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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement filed on 3/11/2025 has been considered.
Drawings
The drawings filed on 3/11/2025 are accepted.
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.
Claims 1-3, 5, 8, 19-21, 23 and 26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Dong et al. (US-2015/0031335 hereinafter, Dong).
Regarding claim 1, Dong discloses an apparatus (Fig. 3 [300]) comprising:
generating circuitry (Fig. 3 [32]) configured to generate privacy preference information relevant to network behavior for said apparatus; (Page 5 [0066] “D may set up the policy that devices in a certain proximity (distance/range), or that devices having a certain relationship in common with the device, can get access to the device's location information.”) and
a transmitter (Fig. 3 [34]) configured to transmit said privacy preference information towards a network node within a communication network. (Page 5 [0066] “a device D may report its location to an SC and set up a privacy policy for the location information”)
Regarding claim 2, Dong teaches wherein said privacy preference information comprises a plurality of privacy preferences (Page 5 [0066] “devices in a certain proximity (distance/range), or that devices having a certain relationship in common with the device”), at least one of said plurality of preferences being relative to at least one of the following: activity of said apparatus; location of said apparatus; (Page 5 [0066] “device’s location information”) or time.
Regarding claim 3, Dong teaches wherein said privacy preference information comprises a privacy preference relative to location discovery of said apparatus. (Page 5 [0066-0068])
Regarding claim 5, Dong teaches wherein the privacy preference information indicates a level of privacy (Fig. 6 and Page 6 [0076] “FIG. 6 illustrates an example format 600 of a device location report that a device may transmit to an SC to specify the devices that are permitted to get access to its location information. As shown, the format 600 includes a Location field that specifies the current location of the device seeking to establish its privacy policy”), and wherein the apparatus is configured to select the level of privacy amongst a plurality of privacy levels. (Page 6 [0076] “public”, “private” and “friends”)
Regarding claim 8, Dong teaches wherein said apparatus further comprises determining circuitry configured to determine a requirement for enhanced privacy; (Page 5 [0067] “According to some embodiments, device D may change its privacy policy.”) and
said generating circuitry and said transmitter are configured to generate and transmit said privacy preference information in response to said determining circuitry determining said requirement for enhanced privacy. (Page 5 [0067] “If some of the devices that were previously informed of device D's location information no longer satisfy the new privacy policy, the SC may send an invalid location information notification to those devices. A device D's location information may be deleted from the SC. The devices that were previously informed with the device D's location will receive a notification from the SC that may indicate this deletion. A device's location may be retrieved from the SC by other devices (as well as applications or enterprises) if they satisfy the privacy policy of the device location.”)
Regarding claim 19-21, 23 and 26, the limitations of claims 19-21, 23 and 26 are rejected as being the same reasons set forth above in claims 1-3, 5 and 8.
Claims 9, 10, 12 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by 3GPP RAN WG2 Meeting #119-e R2-2207247 from InterDigital, hereinafter, InterDigital (from Applicant’s IDS).
