DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . This action is in response to the RCE filed on 1/15/2026. Claims 1, 4-7 are pending in this application.
Priority
This application claims priority of 63/080,150, filed 9/18/2020. The assignee of record is GOOGLE LLC. The listed inventor(s) is/are: Wu, Chih-Hsiang.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed 1/15/2026 have been considered but are moot because the arguments do not apply to any of the references being used in the current rejection.
Response to Amendment
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.
Claim(s) 1, 4-7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tseng et al. (US 20200045674 A1, published 2/6/2020; hereinafter Tse) in view of Lee et al. (US 20230319852 A1, Provisional 62/910,413 support for cited portions found on Pg 51 step 9 of the provisional; hereinafter Lee).
For Claim 1, Tse teaches a method in a user equipment (UE) for managing information related to sidelink communications, when the UE has a radio connection with a radio access network (RAN) (Tse please see screenshot of Tse Fig. 3 below, thank you:
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), the method comprising:
receiving, by the UE and from the RAN a sidelink configuration (Tse ¶ 0145-0146, please see screenshot of Fig. 6 below, thank you:
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);
detecting, by the UE a failure on the radio connection with the RAN (Tse ¶ 0045 The UE 118 may determine that an exceptional condition (e.g., a beam failure with the RAN, a radio link failure with the serving cell, etc.) has occurred, based on which the UE 118 has to stop sidelink communication with other UEs, such as the UE 120);
performing, by the UE, a radio resource control (RRC) reestablishment procedure in response to the detecting of the failure (Tse ¶ 0063-0064 RRCConnectionReconfiguration); and
releasing, by the UE, the sidelink configuration (Tse ¶ 0063-0064 RRC Connection Release message).
Tse does not explicitly teach releasing, by the UE, the sidelink configuration in response to the performing of the RRC reestablishment procedure.
However, Lee teaches releasing, by the UE, the sidelink configuration in response to the performing of the RRC reestablishment procedure (Lee ¶ 0376 In step S1308, if the validity time has been configured in the UE dedicated sidelink configuration received in step S1214, the source UE starts a timer upon leaving RRC_CONNECTED, upon receiving a RRC Release message, upon initiation of RRC re-establishment procedure, upon RRC re-establishment failure, upon detection of radio link failure, upon detection of beam failure, and/or upon cell selection. For example, upon receiving a RRC release message in step S1302 and/or upon RRC re-establishment failure, the source UE may leave RRC_CONNECTED.
Examiner notes in Lee the RRC reestablishment procedure is performed, unsuccessfuly, but performed nonetheless. It appears amended language to the claims that require a successful performing of the RRC reestablishment procedure would overcome the current rejection, thank you).
Lee and Tse are analogous art because they are both related to sidelink.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to use the release techinques of Lee with the system of Tse because a UE can properly reconfigure sidelink transmission and reception, in particular when the UE leaves a certain state and/or a certain area and/or when the UE detects a certain problem (Lee ¶ 0011).
For Claim 4, Tse-Lee teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the failure on the radio connection is a radio link failure, a handover failure, an integrity check failure, or another reconfiguration failure (Please see at least Tse ¶ 0125 radio link failure (RLF)).
For Claim 5, Tse-Lee teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising transmitting, by the UE, sidelink information to the RAN (Tse ¶ 0047 RRC Connected state with the RAN where UE request SL resources from eNB, Tse ¶ 0059 while in the connected state, the UE 310 may provide more SL traffic-related information (e.g., SL traffic type, SL packet size, SL packet arrival pattern, etc.) to the serving cell 320).
For Claim 6, Tse-Lee teaches the method of claim 5, further comprising releasing, by the UE, the sidelink information in response to the detecting of the failure or the performing of the RRC reestablishment procedure (Please see at least Tse ¶ 0062-0063 UE may release the stored UE context (e.g., UE Inactive context), which may include the stored SL resource allocations, after receiving the RRC Connection Release message (without the suspendconfiguration)).
For Claim(s) 7, the claim(s) is/are substantially similar to claim 1 and therefore is/are rejected for the same reasoning set forth above.
Conclusion
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/MICHAEL A KELLER/
Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2446