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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
2. 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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 04/24/2026 has been entered. Claims 17-23, 25-37. Claims 1-16, 24 are cancelled.
3. Applicant’s amendments, filed on 04/24/2026 regarding rejection of claims 17-23, 25-37 has been considered and entered. Claims 1-16, 24 are cancelled.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 17-23, 25-37 have been considered but are moot because the arguments do not apply to new combinations of references including new prior arts being used in the current rejection. The new grounds of rejection are necessitated by amendment.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
4. 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) 17 18, 19,21, 31,32-33, 28, 36 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Deng et al. (US 20230164825 A1) hereinafter Deng and further in view of Belleschi et al (US 20200229194 A1) hereinafter Belleschi
As to claim 17. Deng teaches a method comprising: detecting, at a first user equipment (UE), a triggering condition for resource selection assistance;([0073][0074][0075] transmission of assistance information (e.g., a WTRU assistance transmission) may be triggered by a (e.g., explicit, signaled, determined, etc.) request for resource selection assistance)
in response to detecting the triggering condition, determining whether a second condition is satisfied; ([0112] e.g., increase the number of assistance transmissions, for example, in a case where a (e.g., measured, determined, etc.) CBR is below a (pre)configured threshold. )
and
transmitting, from the first UE to a second UE, resource selection assistance information in response to determining that the second condition is satisfied. ([0112] [0115] Fig. 5, , an assistance transmission (e.g., sent by a WTRU) may provide resource set information to (e.g., other) WTRUs, in a case where a (e.g., measured, determined, etc.) CBR is below a (pre)configured threshold. )
Deng does not teach wherein the first UE is configured to not transmit the resource selection assistance information in response to determining that the second condition is not satisfied.
Belleschi teaches wherein the first UE is configured to not transmit the resource selection assistance information in response to determining that the second condition is not satisfied ([0096] [0100]thresholds on the level of interference/congestion of the sidelink carrier are used as a criterion for determining the number of carriers or selecting particular carriers. For example, the CBR measurements can be used as a metric to evaluate the level of congestion/interference of the sidelink carrier; in case the CBR threshold B is not configured, it can be assumed that, if a CBR measurement is above the CBR threshold A for a sidelink carrier, the UE should stop using the sidelink carrier for the transmission of data with the associated Prose Per Packet Priority PPPP)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Belleschi with the teachings of Deng because Belleschi teaches that selecting proper carrier would enable a UE which is capable of transmitting on multiple sidelink carriers by taking into account sidelink carrier measurements and QoS, and, ensure fair usage of the available spectrum and limited UE battery consumption. (Belleschi [0048])
Claim 32 is/are interpreted and rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claim 17.
As to claim 18. The combination of Deng and Belleschi specifically Deng teaches wherein the second condition comprises a channel busy ratio (CBR) being below a threshold value. ([0112] n a case where a (e.g., measured, determined, etc.) CBR is below a (pre)configured threshold. )
Claim 33 is/are interpreted and rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claim 18.
As to claim 19 The combination of Deng and Belleschi specifically Deng teaches further comprising determining the threshold value based on a priority level of communications from the second UE. ([0178] a WTRU may be (pre-)configured with a mapping of a (e.g., one, each, any, etc.) minimum received signal strength threshold to any of a (e.g., one, each, any, etc.) priority and a reliability value of a TB)
Claim 34 is/are interpreted and rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claim 19.
As to claim 21 The combination of Deng and Belleschi specifically Deng teaches wherein the first UE is configured to only determine that the second condition is satisfied prior to transmission of resource selection assistance information for groupcast or broadcast transmissions. ([0107][0112] an assisting WTRU may e.g., increase the number of assistance transmissions), for example, in a case where a (e.g., measured, determined, etc.) CBR is below a (pre)configured threshold, periodic assistance transmissions may be any of (1) a semi-persistent broadcast transmission and (2) groupcast transmission,)
Claim 36 is/are interpreted and rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claim 21.
As to claim 31. The combination of Deng and Belleschi specifically Deng teaches , wherein the resource selection assistance information identifies a plurality of non-preferred resources. ([0169] a WTRU may determine a candidate resource set according to (e.g., based on) a superset of any of available resources and preferred resources. According to embodiments, (e.g., such) a superset (e.g., of available and/or preferred resources) may be determined according to (e.g., based on) any of: (1) a number of resource sets in which an assistance resource is included)
Claim(s) 20, 35 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Deng, Belleschi and further in view of Huang et al (US 20230362973 A1) hereinafter Huang
As to claim 20 The combination of Deng and Belleschi does not teach wherein the second condition comprises a number of assistances reports received from neighboring UEs within a particular period of time being less than a threshold number.
