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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Claim(s) 1, 4, 6, 9-11, 14, 16, 19, 20 are pending.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 3/23/26 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed 3/23/26 with respect to rejection(s) of claim(s) under 35 USC 103 have been considered but are not persuasive. Specifically, while the amendments substantially change the scope of the claimed subject matter and necessitate new grounds of rejection with new citations of prior art, Examiner respectfully maintains the prior art references cited reasonably teach/suggest the limitations of the amended claims albeit with new/revised citations.
Regarding remarks on page 7-8, applicants state “Yang describes stopping LBT on a predefined threshold value, which may be greater than one, and further expressly discloses that Cat2 LBT may still be performed on other beams. Yang's stopping behavior is threshold-based and optional, and contemplates continued LBT on additional beams. See Yang, 11 [0569]. However, Yang fails to teach or suggest "performing a listen-before-talk (LBT) on each beam of the set of beams in a time domain", "performing one or more of the downlink reception or the uplink transmission in response to first successful LBT on one beam of the set of beams", and "terminating the LBT procedure upon the first successful LBT and refraining from performing LBT on remaining beams of the set of beams", as recited in amended claim 1.” However, Yang was previously cited for (see at least 0559-0562, LBT may be performed over time on the multiple beams for transmission), thus disclosing LBT taking place at a given time, comprising being in time domain; also see Yang (0535, “The CCA may be performed on multiple candidate beams at the same time, or the CCA detection may be sequentially performed in the TDM manner”). Further, the language disclosed in Yang (0569, “If the number of beams on which the LBT is completed reaches a predefined threshold value, LBT on other beams can be stopped, or Cat2 LBT or Cat2 LBT having the minimum time interval is performed on other beams”) does not exclude the threshold from being one; also see Yang (0457, 0525, “…transmission is performed only on the directional beam on which the LBT is successfully performed”). Further, as Yang discloses that continuing LBT on other beams is optional, the UE may stop/terminate LBT at that point; also see Yang (0525, “As long as a secondary beam is detected to be idle through the CCA detection, the CCA detection on other secondary beams is stopped. The secondary beam on which the CCA is successfully performed is used for the transmission”). Therefore Examiner respectfully submits the prior art cited reasonably teaches/suggests the amended limitations of the claim(s) including “performing one or more of a downlink reception or an uplink transmission in response to a first successful LBT instance on one beam of the set of beams; and terminating the LBT procedure upon the first successful LBT and refraining from performing additional LBT instances on remaining beams of the set of beams”.
Rejections for similar independent and dependent claims are revised and/or maintained accordingly.
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.
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.
Claim 1, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 19, 20 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang et al. (US 2019/0373635) in view of Kim et al. (US 2020/0280859) in view of Liu et al. (US 2018/0227094).
For claim 1, Yang teaches: A method performed by a user equipment (UE) (see at least 0632-0635, fig. 1, 21-22, UE and BS may comprise processor/memory for communication), the method comprising:
determining a set of beams, wherein the set of beams comprises a plurality of beams configured for concurrent downlink reception or concurrent uplink transmission (see at least 0536, 0559-0563, multiple beams may be simultaneously (concurrently) transmitted; LBT may be performed on the multiple beams for transmission. See at least 0413, 0402, UE may perform beam LBT for uplink);
performing a listen-before-talk (LBT) procedure on the set of beams in a time domain (see at least 0559-0562, LBT may be performed on the multiple beams for transmission; 0535, “The CCA may be performed on multiple candidate beams at the same time, or the CCA detection may be sequentially performed in the TDM manner”);
performing one or more of a downlink reception or an uplink transmission in response to a first successful LBT instance on one beam of the set of beams (see at least 0561, “at least one of the beams on which LBT is successfully performed may be used for transmission”; 0525, “As long as a secondary beam is detected to be idle through the CCA detection, the CCA detection on other secondary beams is stopped. The secondary beam on which the CCA is successfully performed is used for the transmission”); and
terminating the LBT procedure upon the first successful LBT and refraining from performing additional LBT instances on remaining beams of the set of beams (see at least 0525, “As long as a secondary beam is detected to be idle through the CCA detection, the CCA detection on other secondary beams is stopped”; 0569, “If the number of beams on which the LBT is completed reaches a predefined threshold value, LBT on other beams can be stopped”).
