Prosecution Insights
Last updated: July 14, 2026
Application No. 18/073,094

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR HANDLING PUCCH RESOURCE FOR ENHANCED BEAM FAILURE RECOVERY IN WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

Final Rejection §102§112
Filed
Dec 01, 2022
Priority
Dec 08, 2021 — RE 10-2021-0174979
Examiner
GRADINARIU, LUCIA GHEORGHE
Art Unit
2478
Tech Center
2400 — Computer Networks
Assignee
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
OA Round
4 (Final)
36%
Grant Probability
At Risk
5-6
OA Rounds
0m
Est. Remaining
78%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants only 36% of cases
36%
Career Allowance Rate
4 granted / 11 resolved
-21.6% vs TC avg
Strong +42% interview lift
Without
With
+41.7%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
2y 8m
Avg Prosecution
35 currently pending
Career history
67
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§103
88.7%
+48.7% vs TC avg
§102
9.8%
-30.2% vs TC avg
§112
1.0%
-39.0% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 11 resolved cases

Office Action

§102 §112
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 . Response to Amendment The amendment to the claims filed on 02/25/2026 complies with the requirements of 37 CFR 1.121(c) and has been entered. Claims 1, 6, 11, and 16 are amended. Claims 3-5, 8-10, 13-15, and 18-20 are cancelled. Claims 21 and 22 are new. Rejections under §112 are withdrawn. Response to Arguments Applicant’s arguments with respect to the amended claims have been considered but are both unpersuasive and moot because the new ground of rejection does rely on the reference applied in the prior rejection of record, now cited for a new paragraph disclosing the matter specifically challenged in the argument. Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112(b) 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. . Claims 21-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention. The meaning of every term used in a claim should be apparent from the prior art or from the specification and drawings at the time the application is filed. Claim language may not be "ambiguous, vague, incoherent, opaque, or otherwise unclear in describing and defining the claimed invention." In re Packard, 751 F.3d 1307, 1311, 110 USPQ2d 1785, 1787 (Fed. Cir. 2014). During patent examination, the pending claims must be given the broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the Specification. In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054, 44 USPQ2d 1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997); In re Prater, 415 F.2d 1393, 162 USPQ 541 (CCPA 1969). See MPEP §2173.05(a); see also MPEP § 2111 - § 2111.01. Regarding Claim 21, dependent from Amended Claim 1, it recites the limitation "an ongoing random access procedure due to the pending SR for the beam failure recovery of the BFD-RS set of the serving cell". There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim because Amended Claim 1 requires “if the pending SR is for a beam failure recovery of a beam failure detection (BFD) reference signal (RS) set of a serving cell, the first PUCCH resource is for the beam failure recovery of the BFD RS set” and “considering the first PUCCH resource as valid,” therefore, there cannot be “an ongoing random access procedure due to the pending SR for the beam failure recovery of the BFD-RS set of the serving cell”, as required by Claim 21, because there is already a valid PUCCH resource for transmitting the pending SR. As stated also in the Specification, the “ongoing Random Access procedure [is] due to a pending SR for BFR of an SCell, which has no valid PUCCH resources configured” – See [¶00266]; see also §5.4.4, 3GPP TS 38.321 infra, describing the MAC procedure for a pending SR, stating, at page 53, “if the MAC entity has no valid PUCCH resource configured for the pending SR: 2> initiate a Random Access procedure (see clause 5.1).” Claim 22, dependent from Claim 2, suffers the same deficiency, because Claim 2 requires validity of “the first PUCCH resource is for the SCell beam failure recovery” for “the pending SR is for a secondary cell (SCell) beam failure recovery.” Therefore, Claims 21 and 22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §112(b) for lack of sufficient antecedent basis. Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102 The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action: A person shall be entitled to a patent unless – (a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention. Claims 1-2, 6-7, 11-12, 16-17 and 21-22, as amended, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Tsai et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20240237053 (hereinafter Tsai) and references included therein1. Regarding Amended Claim 1, Tsai teaches a method performed by a user equipment (UE) in a wireless communication system (“a method performed by a User Equipment (UE) for SR resource prioritization” – See [¶0007]), the method comprising: identifying that a first physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) resource for a pending scheduling request (SR) and a second PUCCH resource different from the first PUCCH resource overlap (“During the BFRQ operation, the UE 182 may transmit a BFR-Scheduling Request (SR) over a PCell, a PSCell, and/or an SCell” – See [¶0052] whereby “the UL resources (e.g., a PUCCH resources) for a BFR-SR transmission may overlap other UL resources (e.g., PRACH/PUSCH/PUCCH resources) in the time domain (e.g., in one or more symbols/slots)” – See [¶0057]); if the pending SR is for a beam failure recovery of a beam failure detection (BFD) reference signal (RS) set of a serving cell (in case of “the loss of ongoing link of the control channel (which may be referred to as a "beam failure (event)"),” – See [¶0038] and “when a beam failure event is detected on an SCell(s), the UE 182 may trigger a BFR procedure for the SCell(s) and/or trigger a SR procedure for BFR” – See [¶0050] wherein “the UE 182 may transmit a BFR-Scheduling Request (SR) over a PCell, a PSCell, and/or an SCell” – See [¶0052] and Fig. 1, i.e., on a still active beam/channel; “the purpose of BFR-SR transmission may include informing the NW that beam failure happens on a serving cell(s) (e.g., a beam failure event is detected on the serving cell(s )), and/or to request a (specific) UL resource for transmitting a BFR report ( e.g., a MAC CE)” – See [¶0058] when “[f]or Beam Failure Detection (BFD), the gNB may configure the UE with BFD RS(s) (e.g., SSB(s) or CSI-RS(s),” i.e., an BFD specific RS set on a serving cell – See [¶0040]), the first PUCCH resource is for the beam failure recovery of the BFD RS set and the second PUCCH resource is not for the beam failure recovery (“the UE may prioritize the BFR-SR resource (or an ‘SR resource for BFR’) for a BFR-SR transmission over some other UL resources (e.g. ,. . . a PUCCH for (normal) SR transmission), if the BFR-SR resource (occasion) for transmission collides with the other UL resources in the time domain” – See [¶0058]; specifically, “if a first PUCCH resource for a BFR-SR transmission collides with (or ‘overlaps’) a second PUCCH resource (e.g., which is used for . . . an (regular) SR transmission (e.g., for transmitting a regular SR), . . ., but not for a BFR-SR transmission) in the time domain” – See [¶0094] e.g., when “the first SR resource and the second SR resource may be PUCCH resources. The difference between the first SR resource and the second SR resource may be that the first SR resource is used for transmitting a BFR-SR, while the second SR resource is used for transmitting a regular SR” – See [¶0281]) considering the first PUCCH resource as valid (“the UE may only transmit the BFR-SR on the first PUCCH resource that overlaps with the second PUCCH resource” – See [¶0094], whereby “the MAC entity of the UE may instruct the PHY layer of the UE to transmit a BFR-SR on a valid PUCCH resource (e.g., which is valid for the BFR-SR transmission) when there is a pending BFR-SR procedure on the UE” – See [¶0076]; see also 3GPP TS 38.321, at page 53, defining “PUCCH resources on a BWP which is active at the time of SR transmission occasion are considered valid,” i.e., the active BWP of one of “a PCell, a PSCell, and/or an SCell” configured to the UE – See [¶0052]) and transmitting, to a base station, an SR on the valid PUCCH resource (“the UE may notify the gNB of the beam failure event through certain UL transmission(s),” – See [¶0039] e.g., “the UE 182 may transmit a BFR-Scheduling Request (SR) over a PCell, a PSCell, and/or an SCell (denoted as action "lA" in FIG. 1)” whereby “BFR-Scheduling Request (BFR-SR) may be an SR for BFR (e.g., a specific SR indicated by an Information Element (IE) schedulingRequestID- BFR-SCell), which may be used to inform the BS 184 of a beam failure event detected on the SCell(s) and/or to request an UL resource ( e.g., to transmit more information about the beam failure event)” – See [¶0052]; see also 3GPP TS 38.331, defining, at page 448, MAC parameters for a cell group, including schedulingRequestID- BFR-SCell parameter indicating