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 .
Status of Claims
This action is responsive to the application filed on March 12, 2025. The preliminary amendment filed on the same day amended claims 1-9 and 11-21 and cancelled claims 20 and 22. Claims 1-19 and 21 are pending examination.
Drawings
The drawings filed on March 12, 2025 are accepted.
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.
Claim 21 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because
the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim does not fall within
at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because claim 15 recites “a machine-readable storage medium”, in line 1, that includes a signal per se. The rejection can be overcome by reciting “a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium”.
Examiner’s Note about the Format of 35 U.S.C. 102/103 Rejections
Generally, limitations of a claim are reproduced identically and followed by examiner’s explanation with citation from prior art in Italic enclosed by a parenthesis, (), for each limitation. In examiner’s explanation, the mapping of the key elements of a limitation to the disclosed elements of prior art is shown by stating the disclosed element immediately followed by the claimed element inside a parenthesis. Specific quotation from prior art is delineated with quotation mark, ““. If primary art fails to teach a limitation or part of the limitation, the limitation or the part of the limitation is placed inside double square brackets, [[ ]], for better understandability, and appropriate secondary art(s) is/are applied later addressing the deficiency of the primary art.
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.
Claims 1-19 and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang et al. (US PGPUB No. US 20210306201 A1), hereinafter, Wang, in view of Singhal et al. (US PGPUB No. US 20230316298 A1), hereinafter, Singhal.
Regarding claim 1:
Wang teaches:
A method to be implemented in an electronic device of a network, comprising:
[[receiving a fault remediation request to mitigate a fault of the network, the fault remediation request indicating one or more system components associated with the fault]];
performing a set of remediation actions on a corresponding set of system components within the network responsive to the fault remediation request, a remediation action within the set of remediation actions being selected based on a set of remediation constraints and [[a distance as indicated by a distance function, the distance being between the remediation action and the fault]] (paragraph 0124 discloses identifying plurality of diagnostic actions (set of remediation actions) as stated “After start operation 1305, process 1300 moves to operation 1310, where a plurality of candidate or possible diagnostic actions are identified. As discussed above, some embodiments identify candidate or possible diagnostic actions via a mapping between a component type and the diagnostic actions (e.g. via diagnostic action table 350, and or component table 370)”. Paragraph 0125 discloses iterative performing each of the diagnostic actions. Paragraph 0075 discloses diagnostic actions are selected based on costs (remediation constraints) associated with them); and
calculating, for a performed remediation action within the set of remediation actions, a score for the performed remediation action upon performing the remediation action to evaluate an efficiency of the performed remediation action (paragraph 0131 discloses determining score of action).
Wang does not explicitly teach receiving a fault remediation request to mitigate a fault of the network, the fault remediation request indicating one or more system components associated with the fault; a distance as indicated by a distance function, the distance being between the remediation action and the fault.
Singhal teaches;
receiving a fault remediation request to mitigate a fault of the network, the fault remediation request indicating one or more system components associated with the fault (Fig. 4, step 410, discloses receiving a customer support request (fault remediation request) regarding an issue with components as stated “fault remediation request” as explained in paragraph 0089) ;
a distance as indicated by a distance function, the distance being between the remediation action and the fault (Fig, 2 shows different of operating procedures to resolve different customer incidents. Paragraph 0042 discloses operating procedure is selected based cosine vector similarity function to measure the distance between the incident and operating procedure as stated “his may be done by using the cosine vector similarity metric to estimate the degree of similarity between a text encoding and an operating procedure encoding. In an example, the matching is done based on the distance notion between the text encoding and the operating procedure encodings. Given a customer support request feature x and operating procedures z.sub.1, z.sub.2, . . . , z.sub.m, the matching and selection unit 154 may compute the similarity scores as cosine similarities between x×U×C and z.sub.i×V×C for all i (l . . . m), where U and V are rotation matrices, B is the Mahalanobis distance, and C is the matrix square root of B (i.e., B=C×C). In this manner, the matching and selection unit 154 may make use of a progressing natural NLP algorithm to compare the one or more text encoding representations with the operating procedure encodings.” ).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing data of the claimed to modify Wang to incorporate the teaching of Singhal about receiving a customer support request and selecting operating procedure based on the distance between the incident and operating procedure. One would be motivated to do that to improve the efficiency of fault mitigation process by choosing the optimal operation procedure that is most likely to resolve the fault (see paragraph 0045 of Singhal).
As to claim 2, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated. Wang in view of Singhal teach all the limitations of claim 1 as shown above.
Wang does not teach wherein the distance between the remediation action and the fault is determined based on a weight for the remediation action and a score for the remediation action, the weight and the score being calculated in the distance function.
Singhal teaches wherein the distance between the remediation action and the fault is determined based on a weight for the remediation action and a score for the remediation action, the weight and the score being calculated in the distance function (paragraph 0084 discloses score of the operating procedure is computed based on the distance between the operating procedure and the incident. Paragraph 0043 discloses ranking operating procedures based on the score.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing data of the claimed to modify Wang to incorporate the teaching of Singhal about score of the operating procedure is computed based on the distance. One would be motivated to do that to improve the efficiency of fault mitigation process by choosing the optimal operation procedure that is most likely to resolve the fault (see paragraph 0045 of Singhal).
As to claim 3, the rejection of claim 2 is incorporated. Wang in view of Singhal teach all the limitations of claim 2 as shown above.
