DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claims 1-20 have been cancelled.
Status of Claims
2. This Office Action is in response to the application filed on 12/16/2025. Claims 21 and through 40 are presently pending and are presented for examination.
3. 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.
Response to Arguments
4. Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim 21-40 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection (Based on information submitted in an information disclosure statement (IDS).
Claim Rejections – 35 USC § 103
5. 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.
Claims 21-25, 28, 29-33, 36-38 and 40 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Fakoorian et al. (US 2020/0267756 A1) in view of Wong et al. (US 2022/0086873 A1) and further in view of Myung et al. (US 2021/0360673 A1).
For claims 21, 29, and 37 Fakoorian teaches a method implemented in a wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) (see paragraph 6 “a method implemented in UE (WTRU), the method comprising:
receiving a first grant for a first set of slots, wherein the first grant is associated with a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) process, and wherein the first grant indicates a HARQ process identifier associated with HARQ process (see paragraph 6 “DCI that includes an uplink grant and a time domain resource assignment for transmitting one or more data repetitions of uplink data… symbols within first slot and symbols within a second slot…a slot format…subset of plurality of symbols within a slot”, paragraph 8 “The instructions may be executable by the processor to cause the apparatus to receive, from a base station, signaling including an uplink grant for one or more data repetitions, the uplink grant including a time domain resource assignment that spans a set of slots for the one or more data repetitions (HARQ)”, paragraphs 94-95 “DEs 115
and base stations 105 may support retransmissions of data to increase the likelihood
that data is received successfully… where the device may provide HARQ feedback in a specific slot for data received in a previous symbol in the slot. In other cases, the device may provide HARQ feedback in a subsequent slot, or according to some other time interval. );
determining that a first subset of the first set of slots is available for uplink transmission and that a second subset of the first set of slots is unavailable for uplink transmission (see paragraph 47 “uplink grant includes an indication of availability of
downlink symbols (is a resource or could be a slot resource) or flexible symbols for the one or more data repetitions, and the determining the subset of the plurality of symbols for scheduling the one or more data repetitions may be based on the indication” and paragraph 159 “the UE may determine that the repetition 610-b may not have symbols available to transmit uplink data”, paragraph 227 and claim 37 “the uplink grant comprises an indication of availability of downlink symbols or flexible symbols for the one or more data repetitions, and the determining the subset of the plurality of symbols for scheduling the one or more data repetitions is based at least in part on the indication”);
transmitting a first segment of a transport block (TB) in the first subset of the first set of slots (see claim 17 “the method of claim 1, further comprising: segmenting a first repetition (can be replaced by a first segment of TB) of the one or more data repetitions into a plurality of data sub-repetitions based at least in part on identifying that one or more symbols of the subset allocated for transmission of the first repetition crosses a slot boundary between consecutive slots of the plurality of slots, wherein transmitting the one or more data repetitions comprises: transmitting the plurality of data sub-repetitions within the one or more symbols of the subset allocated for transmission of the first repetition”, pargraph 27-253 “different segmentation and slot configuration”, pargraph 67 “multi-segment”, paragraph 94 “A Medium Access Control (MAC) layer may perform priority handling and multiplexing of logical channels into transport channels. The MAC layer may also use hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) to provide retransmission at the MAC layer to improve link efficiency” and paragraph 133 “the mini-slot duration may depend on the number of symbols between the starting symbol and a last symbol in the first slot N, a transport block (TB) size of data to be transmitted in the data repetitions 310, and a threshold coding rate”);
receiving a second grant for a second set of slots, wherein the second grant is associated with the HARQ process, and wherein the first grant indicates a HARQ process identifier associated with HARQ process (see paragraph 43 “a second grant including a second time domain resource assignment associated with a second traffic type, and identifying a second subset of the plurality of symbols for scheduling a data communication over the second time domain resource assignment based on the dynamic slot format indication”, paragraph 94 “A Medium Access Control (MAC) layer may perform priority handling and multiplexing of logical channels into transport channels. The MAC layer may also use hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) to provide retransmission at the MAC layer to improve link efficiency”, and paragraph 133 “the mini-slot duration may depend on the number of symbols between the starting symbol and a last symbol in the first slot N, a transport block (TB) size of data to be transmitted in the data repetitions 310, and a threshold coding rate”) ; and
transmitting a second segment of the TB in the second set of slots based on the second grant being associated with the HARQ process (see paragraph 133 “the mini-slot duration may depend on the number of symbols between the starting symbol and a last symbol in the first slot N, a transport block (TB) size of data to be transmitted in the data repetitions 310, and a threshold coding rate”).
