DETAILED ACTION
Response filed on 9/16/2025 has been entered and made of record.
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 .
Claim status
Claims 1-2, 4, 6-7, 9, 11-12, and 16-17 are amended.
Claims 5, 10, 15, and 20 are canceled.
Claims 25-28 are newly added.
Claims 1-4, 6-9, 11-14, 16-19, and 25-28 are pending for examination
Response to arguments
Re: 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection
Applicant’s arguments have been fully considered. Applicant’s arguments are moot in view of claim amendments and new grounds of rejection.
35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection is not withdrawn.
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.
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.
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.
Claims 1-3, 6-8, 11-14, and 16-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Aris Papasakellariou (US 2020/0022144 A1), hereinafter “Papa”, in view of Alexei et al. (EP 3 451 553 A2), hereinafter “Alexei”.
Regarding claim 1, Papa teaches, a communication method, applied in a terminal device or a chip in the terminal device (Papa: [Abstract] “Methods, user equipment (UE), and base stations for downlink control information (DCI) formats reception or transmission are provided.”), comprising:
receiving a first configuration information that indicates a first frequency domain resource and a second frequency domain resource (Papa: [0206] A UE is provided a set of PDSCH reception configurations in a slot where each configuration in the set of configurations includes time-frequency resources, a transport block size, a modulation scheme, PUCCH timing and a PUCCH resource for HARQ-ACK transmission in response to a transport block reception, a DM-RS configuration”; see Fig.17),
wherein the second frequency domain resource comprises at least one of a control-resource set (CORESET) 0 and an initial bandwidth part (BWP) (Second resource may be for user specific resource; [0016] The UE's expectation/decision on which CORESET 0 is to be monitored may be based on the condition whether there is CORESET 0 configured for current bandwidth part (BWP). For example, the CORESET 0 within the current BWP may be prioritized for monitoring over other CORESETs 0 not configured in the current BWP.“; [0140] “the gNB and UE should identify one SSB to transmit and receive the PDCCH in CORESET 0, when CORESET 0 is configured for current active bandwidth part (BWP).”), and the first configuration information and the second configuration information are configured by using different signaling (implied by disclosures in Papa [0210] “The gNB can provide by higher layer signaling to each UE from the multiple UEs with a RNTI, referred to as M-RNTI, included in a DCI format that schedules a multicast/ broadcast PDSCH reception to the UE.”; and Fig.21, steps 2110, 2120, and 2130) .
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 disclosure by Alexei regarding independent configuration of resources with the disclosures by Papa and come up with claimed invention for configuration of multiple resources for a user equipment for communication with the network.
Papa teaches, receiving, by the terminal device, first information, wherein the first information is used to schedule a downlink data channel (Papa: Fig.20, step 2020 “UE detects DC[ format scheduling PDSCH reception that conveys transport block”; see also [0247]), the first information comprises frequency domain resource assignment information (Papa: Clm.3, “receiving a configuration for a number of resource blocks (RBs) in a resource block group (RBG), wherein: the first DCI format includes a frequency domain resource allocation (FDRA) field, the second DCI format includes the FDRA field, a value of the FDRA field indicates a number of RBGs,”), wherein the frequency domain resource assignment information indicates a frequency domain resource of the downlink data channel within a range of the first frequency domain resource (disclosed above), and the first information is scrambled by using a group-radio network temporary identifier {G-RNTI] (Papa: [0220] “for scheduling broadcast PDSCH transmissions or multiple unicast transmissions can be avoided by introducing a new DCI format that schedules multiple PDSCH receptions from or multiple PUSCH transmissions by respective multiple UEs. A UE can be configured a new RNTI, referred to G-RNTI, for a new DCI format.”).
Regarding claim 2, combination of Papa and Alexei teaches the method according to claim 1 (discussed above), wherein the first information does not comprise: a physical uplink control channel {PUCCH} transmission power control command (implied by disclosure in Papa: [0186] “A TPC command can also be provided by a UE-group specific DCI format, such as DCI format 2_2. For a quasi-stationary UE, relying on a UE-group specific DCI format to provide TPC commands can be sufficient and a TPC command does not need to be included in the DL DCI format or UL DCI format.”. It is implied from the disclosure that a TPC command may not be included in the DL DCI when relied on group specific DCI format info)
Regarding claim 3, combination of Papa and Alexei teaches the method according to claim 1 (discussed above), wherein the first information does not comprise downlink control information (DCI) format identifier information, and the DCI format identifier information indicates an uplink DCI format or a downlink DCI format (Papa: [0003] “The present disclosure further relates to enabling a dynamically scheduled PDSCH reception by a UE without an associated DCI format.”; [0029] FIG. 17 illustrates an example determination of a PDSCH reception without an associated DCI format according to embodiments of the present disclosure”).
