CTFR 17/649,740 CTFR 94028 DETAILED ACTION Response filed on 3/23/2026 has been entered and made of record. Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status 07-03-aia AIA 15-10-aia The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA. Claim status Claims 14 and 18 are amended. Claims 1-3, 5-22, and 24- 27 are pending for examination. Response to arguments Re: 35 USC § 103 rejection Applicant’s response filed on 12/12/2025 has been fully considered but not persuasive. Below are applicant’s arguments and examiner’s response to the arguments. Applicant’s argument: “the Office Action has not shown that PI and BALA disclose " transmit the three bit sub-band differential CQI value in the CSI communication based at least in part on the request and the determination that the set of physical uplink shared channel or physical uplink control channel resources is sufficient to permit the three bit sub-band differential CQI value to be transmitted in the CSI communication ; or refrain from transmitting the three bit sub-band differential CQI value in the CSI communication based at least in part on the request and the determination that the set of physical uplink shared channel or physical uplink control channel resources is insufficient to permit the three bit sub-band differential CQI value to be transmitted in the CSI communication ””. Examiner’s response: Examiner respectfully disagrees. In the previous office action, it was shown that part of the claim as shown above, in italics, is taught by the prior arts of record. The second part, in bold, is an option from two and is not being considered in the rejection of the claim (claim 14), that is discussed in the following section. 35 USC § 103 rejection is not withdrawn. Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103 07-06 AIA 15-10-15 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. 07-20-aia AIA 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. 07-23-aia AIA The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows: 1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art. 2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue. 3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art. 4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness. 07-20-02-aia 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. 07-21-aia AIA Claim s 14-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pi et al. (US 9,386,473 B2) hereinafter “Tsai” in view of Bala et al.( US 2009/0116570 A1), hereinafter “Bala” . Regarding claim 14 , Tsai teaches ‘a mobile station for wireless communication’ (Tsai: Col.1 lines 33-35, “For a given channel condition, the most appropriate CQI index is selected and fed back by the mobile station), comprising: ‘one or more memories; and one or more processors, the one or more processors’ (Clm.4), ‘ individually or collectively based at least in part on information stored in the one or more memories, being configured to: ‘determine that a set of physical uplink shared channel or physical uplink control channel resources to be used for transmitting a channel state information (CSI) communication ( Tsai: Col.15, lines 55-60, “wideband CQI can be transmitted in both physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) or physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH). Since the resource on PUCCH is more scarce, it is preferable to transmit wideband CQI in PUCCH with less number of bits than to transmit wideband CQI in PUSCH.” ) is sufficient or insufficient to permit a three bit sub-band differential CQI value to be transmitted in the CSI communication’ (Tsai: Col.8, lines 58-62, “upper and lower limits are applied to make sure the reported differential CQI index is within the desired range. For example, we can set the upper limit and the lower limit such that I SB,min = I SB,max -7 to make sure the differential CQI index can be represented by 3 bits”; the disclosure regarding checking to see whether the differential CQI index can be represented by 3 bits, implies determination of sufficiency as per the claim. Tsai teaches, ‘transmit the three bit sub-band differential CQI value in the CSI communication based on determination that the set of physical uplink shared channel or physical uplink control channel resources is sufficient to permit the three bit sub-band differential CQI value to be transmitted in the CSI communicaiton’ ((Tsai: Clm.1 “selecting a subset of entries in the channel quality indication table”, and as per discussion above). Claim, ‘refrain from transmitting the three bit sub-band differential CQI value in the CSI communication based at least in part on the request and the determination that the set of physical uplink shared channel or physical uplink control channel resources is insufficient to permit the three bit sub-band differential CQI value to be transmitted in the CSI communication’, is one of the options of the claim and is not considered. The other option is considered above. Tsai however does not expressly teach but in the same field of endeavor Bala teaches, receive, from a base station, a request to report a channel quality indicator (CQI) value’ (implied by disclosures (implied by disclosures in Bala, [0005] “A method and apparatus is disclosed for a WTRU to feedback a channel quality indicator (CQI), a precoding matrix indicator (PMI), and rank information to a Node B”, and in [0145] “To signal the WTRU if the Node B requests a periodic CQI report or not, a 1 bit signaling has to be used in the uplink grant”. WTRU sends the feedback as per request from the base station ) . The claim of CQI transmission ‘based at least in part on the request and the determination of whether the set of physical uplink shared channel or physical uplink control channel resources is sufficient to permit the three bit sub-band differential CQI value to be transmitted in the CSI communication’ , is disclosed by combination of Bala and Tsai as discussed above, the request part being disclosed by Bala as discussed above and sufficiency of uplink resource for reporting the three bit sub-band differential CQI value is disclosed by Tsai. It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the disclosure by Bala regarding the request for CQI reporting with that of 3-bit differential CQI values taught by Tsai to come up with the claimed invention motivated by use of limited resource for CQI reporting, which is required by the base station to have the channel quality information for scheduling communication with WTRU as disclosed by Bala in [0003] and quoted above. Regarding claim 15 , combination of Tsai and Bala teaches the mobile station of claim 14 (discussed above). The claim ‘wherein the one or more processors, to selectively transmit the three bit sub-band differential CQI value, are configured to: transmit the three bit sub-band differential