Wang does not teach wherein the weight for the remediation action is based on closeness of the remediation action to the one or more system components associated with the fault.
Singhal teaches wherein the weight for the remediation action is based on closeness of the remediation action to the one or more system components associated with the fault (paragraph 0043 discloses selecting top ranked operating procedures based highest similarity score).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing data of the claimed to modify Wang to incorporate the teaching of Singhal about selecting top ranked operating procedures. One would be motivated to do that to improve the efficiency of fault mitigation process by choosing the optimal operation procedure that is most likely to resolve the fault (see paragraph 0045 of Singhal).
As to claim 4, the rejection of claim 2 is incorporated. Wang in view of Singhal teach all the limitations of claim 2 as shown above.
Wang further teaches wherein the score for the remediation action is based on: a historical score for the remediation action to mitigate the fault, effectiveness for the remediation action on the fault, on the one or more system components and on the set of remediation constraints and cost of the remediation action (Fig. 6 shows determining diagnostic action based on score with probability of resolution and cost associated with the diagnostic action as explained in paragraphs 0076-0079. Paragraph 0080 discloses historical information of diagnostic actions are taken into consideration).
As to claim 5, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated. Wang in view of Singhal teach all the limitations of claim 1 as shown above.
Wang further teaches wherein the set of remediation actions are performed sequentially, while a first remediation action is performed earlier than a second remediation action when a first distance between the first remediation action and the fault is less than a second distance between the second remediation action and the fault (paragraph 0112 discloses performing diagnostic actions sequentially based on the costs as stated “These embodiments then select a diagnostic action according to the ranking. For example, a first iteration of process 1150 selects a highest ranked (lowest cost) diagnostic action, with subsequent iterations selecting incrementally lower ranked diagnostic actions.”).
As to claim 6, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated. Wang in view of Singhal teach all the limitations of claim 1 as shown above.
Wang does not teach wherein the set of remediation actions are performed concurrently based on a priority of the fault.
Singhal teaches wherein the set of remediation actions are performed concurrently based on a priority of the fault (paragraph 0091 discloses performing top ranked operating procedures as stated “In an alternative implementation, operating procedures having the top n number (e.g., when n is an integer) of similarity scores are selected. The identified operating procedures may then be provided as recommended operating procedures, at 435, before method 400 ends, at 440. Providing the identified operating procedures may involve transmitting information about the identified operating procedures to an application for display to the user”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing data of the claimed to modify Wang to incorporate the teaching of Singhal about performing top ranked operating procedures. One would be motivated to do that to improve the efficiency of fault mitigation process by choosing the optimal operation procedures that is most likely to resolve the fault (see paragraph 0045 of Singhal).
As to claim 7, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated. Wang in view of Singhal teach all the limitations of claim 1 as shown above.
Wang further teaches wherein the one or more system components comprise a set of system components impacted by the fault and the fault remediation request identifies corresponding impact classes of the set of system components (paragraph 0069 discloses impacted network components and analyzing impact of the diagnostic action).
As to claim 8, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated. Wang in view of Singhal teach all the limitations of claim 1 as shown above.
Wang further teaches wherein the set of remediation constraints comprises one or more of a set of allowable remediation actions, a time duration during which the set of remediation actions are to be performed, a set of allowable computing resources to be consumed by the set of remediation actions, a set of allowable bandwidth or storage resources to be consumed by the set of remediation actions (Fig. 6, steps 605 and 610, disclose qualifying diagnostic action based on cost and probability of resolutions).
As to claim 9, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated. Wang in view of Singhal teach all the limitations of claim 1 as shown above.
Wang further teaches wherein a binding record is created between the remediation action and the fault based on the score, and wherein the binding record is stored to be used by future fault remediation requests (Fig. 3 shows action table 320 showing binding record between action and fault as explained in paragraph 0051. History table 350 show creating of record for future as stated in paragraph 0056).
As to claim 10, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated. Wang in view of Singhal teach all the limitations of claim 1 as shown above.
Wang further teaches wherein the binding record is stored in a storage with a freshness indication to identify one or more conditions to remove the binding record from the storage (Fig. 3 shows injection table 360 indicated injection time. Fig. 13B, step 1394 discloses removing diagnostic action from the record).
Regarding claim 11:
Claim 11 is directed towards an electronic device performing the method of claim 1. Accordingly, it is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 12 is directed towards an electronic device performing the method of claim 2. Accordingly, it is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 13 is directed towards an electronic device performing the method of claim 3. Accordingly, it is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 14 is directed towards an electronic device performing the method of claim 4. Accordingly, it is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 15 is directed towards an electronic device performing the method of claim 5. Accordingly, it is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 16 is directed towards an electronic device performing the method of claim 6. Accordingly, it is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 17 is directed towards an electronic device performing the method of claim 7. Accordingly, it is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 18 is directed towards an electronic device performing the method of claim 8. Accordingly, it is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 19 is directed towards an electronic device performing the method of claim 9. Accordingly, it is rejected under similar rationale.
Regarding claim 21:
Claim 21 is directed towards machine-readable storage medium that provides instructions that, when executed by a processor, are capable of causing the processor to perform the method of claim 1. Accordingly, it is rejected under similar rationale.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KAMAL M HOSSAIN whose telephone number is (571)270-3070. The examiner can normally be reached 9:30-5:30 M-F.
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, John Follansbee can be reached at (571)272-3964. 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.
August 6, 2026
/KAMAL M HOSSAIN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2444
Prosecution Insights