Claims 4, 9, 14, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over combination of Papa and Alexei as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of 3GPP TS 38.212 V1.2.1 (2017-12), hereinafter “TS38212”.
Regarding claim 4, Papa teaches the method according to claim 1 (discussed above), wherein the method further comprises:
receiving second information, wherein the second information is in a DCI format 1_0 (Papa: [0268] “If the UE does not indicate to the serving gNB a capability to monitor up to 4 sizes of DCI formats with CRC scrambled by a C-RNTI per cell, the serving gNB can configure the UE to monitor only DCI format 0_0 and DCI format 1_0 for at least one service type”), and the second information is scrambled by using a cell-radio network temporary identifier (C-RNTI) (Papa: [0083] “A DCI format type is identified by a radio network temporary identifier (RNTI) that scrambles the CRC bits. For a DCI format scheduling a PDSCH or a PUSCH to a single UE, the RNTI can be a cell RNTI (C-RNTI) and serves as a UE identifier.”),
The claim element, wherein the second information comprises an information field of the following information:
an identifier for DCI formats,
frequency domain resource assignment,
time domain resource assignment,
a virtual resource block {VRB}-to-physical resource block {PRB} mapping,
a modulation and coding scheme,
a new data indicator,
a redundancy version,
a HARQ process number,
a downlink assignment index,
a PUCCH transmission power control command,
a PUCCH resource indicator, and
a PDSCH-to-HARQ feedback timing indicator., is not disclosed by combination of Papa and Alexei, but disclosed by TS38212 as shown in the following:
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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 above disclosure by TS38212 with disclosures by Papa and Alexei and come up with the claimed invention so that required configuration information is received by user equipment for successful communication.
Claims 6, 11, and 16 are for method for network device or a chip in the network device, terminal device and network device respectively. Claim 6 is method complimentary to method of claim 1, claims 11 and 16 are change in categories with respect to claims 1 and 6 respectively. Transceivers with processor and memory are implied.
Claims 7, 12, and 17 are for method for network device or a chip in the network device, terminal device and network device respectively. Claim 7 is method complimentary to method of claim 2, claims 12 and 17 are change in categories with respect to claims 2 and 7 respectively. Transceivers with processor and memory are implied.
Claims 8, 13, and 18 are for method for network device or a chip in the network device, terminal device and network device respectively. Claim 8 is method complimentary to method of claim 3, claims 13 and 18 are change in categories with respect to claims 3 and 8 respectively. Transceivers with processor and memory are implied.
Claims 9, 14, and 19 are for method for network device or a chip in the network device, terminal device and network device respectively. Claim 9 is method complimentary to method of claim 4, claims 14 and 19 are change in categories with respect to claims 4 and 9 respectively. Transceivers with processor and memory are implied.
Claims 25 and 27:
Regarding claim 25, combination of Papa and Alexei teaches the communication method according to claim 1 (discussed above), wherein the downlink data channel is a multicast data channel (Papa: [0210] “The gNB can provide by higher layer signaling to each UE from the multiple UEs with a RNTI, referred to as M-RNTI, included in a DCI format that schedules a multicast/ broadcast PDSCH reception to the UE.”).
Claim 27 is for communication method complementary to method of claim 25. Claim is rejected based on rejection of claim 25.
Claims 26 and 28:
Regarding claim 26, combination of Papa and Alexei teaches the communication method according to claim 1 (discussed above), wherein the first configuration information is carried in higher layer signaling (Fig.19, step 1950, “UE receives PDSCH according to a set of parameters provided by higher layers”), and the second configuration information is carried in system information (Fig.21, steps 2110, 2120, and 2130).
Claim 28 is for communication method complementary to method of claim 26. Claim is rejected based on rejection of claim 26.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. WO 2017045180 A1 teaches resource configuration for multicast and unicast data.
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.
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/INTEKHAAB A SIDDIQUEE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2462
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