Regarding claim 9, 3GPP teaches an apparatus (Page 2 [2.2] gNB) comprising:
control circuitry (inherent to a gNB or base station) configured to:
receive, from a user equipment, privacy preference information indicating preference for enhanced privacy of the user equipment; (Page 2 [2.2] “UE assistance information can be beneficial in aiding the network to make decisions related to adapting resources in the time, frequency, spatial or power domains. gNBs can take into consideration UE measurements, positioning, UE assistance info, interference status, load information, and proprietary info to make decisions related to adapting resources or turning cells on/off”, Page 5 “indication of UE’s buffer status for UL channel transmissions” and “conditions for triggering the assistance information from the UE”) and
modify a network energy saving policy of said apparatus on the basis of the privacy preference information. (Page 5 “Further study techniques and enhancements on assistance information from the UE to aid the gNB to perform energy saving techniques” and Page 2 “gNBs can take into consideration UE measurements, positioning, UE assistance info, interference status, load information, and proprietary info to make decisions related to adapting resources or turning cells on/off”)
Regarding claim 10, InterDigital teaches wherein said apparatus comprises energy saving circuitry configured to control said apparatus to reduce energy consumption by performing energy saving behavior (Page 2 [2.1.2] “the gNB can achieve considerable energy savings from deactivating carriers (e.g. SCells, SUL or NUL) at low cell loads” and [2.2] “gNBs can take into consideration UE measurements, positioning, UE assistance info, interference status, load information, and proprietary info to make decisions related to adapting resources or turning cells on/off”), said control circuitry being responsive to receipt of said privacy preference information indicating said preference for enhanced privacy of said user equipment to control said energy saving circuitry to dis-associate power-saving steps in capacity cells from a location of the user equipment. (Page 3 [2.2] “Frequent transmission of UE assistance information for NES can have impacts on UE power savings, and thus shall not be transmitted too frequently or unpredictably, especially when it’s not of use to the network. UE can therefore trigger the transmission of UE assistance information when needed, e.g. upon data arrival, based on coverage conditions, or based on detection of NES SSBs” and Page 5 “conditions for triggering the assistance information from the UE” i.e. less frequent transmissions of UE assistance information from a specific UE leads to less impact on gNB energy saving decisions)
Regarding claim 12, InterDigital teaches wherein said privacy preference information comprises an indication of a time during which enhanced privacy of said user equipment is required (Page 5 “indication of UE’s buffer status for UL channel transmissions” and Page 2 [2.2] “load information”), said control circuitry being configured to modify said energy saving policy of said apparatus with respect to said user equipment during said time indicated (Page 3 “Cell/network node activation request by the UE, for example using signal/channel from UE for gNB’s wake-up request” i.e. turn cell on), and not to modify said energy saving policy with respect to said user equipment during other time. (Pages 2-3 [2.2] i.e. no data arrival, unneeded cell stays turned off)
Regarding claim 13, InterDigital teaches wherein said privacy preference information comprises an indication of at least one activity of said user equipment which when performed does not require enhanced privacy (Page 5 “conditions for triggering the assistance information from the UE” and “conditions for triggering the assistance information from the UE”), said control circuitry being configured to modify said behavior of said apparatus with respect to said user equipment when said activity is not performed (Page 2 [2.1.2] “Similar to BWPs, the gNB can achieve considerable energy savings from deactivating carriers (e.g. SCells, SUL or NUL) at low cell loads. SCells can also remain active but only used when needed for additional capacity, i.e. without transmitting periodic signals such as SSBs or CSI-RS” i.e. no UE transmission of assistance information results in the cell being in sleeping/energy saving mode) and not to modify said behavior when said activity is performed. (Page 3 [2.2] “UE can therefore trigger the transmission of UE assistance information when needed, e.g. upon data arrival” and Page 3 “Cell/network node activation request by the UE, for example using signal/channel from UE for gNB’s wake-up request” i.e. UE triggered transmission of UE assistance information indicates to the base station to turn on the cell)
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 4, 6, 7, 22, 24, 25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dong in view of 3GPP RAN WG2 Meeting #119-e R2-2207247 from InterDigital, hereinafter, InterDigital.
Regarding claim 4, Dong teaches the limitations of claim 1 above and additionally states wherein said apparatus comprises a user equipment (Page 2 [0039] “With more powerful M2M devices, including portable user equipment (UE) devices such as cell phones and tablet computers”, Fig. 3 [300] and Pages 3-4 [0049]) and said user equipment is configured to generate and transmit said privacy preference information (Page 5 [0066]), but differs from the claimed invention by not explicitly reciting the privacy preference information is part of UEAssistanceInformation.