Huang teaches wherein the second condition comprises a number of assistances reports received from neighboring UEs within a particular period of time being less than a threshold number. ([0388] the third terminal device sends the assistance information when a channel busy ratio (CBR) is less than a CBR threshold. )
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Huang with the teachings of Deng and Belleschi because Huang teaches that from a perspective of system performance, sending the assistance information when the channel is not congested is more meaningful.(Huang [0388])
Claim 35 is/are interpreted and rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claim 20.
Claim(s) 30, 37 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Deng and further in view of Wang et al (CN 116094631 A) hereinafter Wang
As to claim 30. Deng does not teach , wherein the triggering condition comprises a determination that exclusion of all of the non-preferred resources would cause a remaining number of resources to be less than a threshold value or that a number of non-preferred resources is greater than a threshold value.
Wang teaches wherein the triggering condition comprises a determination that exclusion of all of the non-preferred resources would cause a remaining number of resources to be less than a threshold value or that a number of non-preferred resources is greater than a threshold value. ([rule 1.2, rule 1.3, rule 7, rule 8] the detected non-preferred resource is used for resource exclusion., based on the non-tendency resource set for resource exclusion, if the candidate resource set in the remaining resource number is less than or equal to the fourth threshold value, triggering resource reselection;))
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Wang with the teachings of Deng because Wang teaches that alternative resource set reduces the resource number satisfy the second preset condition;(Rule 2.1)
Claim 37 is/are interpreted and rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claim 29.
Allowable Subject Matter
5. Claims 22-23, 25-29 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: Regarding claim 22 prior art Hwang et al [US 20230209576 A1] teaches in [0195] For example, if the UE transmitting the additional information increases the amount of resources based on the additional information request, the UE may boost an RSRP threshold and then determine non-preferred resources based on sensing by using the boosted RSRP threshold.
For example, the non-preferred resource may indicate discontinuous time resources and/or frequency resources within the preferred resource. For example, upon receiving the additional information from the UE-A, the UE-B may select an available resource by prioritizing a resource in the preferred resource, while the UE-B may exclude the non-preferred resource. For example, upon receiving the additional information from the UE-A, the UE-B may select an available resource by prioritizing a resource in the preferred resource, and the UE-B may lower the priority such that the non-preferred resource is excluded.
And prior art Baker et al. [US 20130170476 A1] disclose in para [0074] The base station determines the unique time frequency resources of some resource block (RB) allocation size as candidates to be allocated for the one-to-one peer-to-peer communication link between the transmitter station and a given receiver station for each of the timeslots designated as preferred (TS.sub.p) and non-excluded and/or non-preferred for the one-to-one peer-to-peer communication link.
The time frequency resources selected as candidate resources for the given receiver station may or may not be determined as the candidate resources for another receiver station in the one-to-many peer-to-peer communication link. If the candidate time frequency resources for more than one of the receiver stations within a given timeslot are identical, the one candidate time frequency resource can be used to simultaneously support the communication link between the transmitter station and more than one receiver stations.
However, combination or prior arts records Hwang and Baker does not teach
For claim 22
determine if a number of candidate resources is less than a threshold based on excluding the plurality of non-preferred resources from a set of candidate resources, the threshold indicating a total number of candidate resources to be included in the set of candidate resources;
in response to determining that the number of candidate resources is less than the threshold, determine a number of non-preferred resources from the
plurality of non-preferred resources to include in the set of candidate resources such that the set of candidate resources meets the threshold;
generate the[[a]] set of candidate resources comprising the[[a]] determined number of non-preferred resources;
and select a resource from the set of candidate resources comprising the determined number of non-preferred resources for transmission.
Therefore, claim 22 and its respective dependent would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the objections set forth in this office action and in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
6. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
HOSSEINI; Seyedkianoush et al. [US 20220070890 A1] SIDELINK SCHEDULING REQUEST
PARK; Changhwan et al. [US 20210274556 A1] METHOD FOR TRANSMITTING/RECEIVING SIGNAL IN WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEM, AND DEVICE THEREFOR
Hui; Bing et al. [US 20220346065 A1] Selection Window Determination for Sidelink Inter-UE Coordination
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ATIQUE AHMED whose telephone number is (571)272-6244. The examiner can normally be reached 9:30 - 7:30 PM M-F Eastern.
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/ATIQUE AHMED/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2413
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