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 Under 37 CFR 1.114
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 2/18/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments regarding the 103 rejection have been considered and they are moot because they do not apply to the new references used in the office action.
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.
Claims 9, 11-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nguyen (US 20210105817) in view of Ji (US 20220408415).
Regarding claim 9, Nguyen discloses a first terminal comprising:
a receiving unit (fig. 3) configured to receive first reservation information for reserving a first resource from a second terminal and receive second reservation information for reserving a second resource from a third terminal (fig. 8, 802, the receiving device receives a first resource reservation from a first transmitting device, 804, the receiving device receives a second resource reservation from a second transmitting device);
a controlling unit (fig. 3) configured to, in a case where a destination related to the first reservation information is not the first terminal and a destination related to the second reservation is the first terminal, identify a terminal that is to be a transmission destination of information related to a collision between the first resource and the second resource based on a first priority related to the first reservation information and a second priority related to the second reservation information (fig. 8, 806, [0106], the receiving UE may identify a collision between first resources reserved by the first transmitting device and second resources reserved by the second transmitting device. The receiving device may determine a respective priority associated with each of the first and second resource reservations (or each of the first and second transmitting devices), and the receiving device may determine to send the collision indication to the first transmitting device or the second transmitting device based, at least in part, on which respective priority is relatively higher between the first resource reservation from the first transmitting device and the second resource reservation from the second transmitting device. Note, Nguyen discloses identifying the potential collision after receiving the two reservation information, includes the case where a destination related to the first reservation information is not the first terminal and a destination related to the second reservation is the first terminal (which is only an addressing details)); and
a transmitting unit configured to transmit the information related to the collision to the identified terminal (fig. 8, 808, 810, the receiving device may transmit the collision indication to the determined one of the first transmitting device or the second transmitting device).
Nguyen does not explicitly disclose wherein the controlling unit detects the collision in a case where a value of an RSRP (Reference signal received power) of the second terminal is greater than a predetermined value.
Ji discloses wherein the controlling unit detects the collision in a case where a value of an RSRP (Reference signal received power) of the second terminal is greater than a predetermined value (Ji, [0078][0080][0090], if the following conditions is met, it may be determined that the resource of the first target terminal device is subject to a resource collision: energy of the resource reservation signaling of the first target terminal device is higher than a first threshold; the energy may be expressed as a parameter such as an RSRP).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing to combine the teachings of exchanging reservation information as given by Nguyen with the teachings of detecting collision given by Ji. The motivation for doing so would have been to efficiently detect potential collision.
Claims 13-15 are rejected similarly with claim 9 noting that Nguyen and Ji disclose a controlling unit configured to control reselection of a resource used for communication between terminals based on the information related to the collision (Ji, [0113-114]).
Regarding claim 11, Nguyen and Ji disclose the first terminal as claimed in claim 9,
wherein the controlling unit detects the collision in a case where a difference between an RSRP (Reference signal received power) of the second terminal and an RSRP (Reference signal received power) of the third terminal is greater than a predetermined value (Ji, [0078-81][0090], in a case that at least one of the following conditions is met, it may be determined that the resource of the first target terminal device is subject to a resource collision: an energy difference between the resource reservation signaling of the first target terminal device and resource reservation signaling of a second target terminal device is higher than a second threshold. Here, the energy can be measured using RSRP).
Regarding claim 12, Nguyen and Ji disclose the first terminal as claimed in claim 9,
wherein the transmitting unit transmits the information related to the collision via a PSFCH (Physical Sidelink Feedback Channel) (Ji, [0115][0118], feedback an ACK or a NACK based on the occupied PSFCH resource).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZHENSHENG ZHANG whose telephone number is (571)270-1985. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday 8:00am-6:00pm.
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/ZHENSHENG ZHANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2474
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