In an analogous art, InterDigital teaches a method and system to implement network energy savings (Page 1 [Introduction] “RAN approved a new study item on network energy saving (NES) [1]. The SI aims to improve the operation of the cellular eco-system to enable more efficient adaptation of network transmissions and receptions resources in the time, frequency, spatial, and power domains, aided by UE feedback and assistance”) that includes transmitting privacy preference information is part of UEAssistanceInformation. (Page 2 [2.2] “UE assistance information can be beneficial in aiding the network to make decisions related to adapting resources in the time, frequency, spatial or power domains. gNBs can take into consideration UE measurements, positioning, UE assistance info, interference status, load information, and proprietary info to make decisions related to adapting resources or turning cells on/off”)
Before the effective filing date of the invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to be motivated to implement the invention of Dong after modifying it to incorporate the ability to send positioning information in UE assistance information of InterDigital since it provides the ability for the UE to provide to the network, pertinent information that can be used to adapt network availability or coverage. (InterDigital Page 2 [2.2] “NES UE assistance info can be useful is when the UE is in need to perform initial access or to adapt network availability, coverage, or network resources in connected mode”)
Regarding claim 6, Dong teaches the limitations of claim 1 above including the transmitter being configured for cellular communications (Fig. 3 [34/36] and Page 4 [0052] “The transmit/receive element 36 may support various networks and air interfaces, such as WLAN, WPAN, cellular, and the like.”) and that network (Fig. 1 [12]) can be a cellular network (Page 2 [0042]), but differs from the claimed invention by not explicitly reciting wherein the transmitter is configured to transmit the privacy preference information to a coverage cell managing energy saving of at least one capacity cell within a coverage area of the coverage cell.
In an analogous, InterDigital teaches a method and system for implementing network energy savings (Page 1 [Introduction] “RAN approved a new study item on network energy saving (NES) [1]. The SI aims to improve the operation of the cellular eco-system to enable more efficient adaptation of network transmissions and receptions resources in the time, frequency, spatial, and power domains, aided by UE feedback and assistance”) that includes a user equipment transmitting the privacy preference information to a coverage cell managing energy saving (Page 3 [Annex A] “Further study techniques and enhancements for increasing time domain energy saving opportunities by the gNB” ) of at least one capacity cell within a coverage area of the coverage cell. (Page 2 [2.2] and Page 5 see “Agreement” “assistance information from the UE to aid the gNB to perform energy saving techniques” and “coverage, mobility status, location” and “Mechanism to utilize potential energy saving states or sleep modes and the transition between states from leveraging cell on/off opportunities”)
Before the effective filing date of the invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to be motivated to implement the invention of Dong after modifying it to incorporate the ability to transmit privacy preference information to a coverage cell of InterDigital since it enables utilizing assistance information from a UE to aid the base station when performing energy saving techniques. (InterDigital Page 5 last “Agreement”)
Regarding claim 7, Dong in view of InterDigital teaches wherein said privacy preference information indicates preference for privacy protection in an event of an energy saving procedure. (InterDigital Page 3 “Frequent transmission of UE assistance information for NES can have impacts on UE power savings, and thus shall not be transmitted too frequently or unpredictably, especially when it’s not of use to the network. UE can therefore trigger the transmission of UE assistance information when needed, e.g. upon data arrival, based on coverage conditions, or based on detection of NES SSBs”, “RAN2 to discuss the triggers for transmission of UE assistance information for NES” and Page 5 “Some examples of assistance information are” … “conditions for triggering the assistance information from the UE” i.e. how often transmissions occur during energy saving procedures)
Regarding claims 22, 24, 25, the limitations of claims 22, 24, 25 are rejected as being the same reasons set forth above in claim 4, 6, 7.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US-2018/0063706 to Nolan et al. which discloses privacy preferences related to the allowed accuracy of a location/position of a mobile node.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MATTHEW C SAMS whose telephone number is (571)272-8099. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:30-5 EST.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Matthew Anderson can be reached at (571)272-4177. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/Matthew C Sams/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2646
