DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to Application No. 18/147,946 filed on 12/29/2022. The amendment presented on 7/17/2026, which amends claim 15, is hereby acknowledged. Claims 15-20 have been examined.
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 Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim 15 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mo et al. (hereinafter Mo)(US 2021/0067225) in view of Smith (US 2007/0179760).
Regarding claim 15, Mo teaches as follows:
A system (interpreted as the UE 116 in figure 3) for bandwidth-restricted messaging comprising:
a transmitter (interpreted the RF transceiver 310 in figure 3) for wirelessly communicating with a base station (The RF transceiver 310 receives, from the antenna 305, an incoming RF signal transmitted by an gNB of the network 100, see, ¶ [0057]);
a non-transitory computer readable media (interpreted as the memory 360 in figure 3)(The memory 360 is coupled to the main processor 340. Part of the memory 360 could include a random-access memory (RAM), and another part of the memory 360 could include a Flash memory or other read-only memory (ROM), see, ¶ [0062]);
an alphanumeric input component (interpreted as the input device or the keypad 350 in figure 3)(The operator of the UE 116 can use the keypad 350 to enter data into the UE 116. The display 355 may be a liquid crystal display or other display capable of rendering text and/or at least limited graphics, such as from web sites, see, ¶ [0061]); and
one or more computer processing components (interpreted as the main processor 340 in figure 3) configured to perform a method comprising:
receiving an alphanumeric input via the alphanumeric input component (The main processor 340 is also coupled to the keypad 350 and the display unit 355. The operator of the UE 116 can use the keypad 350 to enter data into the UE 116, see, ¶ [0061]); and
determining that the system is attached to the base station and that the base station is bandwidth-restricted (In operation 1106, the current operating frequency band combination is identified based on a configuration received from the network, see, ¶ [0088] and figure 11)(Therefore, the UE and the base station is connected for communication and the base station is always bandwidth-restricted (bandwidth-limited)).
Mo does not explicitly teach transmitting created encoded message shortened from the input message according to a codebook.
Smith teaches as follows:
To reduce the size of the message strings, recoding may be done after each message propagation step. Recoding replaces longer messages with shorter equivalents according to a codebook… Mathematically, the codebook is a set of ordered pairs, where the pairs consist of a message from the message set, and its index. In recoding, the long message strings generated at each time step are compressed by replacing them with shorter code words from the codebook (see, ¶ [0044] and figure 7).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mo with Smith to include replacing long message with shorter code words from the codebook as taught by Smith in order to efficiently reduce the size of the message strings in bandwidth restricted environment.
Claims 16-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mo et al. (hereinafter Mo)(US 2021/0067225) in view of Smith (US 2007/0179760), and further in view of Zhou et al. (hereinafter Zhou)(US 2019/0173556),
Regarding claim 16, Mo in view of Smith teaches all limitations as presented above except for downloading the codebook from a wireless communication network.
Zhou teaches as follows:
In a first implementation, before operation S401, the transmit end (user equipment) receives a resource configuration message sent by the receive end (equivalent to applicant’s wireless communication network). The resource configuration message includes a codebook pair that occupies mutually different non-zero physical REs. Optionally, the resource configuration message further includes a channel encoding mode and/or an antenna resource mapping mode (see, ¶ [0117] and figure 4).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mo in view of Smith with Zhou to include downloading codebook from the base station as taught by Zhou in order to efficiently synchronize same codebook between the UE and the base station.
Regarding claim 17, Mo in view of Smith and Zhou teaches similar limitations as presented above except for downloading the codebook when the system approaching a terrestrial coverage boundary.
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mo in view of Smith and Zhou to include determining when the UE approaches terrestrial coverage boundary in order to automatically initiate communication between the UE and the base station.
Regarding claim 18, Mo in view of Smith and Zhou teaches downloading the codebook as presented above.
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mo in view of Smith and Zhou to include downloading codebook between UEs for the well-known side-link (peer to peer connection) communication in order to efficiently synchronize same codebook between two UEs.
Claim 19 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mo et al. (hereinafter Mo)(US 2021/0067225) in view of Smith (US 2007/0179760) and Zhou et al. (hereinafter Zhou)(US 2019/0173556), and further in view of Grau et al. (hereinafter Grau)(US 2024/0064819).
Regarding claim 19, Mo in view of Smith and Zhou teaches all limitations as presented above except for using the well-known extraterrestrial base station.
Grau teaches the well-known non-terrestrial network (NTN) radio access network (RAN) as follows:
In this system 1, users of items of user equipment (UEs) 3-1, 3-2, 3-3 (e.g. mobile telephones and/or other mobile devices) can communicate with each other and/or other user equipment via a non-terrestrial network (NTN) radio access network (RAN) 8 that operates according to one or more compatible radio access technologies (RATs) for example, an E-UTRA and/or 5G RAT. In the illustrated example, the NTN RAN includes a base station or ‘gNB’ 5 operating one or more associated cells, a gateway 9, and a non-terrestrial (space or air borne) platform 11 (e.g. including one or more satellites and/or airborne vehicles)(see, ¶ [0065] and figure 2).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mo in view of Smith and Zhou with Grau to include the well-known NTN RAN (base station) as taught by Grau in order to efficiently cover wide area.
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mo et al. (hereinafter Mo)(US 2021/0067225) in view of Smith (US 2007/0179760) and Zhou et al. (hereinafter Zhou)(US 2019/0173556), and further in view of Zhu et al. (hereinafter Zhu)(US 2013/0242726).
Regarding claim 20, Mo in view of Smith and Zhou teaches all limitations as presented above except for receiving a congestion indicator from the base station.
Zhu teaches as follows:
In some downlink congestion and buffer report (DCBR) embodiments, the UE 102 may be configured to send a request to the eNB 104 to activate downlink congestion and buffer reporting and to receive a DCBR from the eNB 104. The DCBR may indicate whether or not congestion exists for downlink traffic and may indicate average packet delay and downlink buffer size. The DCBR may indicate whether or not congestion exists for downlink traffic for a certain QCI of the EPS bearer (see, ¶ [0049])
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mo in view of Smith and Zhou with Zhu to include the congestion and buffer report (DCBR) as taught by Zhu in order to efficiently indicate whether or not congestion exists from the base station.
Conclusion
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 Jeong S Park whose telephone number is (571)270-1597. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday 8:00-4:30 ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Rebecca E Song can be reached at 571-270-3667. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JEONG S PARK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2417
September 9, 2026
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