DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
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.
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 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.
Claims 1-10, 13-22 are rejected in the Instant Application. Claims 11-12 were cancelled by preliminary amendment.
Priority
Examiner acknowledges Applicant’s claim to priority benefits of CN 202211431156.6 and PCT/CN2023/110330 filed 11/14/2022 and 7/31/2023, respectively.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) (IDS) submitted on 4/9/2025, 3/6/2026 is/are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement(s) is/are being considered if signed and initialed by the Examiner.
Claim Rejections
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.
Claim(s) 1-10, 13-22 is/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 pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
There is insufficient antecedent basis in the following claim(s) for the limitation(s) enumerated below:
Claim(s) 1 recites the limitation "the deterministic latency constraint information.” There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
The above cited rejections are merely exemplary.
The Applicant(s) are respectfully requested to correct all similar errors.
Claims not specifically mentioned are rejected by virtue of their dependency.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 of this title, 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 1-4, 9, 13-17, 19 and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Geng (US Pub. 2022/0182315) in view of Filsfils (US Pub. 2015/0109904).
With respect to Claim 1, Geng teaches a deterministic resource scheduling method, comprising: (paras. 78-79; deterministic network used to reserve resources to ensure resources such as end-to-end latency.)
dividing a deterministic latency resource class according to a deterministic latency constraint policy; (Paras. 105-19; forwarding device receives a packet with a required attribute such as latency. Thus the system supports a deterministic latency constraint. Paras. 134-138; policy to keep latency under a required value. Paras. 74-77, 81-90, Table 1; system monitors latency, jitter, packet loss, which are latency resource classes. See also Filsfils, paras. 19-21; selection of a specific path for a traffic class using context sensitive labels. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill prior to the effective filing date to use labels to classify latency requirements.)
and constructing a deterministic resource pool based on the deterministic resource class; (paras. 74-77; controller determines usage metrics of links. para. 98, Table 2; forwarding device stores latency, jitter, bandwidth, packet loss rates for each path.)
constructing a scheduling path of the deterministic latency resource according to the deterministic resource pool, (paras. 74-77; controller builds paths and determines their attributes. paras. 105-112; forwarding device determines a path that meets a required standard. See also Filsfils, para. 21; any router may select an explicit path for each of its traffic classes.)
and allocating a resource. (para. 138; allocation of a transmission path that meets the requirement.)
But Greg does not explicitly teach flooding the deterministic latency constraint information.
Filsfils, however, does teach flooding the deterministic latency constraint information, (First see Geng, Fig. 3, paras. 93-94; control device delivers the attribute information to forwarding devices. Then see Filsfils, para. 36; flooding of link-state messages with TLV elements which identify the link state.)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill prior to the effective filing date to combine the method of Geng with the flooding of the latency information in order to allow the routers to build and select paths that meet the latency requirements of incoming packets. (Filsfils, para. 21; any router may select a path)
With respect to Claim 2, modified Geng teaches the method according to claim 1, and Geng also teaches wherein the deterministic latency constraint policy at least comprises one of the following: an end-to-end jitter policy; (para. 82; maximum jitter on the path)
a node latency policy; (para. 81; latency on the path)
a packet loss policy. (para. 84; packet loss rate on the path)
With respect to Claim 3, modified Geng teaches the method according to claim 1, and Geng also teaches wherein the dividing a deterministic latency resource class according to a deterministic latency constraint policy comprises: dividing a first-level class of the deterministic latency resource class according to the deterministic latency constraint policy, wherein the first-level class at least comprises one of the following: a deterministic jitter class-type (DJT); deterministic latency and jitter class-type (DLJT); deterministic latency class-type (DLT); bounded latency class-type (BLT); (para. 43; bounded and deterministic latency values. para. 82; maximum jitter on the path)
configuring one or more of the deterministic latency constraint policies for each of the first-level classes to divide each of the first-level classes into a plurality of second-level classes. (para. 43; packet with a requirement of less than 10ms. Para. 135; packet with a latency requirement of less than 20ms. 10ms and 20ms are a plurality of second-level classes under the first level class of deterministic latency.)
With respect to Claim 4, modified Geng teaches the method according to claim 1, and Filsfils also teaches wherein the flooding the deterministic latency constraint information and constructing a deterministic resource pool based on the deterministic resource class comprises: using an interior gateway protocol (IGP) to flood each class of the deterministic latency resource, (para. 36; flooding. See also Geng, Fig. 3, paras. 93-94; control device delivers the attribute information to forwarding devices.)
The same motivation to combine as the independent claim applies here.
and Geng also teaches collecting a usage condition of each class of the deterministic latency resource, so as to construct the deterministic resource pool. (Para. 109; periodic attribute collection. paras. 74-77; controller determines usage metrics of links.)
