DETAILED ACTION
Response to Amendment
This Action is in response to Preliminary Amendment filed on 06/13/2025.
Independent Claims 1, 11 and 16, and claims 3-4, 6-7, 9-10, and 13-14 are amended.
Claims 2, 8 and 15 have been cancelled. There are no new claims.
Claims 1, 3-7, 9-14 and 16 are presented for examination, and remain pending.
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/ National Stage Information
This application is a 371 of international application (# PCT/FI2023/050689) filed on 12/13/2023. Acknowledgment is also made of applicant's claim for foreign priority based on an application filed in Finland on 12/15/2022. Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDSs) submitted on 06/13/2025 and on 11/07/2025 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the IDSs are being considered by the examiner.
Specification
Applicant is reminded of the proper language and format for an abstract of the disclosure.
The abstract should be in narrative form and generally limited to a single paragraph on a separate sheet within the range of 50 to 150 words in length. The abstract should describe the disclosure sufficiently to assist readers in deciding whether there is a need for consulting the full patent text for details.
The language should be clear and concise and should not repeat information given in the title. It should avoid using phrases which can be implied, such as, “The disclosure concerns,” “The disclosure defined by this invention,” “The disclosure describes,” etc. In addition, the form and legal phraseology often used in patent claims, such as “means” and “said,” should be avoided.
The abstract of the disclosure is objected to because of the following informalities:
Abstract is not on a separate sheet within the range of 50 to 150 words in length. It appears to be the first page of the corresponding WIPO publication.
Abstract uses phrases which can be implied, such as, “According to an example aspect of the present invention, there is provided…” (see lines 1-2).
A corrected abstract of the disclosure is required and must be presented on a separate sheet, apart from any other text. See MPEP § 608.01(b).
Claim Objections
Claims 1, 3-6, 9, 11, 13-14 and 16 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1 recites:
“- determine a number of alerting nodes,
- wherein the apparatus is further configured to:
- store plural definitions of geographic areas, each one of the geographic areas enclosing all core network nodes of a single network domain area;
- perform the determining of the number of the alerting nodes as determining a number of alerting nodes in each one of the geographic areas”
The phrase/step of “determine a number of alerting nodes” appear multiple times. Examiner suggest re-writing the limitations to remove unnecessary redundancy in the claim language. An example amendment could be as follows (supported by original claim 1 and Fig.6):
“- store plural definitions of geographic areas, each one of the geographic areas enclosing all core network nodes of a single network domain area;
- determining a number of alerting nodes in each one of the geographic areas;…”.
Claim 3-5 recites the limitation “the respective …” in lines 3-4. There are insufficient antecedent bases for these limitations in the claims.
Claim 6 recites the limitations “the identified core network nodes” in lines 1-2 as well as “the polygonal definition of the geographic area”. There are insufficient antecedent bases for these limitations in the claim.
Claim 9 recites the limitations “the a number of alerting nodes” in line 5. Examiner suggests removing redundant article from the limitation in the claim.
Claim 11 end with double period sign (“..”). Examiner suggests removing redundant period sign in the claim.
Claim 11 and 16 recite similar limitations as recited in claim 1. Therefore, the claim objection, as set forth above, also applies to the claims.
Claim 13 and 14 recite similar limitations as recited in claims 3 and 4 respectively. Therefore, the claim objections, as set forth above, also applies to the claims.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(d):
(d) REFERENCE IN DEPENDENT FORMS.—Subject to subsection (e), a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, fourth paragraph:
Subject to the following paragraph [i.e., the fifth paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112], a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
Claim 12 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(d) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, 4th paragraph, as being of improper dependent form for failing to further limit the subject matter of the claim upon which it depends, or for failing to include all the limitations of the claim upon which it depends.
Claim 12 depends on independent claim 11, and recites “wherein the definitions of the geographic areas are polygonal.” The limitation of claim 12 is already recited in amended claim 11. Therefore, claim 12 fails to further limit the subject matter of the claim upon which it depends.
Applicant may cancel the claim(s), amend the claim(s) to place the claim(s) in proper dependent form, rewrite the claim(s) in independent form, or present a sufficient showing that the dependent claim(s) complies with the statutory requirements.