the “scheduling request configuration applicable for BFR on SCell, as specified in TS 38.321,” and at page 366, the BWP IE, specifying that “[f]or each serving cell the network configures at least an initial downlink bandwidth part and one (if the serving cell is configured with an uplink) or two (if using supplementary uplink (SUL)) initial uplink bandwidth parts. Furthermore, the network may configure additional uplink and downlink bandwidth parts for a serving cell” and “the network ensures the same subcarrier spacing is used in active DL BWP and active UL BWP within a serving cell,” i.e., each SCell has an active UL BWP) the second PUCCH resource as invalid (because “the priority of the first PUCCH resource for the BFR-SR transmission may be higher than the second PUCCH resource . . . the UE may skip the transmission on the second PUCCH resource on the time occasion that overlaps the BFR-SR transmission occasion (e.g., the first PUCCH resource)” – See [¶0094], whereby “whether the priority of a first PUCCH resource for a BFR-SR transmission is higher or lower than a second PUCCH resource ( e.g., for a specific UCI transmission, an SR transmission, a HARQ feedback transmission, an SRS transmission, or a CSI report transmission, but not for a BFR-SR transmission) may be defined in the 3GPP technical specification(s)” – See [¶0097]; see also 3GPP TS 38.321, stating at page 54, “NOTE3: When the MAC entity has pending SR for SCell beam failure recovery and the MAC entity has one or more PUCCH resources overlapping with PUCCH resource for SCell beam failure recovery for the SR transmission occasion, , the MAC entity considers only the PUCCH resource for SCell beam failure recovery as valid”); and wherein the BFD RS set includes BFD-RSs for beam failure detection for one transmission and reception point (TRP) in a multiple TRP operation (“a cell may be composed by one or multiple associated TRPs. For example, the coverage of a cell may be composed by coverage of all associated TRP(s)” – See [¶0308] wherein “[e]ach TRP may form multiple beams for transmission and/or reception” – See [¶0311] and a “beam may refer to (or associated with) an RS (e.g., an SSB, a CSI-RS, or an SRS), and/or a TCI state” – See [¶0312] and “may be a set of RSs (e.g., SSB and/or CSI-RS) which may be used for beam failure detection. Different sets of the BFD RSs may be associated with . . . different TRPs,” – See [¶0330] i.e., a BFD RS set may be associated with one TRP of a mTRP node), and wherein a beam failure instance max counter and a beam failure detection timer are configured per BFD-RS set of the serving cell (in general, “the UE may declare/detect beam failure when the number of beam failure instance indications from the Physical (PHY) layer reaches a configured threshold before a configured timer expires,” – See [¶0040] e.g., “the UE 182 may use a counter to count the number of beam failure instances from the PHY layer (e.g., BFI_COUNTER) . . . applied based on a BWP/cell/subset of cell group/cell group basis” whereby “the value of the BFI_COUNTER may be reset when a BFD timer ( e.g., beamFailureDetectionTimer) maintained at the UE 182 expires,” and “the beamFailureDetectionTimer may be configured based on a BWP/cell/subset of cell group/cell group basis”; and also “[f]rom the perspective of the MAC entity of the UE 182, the beam failure event may be detected if the number of (consecutive) detected beam failure instances exceeds a configured maximum number (e.g., beamfailureinstanceMaxCount) . . . configured based on a BWP/cell/subset of cell group/cell group basis” – See [¶0049]; see also § 5.17, 3GPPTS 38.321, at page 78, describing the BFD and BFR procedure, stating “MAC entity may be configured by RRC per Serving Cell with a beam failure recovery procedure . . . when beam failure is detected on the serving SSB(s)/CSI-RS(s),” including “following parameters in the BeamFailureRecoveryConfig, BeamFailureRecoverySCellConfig, and the RadioLinkMonitoringConfig for the Beam Failure Detection and Recovery procedure: beamFailureInstanceMaxCount for the beam failure detection; beamFailureDetectionTimer for the beam failure detection”). Therefore, Amended Claim 1 is anticipated by Tsai. Regarding Claim 2, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Tsai further teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising: if the pending SR is for a secondary cell (SCell) beam failure recovery (“when a beam failure event is detected on an SCell(s), the UE 182 may trigger a BFR procedure for the SCell(s) and/or trigger a SR procedure