With respect to Claim 9, modified Geng teaches the method according to claim 1, and Geng also teaches wherein the constructing a scheduling path of the deterministic latency resource according to the deterministic resource pool and allocating a resource comprises: extending path computation element communication protocol (PCEP) or resource reservation protocol (RSVP) wherein the PCEP protocol or the RSVP protocol carries a deterministic class type object representation deterministic class identifier, (para. 95-96; PCEP with data carried in an idle field or a newly added field. Attributes are identified by L, B, etc.)
constructing the scheduling path of the deterministic latency resource according to the deterministic class type object, (paras. 74-77; controller builds paths and determines their attributes. paras. 105-112; forwarding device determines a path that meets a required standard. See also Filsfils, para. 21; any router may select an explicit path for each of its traffic classes.)
and allocating a resource. (para. 138; allocation of a transmission path that meets the requirement.)
With respect to Claim 13, it is substantially similar to Claim 1 and is rejected in the same manner, the same art and reasoning applying. Further, Geng also teaches a non-transitory computer readable storage medium, wherein the computer readable storage medium stores a computer program, and the computer program is configured to, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to: (paras. 234-236; memory such as hard disk storing program and processor to run it)
With respect to Claim 14, it is substantially similar to Claim 1 and is rejected in the same manner, the same art and reasoning applying. Further, Geng also teaches an electronic apparatus, comprising a memory, a processor, and a computer program stored in the memory and is executable by the processor, wherein the processor is configured to execute the computer program to (paras. 234-236; memory such as hard disk storing program and processor to run it)
With respect to Claims 15-17, 19, they are substantially similar to Claims 2-4, 9, respectively, and are rejected in the same manner, the same art and reasoning applying.
With respect to Claim 21, modified Geng teaches the method according to claim 1, and Filsfils also teaches wherein flooding the deterministic latency constraint information comprises: flooding and announcing the deterministic latency resource of each class. (para. 36; flooding of advertisement. See also Geng, Fig. 3, paras. 93-94; control device delivers the attribute information to forwarding devices.)
The same motivation to combine as the independent claim applies here.
Claims 8, 18, 20 and 22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Geng (US Pub. 2022/0182315) in view of Filsfils (US Pub. 2015/0109904), and further in view of Dong (US Pub. 2019/0132234).
With respect to Claim 8, modified Geng teaches the method according to claim 1, and Geng also teaches and constructing the deterministic resource pool. (paras. 74-77; controller determines usage metrics of links. para. 98, Table 2; forwarding device stores latency, jitter, bandwidth, packet loss rates for each path.)
But modified Geng does not explicitly teach node attribute TLVs.
Dong, however, does teach wherein the flooding the deterministic latency constraint information to construct a deterministic resource pool based on the deterministic resource class comprises: in the case where a controller exists, extending a border gateway protocol link state (BGP-LS) and carrying a deterministic latency constraint (DLC) sub-TLV in a node attribute TLV of the BGP-LS protocol, so as to report information about each class of the deterministic resource class to the controller via the BGP-LS protocol, (First see Genge, paras. 74-77; collection of latency information. Then see Dong, paras. 54-56, 72; Notifying a controller of transmission delay of a link connected to a forwarding node. The notification can take the form of extending a BGP-LS node attribute tlv. Paras. 69-71; sub-TLV of a TLV. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill prior to the effective filing date to use sub-TLVs to carry the different classes in order to report different latency data at once.)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill prior to the effective filing date to combine the method of modified Geng and the node attribute tlvs in order to extend a standard to allow for reporting of additional data in order to increase interoperability.
With respect to Claim 18, it is substantially similar to Claim 8 and is rejected in the same manner, the same art and reasoning applying.
With respect to Claim 20, modified Geng teaches the method according to claim 1, and Geng also teaches wherein the deterministic latency resource includes a bandwidth resource, a latency resource, and a delay variation resource. (Geng teaches this on its own, see para. 40, 72; bandwidth, latency reliability. Reliability is a measure of delay variation. Para. 43; latency may be described in a range rather than a single value, which is a delay variation. Examiner notes that Dong also teaches a delay variation, see Dong, para. 3. For compact prosecution purposes, Examiner also rejects the feature citing Dong.)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill prior to the effective filing date to combine the method of modified Geng with the delay variation in order to protect services that are sensitive to a delay.
With respect to Claim 22, modified Geng teaches the method according to claim 8, and Dong also teaches wherein the DLC sub-TLV is carried in the Node Attribute TLV of the BGP-LS protocol as a TLV. (Paras. 69-71; sub-TLV of a TLV.)
The same motivation to combine as the parent claim applies here.
Remarks
Examiner makes no prior art rejection to Claims 5-7, 10 because of the particular bitlengths of the claimed features.
Conclusion
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/NICHOLAS P CELANI/Examiner, Art Unit 2449
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