DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Continued Examination
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 October 22, 2025 has been entered.
This Office Action is in response to RCE application filed on October 22, 2025.
In virtue of this communication, claims 1, 9 and 15 are currently pending in this Office Action.
The Office appreciates the explanation of the amendment and analyses of the prior arts, and however, although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993) and MPEP 2145.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1, 9, 15 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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.
Claims 1, 9, 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Molavian et al. (US 20230283348 A1, hereinafter Molavian) in view of Babaei et al. (US 20240057110 A1, hereinafter Babaei).
Claim 1: Molavian teaches a network controlled repeater (NCR) comprising (abstract): receiving circuitry (Fig.2, element 102, Fig.3, element 116, [0062], “one or more of the transceivers 210 may be used for an NCR radio unit (NCR-RU) entity or NCR forwarding (NCR-Fwd) entity as a DL connection for signaling over an access link with a UE and/or over a backhaul link with a gNB”) configured to: receive a list of NCR configured grant (CG) configurations (Fig. 13, Fig.14, abstract, “first information for a list of spatial domain filters for an access link of an NCR forwarding (NCR-Fwd) entity, second information for a set of spatial relations corresponding to reference signals (RS) for transmission or reception on a control link (C-link) of the NCR-MT entity, and third information indicating an uplink (UL) or downlink (DL) direction for each time domain resource”) by radio resource control RRC signaling (Fig. 30, element 3010, [0201], “the NCR supports a simplified RRC
configuration, such as one with a limited set of IEs, that are provided to the NCR-MT using PHY or MAC signaling or using SIB messages …the NCR-MT is provided pre-configuration for higher layers, such as for RRC layer/protocol”, [0202], “ an architecture for the NCR-MT includes a full protocol stack, including RRC configuration/signaling … once NCR-MT establishes an RRC connection/configuration, the NCR-MT can exchange
RRC messages with the gNB for the purpose of identification”) on a control link from a gNodeB gNB (Fig.14, [0180], “the NCR includes the NCR-MT and NCR-Fwd. The NCR-MT is defined as a functional entity to communicate with a gNB via a Control link (C-link) to enable exchange of control information”).
wherein each NCR CG configuration includes time domain information ([0005], “ first information for a list of spatial domain filters for an access link of an NCR forwarding (NCR-Fwd) entity corresponding to a list of time domain resources …third information indicating an uplink (UL) direction or a downlink (DL) direction for each time domain resource from the list of time domain resources”) including access beam indexes (Fig.22, elements 2220, 2230, [0298], “the NCR-MT is provided a beam indication message that provides a beam index”), a starting symbol and duration in a number of symbols per beam ([0354], “the NCR is provided information of parameters that the NCR can use to determine the corresponding T/F resources for the beam update indication. For example, the beam update indication is considered to apply to a number of consecutive slots, so only a first slot and a number of applicable slots are indicated. In another example, a formula may be used to indicate the corresponding T/F resource, such as a formula for SLIV (start and length indicator value) as used in a TDRA fields of a DCI format, wherein the SLIV can be in a time unit of symbols or extended to a time unit of slots”, [0456], “the NCR-MT can be provided first time/frequency resources, such as a number of symbols/slots and a number of REs or RBs”), and a periodicity of a CG transmission in a number of symbols ([0343], “the NCR is provided information such as one or more of periodicity and offset, an activation/start time/slot/symbol for semi-persistent CSI-RS, any resource ID(s) or sequence ID(s) or UE ID(s) for CSI-RS generation including initialization for random sequence generalization”, [0457], “the NCR-MT receives higher layer information for: a periodicity and a slot offset, or a duration in symbols”),
a type of an NCR CG selected from either type 1 or type 2 (abstract, “first information for a list of spatial domain filters for an access link of an NCR forwarding (NCR-Fwd) entity, second information for a set of spatial relations corresponding to reference signals (RS) for transmission or reception on a control link (C-link) of the NCR-MT entity”, NCR-Fwd is reading as type 1 configuration, and NCR-MT is reading as type 2 configuration),
However, Molavian does not explicitly teach uplink forwarding delay information in a number of slots or a number of symbols.
Babaei, from the same or similar field of endeavor, teaches uplink forwarding delay information (Fig. 16, [0114], “side control information (SCI) for network-controlled repeaters may include beamforming information and/or timing information to align transmission/reception boundaries of the network-controlled repeater and/or information on UL-DL TDD configuration”, [0119], “for the timing of NCR: the DL receiving timing of the NCR-Fwd may be aligned with the DL receiving timing of the NCR-MT; the UL transmitting timing of the NCR-Fwd may be aligned with the UL transmitting timing of the NCR-MT … the impact of internal delay on the NCR may be considered/used in the DL receiving timing and DL transmitting timing of the NCR-Fwd and the UL transmitting timing and UL receiving timing of the NCR-Fwd”, wherein the time gap between DL receiving timing and DL transmitting timing is reading as delay time. ([0141], “RRC may control DRX operation by configuring one or more of the following parameters …drx-SlotOffset: the delay before starting the drx-onDurationTimer”, wherein drx-SlotOffset is also reading as another delay time) in a number of slots or a number of symbols ([0137], “the time at which the NCR applies an access link beam indication may be determined”, [0138], “for the time-domain granularity of the access link beam indication, slot-level and/or symbol-level may be used”, [0092], “the wireless device may be configured with a CSI resource periodicity and offset parameter that indicate a periodicity and corresponding offset in terms of number of slots”).
Molavian and Babaei are both considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of wireless communication. Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the DCR grant configuration of Molavian, to add the feature of uplink forwarding delay information as taught by Babaei, for the benefit of aligning transmission/reception boundaries of the network-controlled repeater (paragraph [0114]).
Claim 9 is analyzed and rejected according to claim 1 and Molavian further teaches A gNodeB gNB (Fig.13,14) comprising: transmitting circuitry (Fig.2, element 102, [0060], “the TRP 200 is a base station such as gNBs 101-103 of FIG. 1”).
Claim 15 is a method of claim 1, and is analyzed and rejected according to claim 1 and Molavian further teaches and using the NCR CG configurations in transmissions (Fig.15, element 1530, Fig. 16, element 1630, Fig.21, elements 2110, 2120, 2130,2140, Fig.22, elements 2230, 2240).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to YONGHONG ZHAO whose telephone number is (571)272-4089. The examiner can normally be reached Monday -Friday 9:00 am - 5:00pm.
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/Y.Z./Examiner, Art Unit 2472
/NICHOLAS A JENSEN/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2472