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 .
Response to Amendment
Applicant’s amendment filed on 10/17/2025 has been entered. Independent Claims 1-3 have been amended. No claims have been cancelled. No claims are new and have been entered. Claims 1-3 are still pending in this application.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 10/17/2025 on pages 7-9, with respect to the rejection of Claims 1-3 under 35 USC § 101, have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection of Claims 1-3 has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Baek.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim(s) 1-3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention. The claims are not clearly written to define metes and bounds of the claimed invention.
Claim 1, Claim 2, and Claim 3
The claims recite “…a value obtained by incrementing a sequence number of a PDCP data protocol data unit (PDU), that is received first, by one, …”. The claim is not immediately obvious as to the relationship of the value being incremented, if it’s the value first received PDCP PDU or if it’s an increment operation for each PDCP PDU. For the purposes of examining, Examiner has assumed that the variable is set by the PDCP PDU, and incremented.
Claim 2
The claim recites “base station apparatus for communicating with a terminal apparatus, the base station apparatus comprising: a transmitter configured to transmit data to the terminal apparatus; and processing circuitry, configured to: maintain, in a receiving…”. The claim is not clear as to what the base station is receiving, in comparison to the UE. Claim 1 describes a situation where a UE receives a data packet and counting from the base station, while Claim 2 describes the base station transmitting the information, but describes what the device would do upon reception of receiving the information from presumably itself. For the purposes of examining, Examiner has assumed that the base station is transmitting information to the UE with the intention that the UE would process the data in the claimed way as in claim 1.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claim(s) 1-3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being unpatentable over Baek (Pub. No.: US 20230111248 A1, hereafter “Baek”).
Regarding Claim 1, Claim 2, and Claim 3
Baek teaches a terminal apparatus, base station apparatus, and method comrising
A terminal apparatus (Baek Fig. 8: 820) for communicating with a base station apparatus (Baek Fig. 8: 810), the terminal apparatus comprising: a receiver (Baek Fig. 13: 1310) configured to receive data (Baek Fig. 8: 830) from the base station apparatus; and processing circuitry (Baek Fig. 13: 1320) configured to: maintain a first state variable (Baek Fig. 8: 840) in a receiving packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) entity (Baek ¶0081-¶0089: PDCP; Baek teaches a UE communicating with a BS for receiving a PDCP and calculating a result based off of the PDCP) of the terminal apparatus, and during maintaining the first state variable: determine (Baek Fig. 8: 840, Calculate) whether the data received from the base station apparatus is associated with a multicast broadcast service (MBS) (Baek ¶0081-¶0089: MBS; Baek teaches calculating a variable based off of a MBS), set (Baek Fig. 8: 830, Reference Count), in a case that the data received from the base station apparatus is associated with the MBS (Baek ¶0081-¶0089: MBS), an initial value of a sequence number (Baek ¶0081-¶0089: COUNT value) that is part of the first state variable as a first value (Baek ¶0081: initial value; Baek teaches calculating a value based off of an MBS with an initial value), and set (Baek Fig. 8: 830, Reference Count), in a case that the data received from the base station apparatus is not associated with the MBS (Baek ¶0081: not configured for a certain PTM DRB), the initial value of the first state variable to 0 (Baek ¶0081: configure the initial value as 0 when performing PTM DRB, e.g. MBS communication; Baek teaches the reference count being set to a value of 0 when the UE is configured for a certain PTM DRB), wherein: the first state variable is a state variable indicating a COUNT value (Baek ¶0081-¶0089: COUNT value) of a PDCP service data unit (SDU) (Baek ¶0083: PDCP SDU) that is to be received (Baek Fig. 8: 830), from the base station apparatus (Baek Fig. 8: 810; Baek teaches setting the COUNT value from a received PDCP SDU from the base station), next, the first value is a remainder (Baek ¶0081: remainder value) obtained by dividing (Baek ¶0081: dividing), by a second value (Baek ¶0081: a value), a value obtained by incrementing a sequence number of a PDCP data protocol data unit (PDU) (Baek ¶0081: adding 1 to the sequence number of the packet first received in the PTM DRB, e.g. the PDCP SDU), that is received first (Baek ¶0081: received in the PTM DRB, e.g. the PDCP SDU), by one (Baek ¶0081: adding 1 to the sequence number; Baek teaches generating a remainder value by diving by a PDCP SDU that has been incremented by one), the second value is 2 to a power of a third value (Baek ¶0081: by the total sequence number size 2^(the number of bits of the sequence number size); Baek teaches dividing by 2 to a power), and the third value is a downlink PDCP sequence number size (Baek ¶0081: the number of bits of the sequence number size).
Claim 2 differs by the following limitation, which is also taught by the prior art, Baek teaches
A base station apparatus (Baek Fig. 8: 810) for communicating with a terminal apparatus (Baek Fig. 8: 820), the base station apparatus comprising: a transmitter (Baek Fig. 12: 1210) configured to transmit data to the terminal apparatus; and processing circuitry (Baek Fig. 12: 1320; Baek teaches a base station with processing circuitry with a transmitter transmitting to a UE)
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JUSTIN MICHAEL WHITAKER whose telephone number is (703)756-4763. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Thursday 7:30am - 4:00pm.
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/JUSTIN MICHAEL WHITAKER/Examiner, Art Unit 2415
/Sudesh M. Patidar/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2415