CQI value in the CSI communication based at least in part on a determination that the set of uplink resources is sufficient to permit the three bit sub-band differential CQI value to be transmitted in the CSI communication’ is obvious based on discussion above in claim 1 regarding resource availability and use of maximum resource availability . It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to use the resource for sending 3-bit CQI report so as to have more accuracy in reporting (more bits imply better accuracy, as discussed by Bala in [0039], “The accuracy of the CQI computation by using the neighbors as the reference can be improved if full-resolution CQIs are computed for some sub-bands”). Regarding claim 16 , combination of Tsai and Bala teaches the mobile station of claim 14 (discussed above). Tsai does not expressly disclose ‘wherein the one or more processors, to selectively transmit the three bit sub-band differential CQI value, are configured to: ‘transmit a two bit sub-band differential CQI value in the CSI communication. Bala discloses transmission of two bit subband CQI value (Bala: [0065] “The bit combination 00 may be used to denote all CQIs smaller than the average CQI. The remaining three bit combinations 01, 10, and 11 may then be used to denote three levels of CQIs that are larger than the average CQI.”). The conditional element, ‘ based at least in part on a determination that the set of uplink resources is insufficient to permit the three bit sub-band differential CQI value to be transmitted in the CSI communication.’, is obvious based on disclosure by Bala regarding resource availability and make use of maximum possible number of bits for CQI reporting. Fallback from three bits to two is obvious when resource is not enough for three bit transmission but enough for two bit transmission of CQI reporting. Regarding claim 17 , combination of Tsai and Bala teaches the mobile station of claim 16 (discussed above). The claim, ‘wherein the two bit sub-band differential CQI value is transmitted in the CSI communication based at least in part on a determination that the set of uplink resources is sufficient to permit the two bit sub-band differential CQI value to be transmitted in the CSI communication’ is discussed above in claim 16. It is implied that CQI report may be transmitted only when the resource is sufficient. Regarding claim 18 , combination of Tsai and Bala teaches the mobile station of claim 14 (discussed above). Tsai however does not explicitly teach, ‘wherein the one or more processors, to refrain from transmitting the three bit sub-band differential CQI value’ , but in the same field of endeavor Bala teaches the claim (Bala: [0061] If the feedback resources are limited, then it may be necessary to feedback the wideband CQI only; the disclosure implies that when resources limited, sub-band differential CQI will not be transmitted). A person of ordinary skill would be motivated to use disclosure by Bala in combination with that of Tsai so that at least the wideband CQI is used for average channel quality information when resource is scarce (wideband CQI is the average is disclosed in e.g. [0032] “The CQI may be an average value, (i.e., an average CQI for all of the configured sub-bands)). Tsai teaches, ‘ are configured to transmit a wideband CQI in the CSI communication (implied by the disclosure in Tsai: Col.7 lines 10-17, “To reduce the overhead of CQI reporting, a differential compression scheme is used. With this approach, the differences between the sub-band CQIs and the wideband CQI, which we call differential sub-band CQI, are reported together with the 15 wideband CQI. In this case, the wideband CQI is reported using a full CQI, the sub-band CQI can be reported using a differential CQI.”). Regarding claim 19 , combination of Tsai and Bala teaches the mobile station of claim 18 (discussed above). For the claim, ‘wherein refraining from transmitting the sub-band differential CQI value is further based at least in part on a determination that the set of uplink resources is insufficient to permit a two bit sub-band differential CQI value to be transmitted in the CSI communication’ , the same disclosure by Bala, as discussed above in claim 18, i.e., “ If the feedback resources are limited, then it may be necessary to feedback the wideband CQI only ”. The disclosure may be broadly interpreted as having implication that when resources limited, two-bit sub-band differential CQI will not be transmitted when resource is not enough for that purpose . Allowable Subject Matter 12-151-07 AIA 07-97 12-51-07 Claim 1-3, 5-13, 20-22, and 24-27 are allowed. The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: Independent claims 1, 9, and 20 are allowable over the prior arts of record since the prior arts, either alone or in combination, do not teach or render obvious to disclose combined claimed limitations recited as-a-whole as interpreted in light of the specification. Closest prior art Bala (US 2009/0116570 A1), though teaches about non-linear step sizes for CQI reporting ([0035] The step sizes do not have to be linear and can be selected unevenly”, uneven quantization levels ([0068], [0101]), it fails to expressly teach the claim limitation ‘wherein a granularity of the set of quantization points is finer near a middle sub-band CQI offset, of the range of sub-band CQI offsets, than near an edge sub-band CQI offset of the range of sub-band CQI offsets’ in combination with other claim elements. Dependent claims 2-3, 5-8, 10-13, 21-23, and 25-27 are allowable based on their dependence on allowable independent claims. Conclusion 07-96 AIA The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. EP 2 536 055 B1 teaches reporting differential channel quality information . Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL . See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a). A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to INTEKHAAB AALAM SIDDIQUEE whose telephone number is (571)272-0895. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Friday 9AM-5PM 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, Yemane Mesfin can be reached at 571-272-3927. 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. /INTEKHAAB A SIDDIQUEE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2462 Application/Control Number: 17/649,740 Page 2 Art Unit: 2462 Application/Control Number: 17/649,740 Page 3 Art Unit: 2462 Application/Control Number: 17/649,740 Page 4 Art Unit: 2462 Application/Control Number: 17/649,740 Page 5 Art Unit: 2462 Application/Control Number: 17/649,740 Page 6 Art Unit: 2462 Application/Control Number: 17/649,740 Page 7 Art Unit: 2462 Application/Control Number: 17/649,740 Page 8 Art Unit: 2462 Application/Control Number: 17/649,740 Page 9 Art Unit: 2462
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