Fakoorian does not explicitly teach segmenting TB.
However, Wong teaches the PUSCH being divided between a first segment located in a first time divided slot of the wireless access interface and a second segment located in a second time divided slot of the wireless access interface (Wang: paragraphs 9-10, Figs. 7-8, and 10-12). In addition, Wong teaches each segment is a separate TB, which is described as unequal repetition… each segment is a CBG where the CBG is sufficient to decode the PUSCH TB and each segment also contains its own DMRS (Wang: paragraphs 62 and 95).
Thus, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of claimed invention to use the teachings of Wong in the uplink transmission of Fakoorian to segment a large TB into multiple segments where the CBG is sufficient to decode the PUSCH TB and each segment also contains its own DMRS (see Wong: paragraphs 62 and 95). In addition, Wong teaches wherein the communications device is configured to receive an indication of a first uplink grant and an indication of a second uplink grant from the infrastructure equipment, the first uplink grant scheduling the first segment of the PUSCH and the second uplink grant scheduling the second segment of the PUSCH (Wang: claim 12). In addition, Wong teaches wherein the first HARQ RV (process ID) and the second HARQ RV (process ID) are the same (Wong: claim 5).
Fakoorian in view of Wong does not explicitly teach wherein the first grant indicates a HARQ process identifier associated with HARQ process.
However, Myung teaches HARQ_ID_ref is a HARQ process ID of UL-SCH
in a reference subframe nref (Myung: paragraph 383). In addition, Myung teaches in the UL LBT process, when a UL grant is received in nth subframe, a first subframe of the latest UL transmission burst before the (n-3)th subframe is set as the reference subframe, and the contention window size is adjusted based on an NDI for an HARQ process ID corresponding to the reference subframe (Myung: paragraph 383). In addition, Myung teaches The BS may schedule a PUSCH in units of CBG to the UE with a specific HARQ process ID through the UL grant and indicate retransmission of only some CBGs that fail to decode through the CBGTI through the UL grant (Myung: paragraph 550).
Thus, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of claimed invention to use the teachings of Myung in the combined uplink transmission of Wong and Fakoorian in order to assign HARQ process ID to HARQ_ID_ref as reference subframe nref (Myung: paragraph 383).
For claims 22 and 30 Fakoorian in view of Wong and further in view of Myung teaches the method, wherein the second segment of the TB is not sent in the first set of slots, and the second segment of the TB is transmitted in the second set of slots based on the second grant being associated with the HARQ process and the second segment of the TB not being transmitted from the first set of slots (as discussed in claim 1-a design configuration).
For claims 23 and 31 Fakoorian in view of Wong and further in view of Myung teaches the method, further comprising segmenting the TB into the first segment and the second segment (see Wong: paragraph 62 “each segment is a separate TB”).
For claims 24, 32, and 38 Fakoorian in view of Wong and further in view of Myung teaches the method, wherein determining that the second subset of the first set of slots is unavailable for uplink transmission is based on one or more of a slot format indicator (SFI) or (see Fakoorian: paragraph 112 “SFI included in MAC-CE”, Fig. 9 “Slot Format Component 945”), and pargraph 35 “semi-static and dynamic slot format indicator”).
For claims 25, 33, and 40 Fakoorian in view of Wong and further in view of Myung teaches the method, wherein the first grant is received via a first downlink control information (DCI) and the second grant is received via a second DCI (see Fakoorian: paragraph 139 “UE may use the slot format indicated in a first grant it receives”, pargraph 164 “first grant and second grant”, paragraphs 6, 66, 114, 119, 124, 128, and 151 “DCI includes uplink grant”) .
For claims 28 and 36 Fakoorian in view of Wong and further in view of Myung teaches the method, wherein the second set of slots is a same number of slots as the second subset of the first set of slots (as discussed in claims 21-26 and design configuration).
Allowable Subject Matter
6. Claims 26-27, 34-35, and 39 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
7. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: Ki et al. (US 2011/0164560), Wang et al. (US 2018/0139730 A1), and Marinier et al. (US 2025/005503 A1).
8. THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
9. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to David M OVEISSI whose telephone number is (571)270-3127. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8Am-5PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jeffrey Rutkowski can be reached at (571) 270 - 1215. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MANSOUR OVEISSI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2415
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