jha teaches a computer program product comprising program instructions code stored on a computer-readable medium for the execution of one of: the admission control method according to any one of the admission control method (Seed, p. 108, “It is understood that any or all of the apparatuses, systems, methods and processes described herein may be embodied in the form of computer executable instructions (e.g., program code) stored on a computer-readable storage medium which instructions, when executed by a processor, such as processors 118 or 91, cause the processor to perform and/or implement the systems, methods and processes described herein. Specifically, any of the steps, operations or functions described herein may be implemented in the form of such computer executable instructions, executing on the processor of an apparatus or computing system configured for wireless and/or wired network communications. “) according to any one of the admission request method according to claim 13.
Claim 16, Seed-Jha teaches a computer program product comprising program instructions code stored on a computer-readable medium for the execution of: the admission request method (Seed, p. 108, “It is understood that any or all of the apparatuses, systems, methods and processes described herein may be embodied in the form of computer executable instructions (e.g., program code) stored on a computer-readable storage medium which instructions, when executed by a processor, such as processors 118 or 91, cause the processor to perform and/or implement the systems, methods and processes described herein. Specifically, any of the steps, operations or functions described herein may be implemented in the form of such computer executable instructions, executing on the processor of an apparatus or computing system configured for wireless and/or wired network communications.”) according to claim 13.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 1 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action. Dependent claims 2-11 and independent claim 12 would also be allowable if the rejection is overcome.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Senarath et al., US 20180139106 A1, teaches the modeled information includes a prediction of future behavior of the network service. The prediction of future behavior can include a prediction of a request to modify, scale, or terminate the network service. The prediction can include a time of the request, a type of the request, details of the request such as an amount by which to scale the service, etc. The computational model can include a model of the requirements of the network service, such as the time-varying usage of network resources by the network service. The model may be configured to predict when the network service will be more in demand and when it will be less in demand.
Parker et al., US 20200195495 A1, teaches network slice instances may change dynamically. A network operator may create new NSIs in response to load conditions (e.g., as detected by the AIRM 160), or may change the assignment of a UE to an NSI. These decisions are driven by network operations monitoring, and a prediction function may be useful in carrying out these decisions. In some aspects, the AIRM 160 may further provide AI-based predictions associated with resource utilization, which may be used for dynamic network slice instance configuration, provisioning, and modification (e.g., re-provisioning with a different set of resources).
Molloy et al., US 20200364638 A1, teaches the IT portfolio optimization engine 130 builds respective IT resource forecasting models that are elements of the IT portfolio forecasting model 135. In certain embodiments of the present invention, the IT portfolio optimization engine 130 builds each IT resource forecasting model for each IT service based on demands by respective IT services of a particular IT resource, and aggregate all capacity requirements for the IT resource when more than one IT service is considered.
Chaysingh et al., US 20210194988 A1, teaches MEC controller 140-2 may use artificial intelligence and/or machine learning to derive the first service usage pattern from aggregated public data and network data. For instance, MEC controller 140-2 may categorize service 150-1 as a temporary service that receives a high volume of requests at edge location 120-2 during the first time based on previous request patterns for service 150-1.
Sciancalepore et al., US 11051210 B2, teaches the context of maximizing revenue as the utility function. When maximizing revenue as the utility function according to an embodiment, the present invention also effects a number of technological improvements to the network. For example, by learning which network slices are better to accept now to gain the most payoff, the network slice controller is able to accept and service more network slice requests overall and meet the network slice requests in a timelier manner.
Young et al., US 20220124547 A1, load estimator 340 may convert the capacity requirement into an estimated load for the network slice with respect to cloud resources, transport resources, and/or RAN resources. Load estimator 340 may determine an average load, and/or a maximum load for the cloud resources, transport resources, and/or RAN resources that may be consumed by the network slice.
Wadekar et al., US 20230168929 A1, teaches in response to a prediction that the original intra-tenant limit is higher than the tenant usage in the future, resource manager 213 determines a new intra-tenant limit (e.g., maximum of the predicted usage along with a buffer (e.g., a constant number of redundant resource)) and then recommends the new intra-tenant limit to the network admin.
Yeh et al., US 20260156535 A1, teaches in some implementations, there may be a predefined or configured upper limit or threshold for the amount of resources that can be allocated to a reliability flow for a path i (e.g., path i can at most allocate y % of resources for a reliability flow, where y % is the reliability flow resource allocation limit/threshold).
Sciancalepore et al., Mobile traffic forecasting for maximizing 5G network slicing resource utilization, teaches three key network slicing building blocks: (i)a forecasting module that predicts network slices’ traffic based on past traffic and user mobility, (ii) a network slicing admission control algorithm and (iii) a network slicing scheduler algorithm in charge of meeting the agreed SLAs and report deviations to the forecasting module.
A. Kammoun et al., "Admission Control Algorithm for Network Slicing Management in SDN-NFV Environment," teaches a network orchestrator module which receives new users' requests and then determines if their demands can be served by an existing slice on not. The major aim of our algorithm is the selection of the best target slice for the user request based on several network criteria such as the network resources latency, availability and reliability as well as their computational performances. Thus, according to the proposed algorithm, users' requests will be mapped into the slice that corresponds perfectly to the request.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PATRICE L WINDER whose telephone number is (571)272-3935. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10am-6pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, KAMAL B DIVECHA can be reached at (571)272-5863. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Patrice L Winder/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2453
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