for BFR” – See [¶0050], “the UL resources (e.g., a PUCCH resources) for a BFR-SR transmission may overlap other UL resources (e.g., PRACH/PUSCH/PUCCH resources) in the time domain (e.g., in one or more symbols/slots)” – See [¶0057] whereby “other UL resources [are] (e.g. ,. . . a PUCCH for (normal) SR transmission)” – See [¶0058], i.e., second PUCCH is not for BFR), the first PUCCH resource is for the SCell beam failure recovery and the second PUCCH resource is not for the beam failure recovery of the BFD RS set, considering the first PUCCH resource as valid and the second PUCCH resource as invalid (see NOTE 3 of 3GPP TS 38.321:54, supra, stating “the MAC entity considers only the PUCCH resource for SCell beam failure recovery as valid”). Therefore, Claim 2 is anticipated by Tsai. Regarding Amended Claim 6, Tsai further teaches a method performed by a base station in a wireless communication system (“The BS may connect to serve the one or more UEs through a radio interface to the network” – See [¶0028], and “may utilize multiple beams to cover the whole coverage area and each UE may be associated with one of those beams” – See [¶0037] so that “[i]f beam failure is detected, the UE may notify the gNB of the beam failure event through certain UL transmission(s)” – See [¶0039] configured to the UE by the serving gNB – See [¶0040], and the “UE may receive, from a BS, a first SR configuration indicating a first SR index associated with a first SR resource. For example, the first SR configuration may be a BFR-SR configuration. The first SR resource may be an UL resource (e.g., a PUCCH resource) for a BFR-SR transmission” and “the UE may receive, from the BS, a second SR configuration indicating a second SR index associated with a second SR resource. For example, the second SR configuration may be a regular SR configuration. The second SR resource may be an UL resource (e.g., PUCCH resource) for a regular SR transmission” – See [¶¶0279-80]), the method comprising: receiving, from a user equipment (UE), a scheduling request (SR) (“the UE may further trigger the first SR procedure to transmit a BFR-SR to request the BS for an available UL resource to transmit a BFR report of the BFR procedure” – See [¶0282], whereby “there may be only one BFR-SR procedure pending on the UE at a point of time (e.g., no matter how many SCell BFR procedures are initiated or ongoing)” – See [¶0213]) wherein if a first physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) resource for a pending scheduling request (SR) and a second PUCCH resource different from the first PUCCH resource overlap, the SR is received on a valid PUCCH resource among the first PUCCH resource and the second PUCCH resource (“both of the first SR resource and the second SR resource may be PUCCH resources. The difference between the first SR resource and the second SR resource may be that the first SR resource is used for transmitting a BFR-SR, while the second SR resource is used for transmitting a regular SR” – See [¶0281], whereby “a first PUCCH resource for a BFR-SR transmission collides with (or ‘overlaps’) a second PUCCH resource (e.g., which is used for . . . an (regular) SR transmission (e.g., for transmitting a regular SR) ” – See [¶0094]) with the same limitations as recited in Amended Claim 1, using the same language. Because Amended Claim 1 is anticipated by Tsai, Amended Claim 6 is also anticipated by Tsai. Regarding Amended Claims 11 and 16, they merely recite the same steps as recited in Amended Claims 1 and 6 only applied to a UE and a base station, respectively. Because Tsai discloses in Fig. 7, a UE comprising: at least one transceiver; and at least one processor communicatively coupled to the at least one transceiver; and at least one memory, communicatively coupled to the at least one processor, storing instructions executable by the at least one processor individually or in any combination (“The UE includes a memory and at least one processor coupled to the memory. The at least one processor is configured to receive, from a BS” and “transmit an SR” to the BS – See [¶0008]) to cause the UE to: execute the steps of Amended Claim 1, and a base station comprising: at least one transceiver; at least one processor communicatively coupled to the at least one transceiver; and at least one memory, communicatively coupled to the at least one processor, storing instructions executable by the at least one processor individually or in any combination (“a node 700 may include a transceiver 706, a processor 708, a memory 702, one or more presentation