DETAILED ACTION RCE
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 10/21/25 has been entered.
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
3. This action is in response claims filed on 07/02/26.
4. Claims 1-6 are under examination.
5. Claims 7-20 are canceled.
Drawing
6. The drawings filed on 09/29/22 are accepted by the examiner.
Response to Arguments
7. Applicant's arguments/amendments filed on 10/21/25, regarding to a 102 rejection have been fully considered but are not persuasive. See final office action mailed out on 03/09/26.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
8. 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.
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 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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.
9. Claims 1-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ericsson et al. (hereinafter referred as Ericsson) NPL document, “Handling LBT failures” Chongqing, China, 14-18 Oct 2019 (as disclosed in the IDS), in view of 3GPP et al. (hereinafter referred as 3GPP) NPL Document (Handling Consistent UL LBT failures) 24th Feb-6th Mar, 2020 (as disclosed in the IDS).
Regarding claim 1: Ericsson discloses a terminal equipment (See Section 5.X; the UE performing a consistent LBT failure recovery), comprising:
a transmitter or a receiver (See Section 2.4; a User Equipment (UE) is equipped with a transceiver); and
processor (See Section 2.4; a User Equipment (UE) is equipped with a Controller/CPU/Processor) circuitry configured to, for an activated serving cell configured with ibt-FailureRecoveryConfig (See 5.X; the UE performing a consistent LBT failure recovery is located in the active serving in which an LBT-MAC is set. FailureRecoveryConfig when a consistent LBT failure recovery is configured on active BWP of the serving cell),
in response to occurrence of an event causing a scheduling request for LBT failure Medium Access Control Control Element (MAC CE) to be triggered, reset a counter for consistent LBT failure detection (See Section 1, 2.2; The UE wilt report the occurrence of consistent UL LBT failures an PSCell and SCell. In the RLF report, the UE includes a failure cause indicating that the RLF was triggered due to occurrence of consistent UL LBT failures. If the reset of the MAC entity is requested by the upper layers, the MAC shall reset LBT counter).
Ericsson does not explicitly disclose a scheduling request for LBT failure Medium Access Control Control Element (MAC CE) to be triggered.
However, 3GPP from the same field of endeavor discloses a scheduling request for LBT failure Medium Access Control Control Element (MAC CE) to be triggered (See Section 2.4; LBT failure MAC CE).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include a scheduling request for LBT failure Medium Access Control Control Element (MAC CE) to be triggered as taught by Ericsson in the system of Vivo, would have yield predictable results of interoperability and compatibility between the telecommunication equipment vendors and service providers and resulted in the improve system (KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 127 S.Ct. 1727, 1742, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1396 (2007)).
Regarding claim 2: The combination of Ericsson and 3GPP disclose a terminal equipment.
Furthermore, Ericsson disclose the terminal equipment, wherein the event causing instructing a multiplexing and assembly procedure to generate an LBT failure MAC CE comprises at least one of the following events that: upon reception of Radio Resource Control (RRC) configuration or RRC reconfiguration for BWP switching (See Section 2.4 & 4; RRC reconfiguration for the SCell).
Regarding claim 3: The combination of Ericsson and 3GPP disclose a terminal equipment.
Furthermore, Ericsson disclose the terminal equipment, wherein the processor circuitry is configured to, in response to an event causing instructing a multiplexing and assembly procedure to generate an LBT failure MAC CE, reset a counter for consistent LBT failure detection, and the event causing instructing a multiplexing and assembly procedure to generate an LBT failure MAC CE comprises at least one of the following events that: consistent LBT failure has been triggered and not cancelled in a special cell (SpCell), and uplink shared channel (UL-SCH) resources are available for a new transmission in the special cell and these UL-SCH resources can accommodate theLBT failure MAC CE plus its sub-header as a result of logical channel prioritization (LCP) (See Section 5.X.1 & 5.X.2; consistence LBT failure has been triggered, and not canceled, in the SPCell. UL-SCH resources are available for a new transmission in the SPCell and these UL-SCH resources can accommodate the LBT failure MAC CE plus its subleader as a result of logical channel prioritization).
Regarding claim 4: The combination of Ericsson and 3GPP disclose a terminal equipment.
Furthermore, Ericsson disclose the terminal equipment, wherein the event causing a scheduling request for LBT failure MAC CE to be triggered (See Section 3; Scheduling request is triggered to request resource for UL LBT failure MAC CE) comprises: consistent LBT failure has been triggered and not cancelled in at least one secondary cell, and uplink shared channel (UL-SCH) resources are not available for a new transmission in a serving cell for which consistent LBT failure has not been triggered and these UL-SCH resources can accommodate the LBT failure MAC CE plus its sub-header as a result of logical channel prioritization (LCP) (See Section 5.X.1; consistence LBT failure has been triggered, and not canceled, in the SPCell. UL-SCH resources are available for a new transmission in the SPCell and these UL-SCH resources can accommodate the LBT failure MAC CE plus its subleader as a result of logical channel prioritization).
Regarding claim 5: The combination of Ericsson and 3GPP disclose a terminal equipment.
Furthermore, Ericsson disclose the terminal equipment, wherein reset a counter for consistent LBT failure detection comprises: set the counter to 0 (See Section 5.X; a LBT counter is set to 0).
Regarding claim 6: The combination of Ericsson and 3GPP disclose a terminal equipment.
Furthermore, Ericsson disclose the terminal equipment, wherein, one of the lower layers of the terminal equipment is a physical layer (See Section 1; a physical layer).
Conclusion
10. The prior art of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure.
A. Lohr et al. 2025/0024500 A1 (Title: Techniques for listen before talk failure recovery for sidelink) (See Abstract, Para. 0012 & 0037-0038).
B. Jeong et al. 2024/0049286 A1 (Title: SL resource selection and reselection for SL transmission) (See abstract, Para. 0006 & 00813-0016).
C. Kung et al. 2023/0199638 A1 (Title: Method and apparatus for uplink time alignment in a wireless communication system) (See FIG. 1, Para. 0046, 0050 & 0160).
11. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MEWALE A AMBAYE whose telephone number is (571)270-1076. The examiner can normally be reached on M.F 6a.m.-2p.m..
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, Ian Moore can be reached on (571)272-3085. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/MEWALE A AMBAYE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2469
Prosecution Insights