Examiner’s Note Regarding Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
During examination, the application was reviewed for potential rejection under 35 USC § 101 (revised Step 2A, two-prong test). The independent claims recite limitations:
- store plural definitions of geographic areas, each one of the geographic areas enclosing all core network nodes of a single network domain area;
- perform the determining of the number of the alerting nodes as determining a number of alerting nodes in each one of the geographic areas, and
- trigger reverting, or trigger prompting of a user whether to revert, of at least a subset of core network nodes of a first network domain area to prior configurations based on determining that a number of alerting nodes in a geographic area enclosing the core network nodes of the first network domain area exceeds a threshold number, wherein the definitions of the geographic areas are polygonal, and in that the apparatus is configured to determine the geographic areas in which a specific alerting node is located by determining directional angles to polygon vertices of the geographic areas, and to determine the specific alerting node as being located in those geographic areas for which inter-vertex differences of the directional angles to the polygon vertices add up to a full circle.
Examiner found that such claimed invention, as a whole, integrates any judicial exception, if present, into a practical application. For instance, in the claimed invention, automatic reverting, or automatic prompting whether to revert, to previous device configurations is triggered as a response to determining that a number of network alarms originating from a geographic area spanned by nodes of a network domain area exceeds a threshold. (see [0018] of US 20260032042 A1). In addition, disclosed invention can mitigate the effects of failures or alarms in a network, thereby providing a benefit in terms of enhancing communications reliability provided by the network (see [0018]). For e.g., the claimed approach of the present invention find industrial application in network management (see [0061]). Since the claim as a whole integrates the judicial exception into a practical application, the claim is not directed to a judicial exception (Step 2A: NO) and is eligible under 35 USC § 101.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1, 3-7, 9-11, 13-14 and 16 are allowed over the prior art of record.
Reasons for the Indication of Allowable Subject Matter
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
The primary reason for the allowance of the claims in this application is the inclusion of the specific details of trigger reverting, or trigger prompting of a user whether to revert, of at least a subset of core network nodes of a first network domain area to prior configurations based on determining that a number of alerting nodes in a geographic area enclosing the core network nodes of the first network domain area exceeds a threshold number, wherein the definitions of the geographic areas are polygonal, and in that the apparatus is configured to determine the geographic areas in which a specific alerting node is located by determining directional angles to polygon vertices of the geographic areas, and to determine the specific alerting node as being located in those geographic areas for which inter-vertex differences of the directional angles to the polygon vertices add up to a full circle.
For context, the alerting nodes in a geographic area are alerting core network nodes 110-150 of core network 103 such as mobility management entities (MME), serving gateways (S-GW), or access and mobility management functions (AMF) (see [0039] in view of Fig.1 and [0020]). These are not UE 101.
It must also be recognized that any judgment on obviousness is in a sense necessarily a reconstruction based upon hindsight reasoning. But so long as it takes into account only knowledge which was within the level of ordinary skill at the time the claimed invention was made, and does not include knowledge gleaned only from the applicant's disclosure, such a reconstruction is proper. See In re McLaughlin, 443 F.2d 1392, 170 USPQ 209 (CCPA 1971). Here, the limitations presented in the independent claims, taken together as a whole and as presented, cannot be rejected by the prior art of record without using a level of hindsight reasoning that is impermissible. Specifically, the closest prior-art references US 20200287793 A1; US 10129760 B2; US 20150365802 A1; US 20140165060 A1; US 9031571 B2 and US 20130286852 A1, neither alone, nor in combination can be used to reject the independent claims based on the questions of novelty under 35 U.S.C. 102 and obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103.
Additional References
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Baroudi (US 10129760 B2) discloses restoring connectivity in partitioned wireless sensor and actor networks.
KIM et al. (KR 20190110882 A) teaches method for constructing alternative path between wireless communication nodes, and for selecting relay node.
Dotson et al. (US 20150086736 A1) discloses the sum of the bond angles is approximately 360 degrees.
Barr (US 20150365802 A1) automatically selects alert modes based on location.
Muller et al. (US 20140165060 A1) discloses reclaiming resources in virtual computing environments based on threshold indication.
Basile et al. (US 20130290791 A1) teaches mapping a network fault based on the geographic coordinates of each of the cable modems reporting an issue.
Magerramov et al. (US 10122578 B1) discloses configuration propagation deployment policy to revert back to immediate previous state.
HULTBERG et al. (WO 2020153897 A1) teaches a low power portable location tracker, a location tracking system and methods.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SANDARVA KHANAL whose telephone number is (571)272-8107. The examiner can normally be reached MON-FRI, 0800-1700.
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/SANDARVA KHANAL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2453