Hafeez does not explicitly teach: …receiving a channel occupancy time (COT) sharing information, or: …determining a set of beams based on the received COT sharing information. Kim from an analogous art teaches (see at least 0447, 0441, UE may determine whether a COT is shared with BS if a beam index (e.g. DMRS port index) is signaled), Liu from an analogous art teaches (see at least 0040, UE may identify one or more UL transmission beams via an indication e.g. DMRS port index). Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate Kim, Liu to the system of Yang, so UE may determine whether COT is shared based on received beam index (e.g. DMRS port index), comprising COT sharing information as suggested by Kim, and the UE identifies one or more e.g. multiple transmission beams based on the DMRS port index, comprising determining a set of UL beams based on received DMRS port index (COT sharing information), as suggested by Kim, Liu. The motivation would have been to enhance configuration by indicating COT sharing to the UE for UL transmissions (Kim 0447) and indicating appropriate beams for use to the UE (Liu 0040).
For claim 4, Yang, Kim, Liu teaches claim 1, Liu further teaches: further comprising receiving at least one indication to use the set of beams, wherein the at least one indication comprises one or more of: one or more of a set of downlink reference signal resources or a set of downlink resource set identifiers for determining the set of beams for performing the LBT procedure; or one or more of a set of uplink reference signal resources or a set of uplink resource set identifiers for determining the set of beams for performing uplink transmission on a sub-set of the set of beams after the first successful LBT instance (see at least 0040, UE may identify one or more UL transmission beams via an indication e.g. DMRS port index, comprising a downlink resource identifier). Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate Liu to the system of claim 1, so the UE identifies one or more e.g. multiple transmission beams based on the DMRS port index, comprising determining a set of UL beams based on received DMRS port index (downlink resource identifier), as suggested by Liu. The motivation would have been to enhance configuration by indicating appropriate beams for use to the UE (Liu 0040).
For claim 6, Yang, Kim, Liu teaches claim 1, Yang further teaches: wherein performing the LBT procedure on the set of beams in a time domain comprises performing the LBT procedure on all beams of the set of beams (see at least 0559-0562, 0535, LBT may be performed on the multiple beams for transmission), and the method further comprises selecting one or more of a sub-set of beams or a sub-set of panels for uplink transmission in response to the first successful LBT instance (see at least 0561, “at least one of the beams on which LBT is successfully performed may be used for transmission”. Also see 0016, 0569, optionally LBT can be stopped with transmission performed only on the successful beams).
For claim 9, Yang, Kim, Liu teaches claim 6, Yang further teaches: further comprising performing the uplink transmission using one beam of the sub-set of beams in response to the first successful LBT instance (see at least 0559-0563, “If the number of beams on which LBT is successfully performed meets a predetermined threshold value, at least one of the beams on which LBT is successfully performed may be used for transmission”, thus one beam may be used).
For claim 10, Yang, Kim, Liu teaches claim 6, Yang further teaches: further comprising performing the uplink transmission using a plurality of beams of the sub-set of beams in response to the first successful LBT instance (see at least 0559-0563, “If the number of beams on which LBT is successfully performed meets a predetermined threshold value, at least one of the beams on which LBT is successfully performed may be used for transmission”, thus more than one beam may be used. Also see 0571, a single LBT may be performed on a beam group as a unit, thus multiple beams in the group may be used in response to a single LBT).
Claim 11 recites an apparatus substantially similar to the method of claim 1 and is rejected under similar reasoning.
Claim 14 recites an apparatus substantially similar to the method of claim 4 and is rejected under similar reasoning.
Claim 16 recites an apparatus substantially similar to the method of claim 6 and is rejected under similar reasoning.
Claim 19 recites an apparatus substantially similar to the method of claim 9 and is rejected under similar reasoning.
Claim 20 recites an apparatus substantially similar to the method of claim 10 and is rejected under similar reasoning.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Mukherjee et al. (US 2021/0076424, see figure 13)
Iyer et al. (US 2022/0287093, see figure 6b)
Naghshvar et al. (US 2019/0141744, see figure 8)
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SIREN WEI whose telephone number is (571)272-0687. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Thursday 7-4. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Hassan Phillips can be reached on 571-272-3940. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/SIREN WEI/Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2467
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