components 704, and at least one antenna 710. The node 700 may also include an RF spectrum band module, a BS communications module . . . the node 700 may be a UE or a BS that performs various functions described” – See [¶0332]) to cause the base station to: execute the steps of Amended Claim 6, and both Amended Claims 1 and 6 are anticipated by Tsai, therefore, Amended Claims 11 and 16 are also anticipated by Tsai. Regarding Claims 7, 12, and 17, they recite the same limitation as in Claim 2 only applied to Amended Claims 6, 11 and 16, each of them being anticipated by Tsai. Therefore, Claims 7, 12 and 17 are anticipated by Tsai. Regarding Claim 21, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Tsai further teaches the method claim 1, wherein an ongoing random access procedure due to the pending SR for the beam failure recovery of the BFD-RS set of the serving cell is stopped (“when beam failure is detected (e.g., on an SpCell), a UE may perform a Random Access Channel (RACH)-based BFR procedure” – See [¶0041] including “selecting a suitable beam to perform the BFR procedure (e.g., if the gNB has provided the UE with dedicated Random Access resources for certain beams, those beams may be prioritized to be selected by the UE)” – See [¶0043]; however “if there is UL resource(s) available for BFR report transmission ( e.g., the UL resource(s) can accommodate the BFR report), the UE 182 may (directly) transmit a BFR report (e.g., based on a MAC CE) to the BS 184 (denoted as "2A" in FIG. 1)” – See [¶0053] and “the UE 182 may not transmit the BFR-SR,” – See [¶0052] i.e., stop the RA procedure). Although Tsai does not specifically disclose that the MAC CE which includes beam failure recovery information of the BFD-RS set of the serving cell, e.g., the BFR Report above, is an enhanced beam failure recovery MAC control element (CE) or a truncated enhanced beam failure recovery MAC CE, Tsai references 3GPP TS 38.321 wherein it is disclosed at page 55 that a “MAC entity may stop, if any, ongoing Random Access procedure due to a pending SR for BFR of an SCell, . . ., if: a MAC PDU . . . contains a BFR MAC CE or a Truncated BFR MAC CE which includes beam failure recovery information of that SCell.” Therefore, Claim 21 is anticipated by Tsai. Regarding Claim 22, dependent from Claim 2, Tsai already discloses that an ongoing random access procedure due to the pending SR for the SCell beam failure recovery is stopped, if a MAC PDU containing a MAC CE for beam failure recovery including beam failure recovery information of the SCell is transmitted – See [¶¶0052-53], as explained in Regarding Claim 21 supra. In sum, Claims 1-2, 6-7, 11-12, 16-17 and 21-22, as amended, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §102(a)(2) as anticipated by Tsai and references cited therein. Conclusion The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: Fu et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20220109486 as referenced in previous Office actions; Kang et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20230189279 as referenced in previous Office actions; Tsai et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2025/0151149, disclosing methods, systems, and devices may support BFD with multi-TRP transmission or support BFR with multi-TRP transmission; Babaei, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2025/0048142, disclosing BFD and/or BFR while a wireless device operates in different RRC states; Zhang et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2024/0113762 discloses apparatuses, systems, and methods for multiplexing of physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) for beam failure recovery and other signals; Yang et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20210058804 discloses method and apparatus for transmitting BFR requests when the request and other uplink channel overlap in time; Cirik et al., U.S. Patent No. 11,297,550 discloses switching an uplink bandwidth part for a BFR recovery procedure including 3GPP TSG-RAN WG1 and TSG-RAN WG2 prior art discussions related to BFR procedure on SCells; Cirik et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20240107394 discloses systems, apparatuses, and methods are for reporting a failure recovery (e.g., a beam failure recovery (BFR)) procedure for a secondary cell and BFR signals; Cirik et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20240322891, discloses prioritization in BFR procedures; Zhou et al., U.S. Patent No. 11,647,493 discloses techniques and apparatuses for using a second link for beam failure recovery of a first link; Harada et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20240129767 discloses configuring multiple beams failure detection resource sets individually detecting beam failure for each of the multiple beams failure detection resource sets in the radio communication; John Wilson et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20200145083 discloses method and apparatus for secondary cell recovery for secondary cell group; Tao et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20220255614 discloses resource allocation for beam failure recovery procedure; Li et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20240396613 discloses techniques for cross-frequency range predictive beam failure detection; 3GPP TS 38.321 V16.6.0 (2021-09), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol specification (Release 16)”; 3GPP TS 38.331 v16.6.0 (2021-09), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Radio Resource Control (RRC) protocol specification (Release 16)”; 3GPP TS 38.213 V16.7.0 (2021-09), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for control (Release 16)”; 3GPP TS 38.300 V16.7.0 (2021-09), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; NR and NG-RAN Overall Description; Stage 2 (Release 16)”; 3GPP TSG-RAN2 Meeting #116 Electronic, Skeleton Notes, RAN2 Chairman (MediaTek), November 2021; 3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #116-e, R2-2111206, Title: “Beam failure recovery for multi-TRP”; Source : Huawei, HiSilicon; November 2021; 3GPP TSG-RAN WG1 Meeting #98, R1-1909833, Title: “Reply LS on MAC CE design for SCell BFR,” Source: Apple, TSG RAN WG1, August 2019; 3GPP TSG-RAN2 Meeting #116 Electronic, R2-2110812, Title: “Beam failure with mTRP,” Source: Nokia, Nokia Shanghai Bell, November 2021; 3GPP TSG-RAN2 Meeting #116 Electronic, R2-2109642, Title:” Remaining issues on mTRP BFR,” Source: Intel, November 2021; 3GPP TSG-RAN2 Meeting #116 Electronic, R2-2110985, Title: “BFR handling on multiple TRP,” Source: LG Electronics, November 2021, proposing to apply the legacy SCell BFR cancellation to the cancellation of TRP-specific BFR, and for cell-specific BFR, legacy BFR cancellation is applied. Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LUCIA GHEORGHE GRADINARIU whose telephone number is (571)272-1377. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9:00am - 5:00pm EST. Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Joseph AVELLINO can be reached at (571)272-3905. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300. Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000. /L.G.G./ Examiner, Art Unit 2478 /JOSEPH E AVELLINO/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2478 1 See [¶0001] (“provisional U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 62/878,973 ("the '973 provisional"), filed on Jul. 26, 2019, entitled "Method and Apparatus for Handling Overlap Condition of Beam Failure Recovery." The content(s) of the '973 provisional are fully incorporated herein by reference for all purposes”) whereby the '973 provisional references: 3GPP TS 38.321 V16.6.0 (2021-09), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol specification (Release 16)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.321); 3GPP TS 38.331 v16.6.0 (2021-09), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Radio Resource Control (RRC) protocol specification (Release 16)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.331); 3GPP TS 38.213 V16.6.0 (2021-09), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for control (Release 16)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.213); and 3GPP TS 38.300 V16.7.0 (2021-09), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; NR and NG-RAN Overall Description; Stage 2 (Release 16)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.300).
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Prosecution Timeline

Show 1 earlier event
Mar 19, 2025
Non-Final Rejection mailed — §102, §112
Jun 16, 2025
Response Filed
Aug 28, 2025
Final Rejection mailed — §102, §112
Oct 23, 2025
Request for Continued Examination
Oct 30, 2025
Response after Non-Final Action
Nov 25, 2025
Non-Final Rejection mailed — §102, §112
Feb 25, 2026
Response Filed
May 11, 2026
Final Rejection mailed — §102, §112 (current)

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Prosecution Projections

5-6
Expected OA Rounds
36%
Grant Probability
78%
With Interview (+41.7%)
2y 8m (~0m remaining)
Median Time to Grant
High
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