DETAILED ACTION
Status of Case
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This Office Action is in response to the RCE filed on 4/1/2026.
Claims 1-16 and 30-43 are pending.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) filed on 4/1/2026 has been considered by Examiner.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed on 4/1/2026 with respect to the pending claims have been considered but are moot because the arguments do not apply to any of the references being used in the current rejection.
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 1-2, 30-31, 37-38, and 41-42 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Teyeb (USPAN 2024/0388409) in view of Chai (USPAN 2016/0100343), Bontu (USPN 9,313,698), and Park (WO 2013/115543).
Consider claims 1, 30, 37, and 41, Teyeb discloses an apparatus for wireless communications at a user equipment (UE), comprising one or more memories; and one or more processors coupled with the one or more memories (see figure 1B, wherein disclosed is a WTRU, i.e. UE, comprising memories 130 and 132 and a processor 118), and a corresponding method (see paragraph 72, wherein disclosed is said method) and a corresponding non-transitory computer-readable medium storing code for wireless communication at a user equipment (UE), the code comprising instructions executable by one or more processors (see figure 1B, wherein disclosed is computer-readable medium 130 and 132; also, see paragraph 139: “computer-readable storage media include, but are not limited to, a read only memory (ROM), a random access memory (RAM)…”), and a corresponding apparatus for wireless communication comprising means for receiving and means for transmitting (see figure 1B, wherein disclosed is said means for receiving and means for transmitting via elements 122 and 120) and configured to cause the UE to:
receive an indication of coverage information for a first cell associated with a non-terrestrial network, the coverage information indicating a coverage area supported by the first cell for the wireless communications; and transmit, based at least in part on location information of the UE and the coverage information, a message associated with a handover for the UE from the first cell to a second cell associated with the non-terrestrial network (see paragraph 72: “…a WTRU that is being served via a first cell (e.g., of a non-terrestrial network (NTN) satellite) for handling the uplink and/or downlink (UL and/or DL) data transmission and/or reception associated with (e.g., during) handover from the first cell to a second cell of (e.g., of another NTN satellite)… One or more of the following may be performed by the WTRU. The WTRU may receive triggering configuration information (e.g., information that indicates triggering conditions), where the triggering configuration information may indicate condition(s) associated with starting and/or stopping a dual connection (e.g., a carrier aggregation (CA) operation) with the first cell and the second cell, for example the carrier aggregation may be started or stopped based on whether one or more of the conditions are satisfied. The triggering configuration information may be the same or different for the UL and DL. The triggering configuration information may include one or more of the following (e.g., on which starting or stopping a CA operation may be based): a command (e.g., explicit command) to start or stop the dual connection; time information (e.g., a time condition); location information (e.g. a location condition); timing advance information (e.g., a timing advance condition) and/or pre-compensation information (e.g., a time/frequency pre-compensation condition); cell information (e.g., list of candidate cell information in physical cell identity (PCI), cell global identity (CGI), frequency, etc.); or signal level threshold(s). The WTRU may receive configuration information regarding the WTRU UL behavior to use in association with activation of the target (e.g., second) cell (e.g., for carrier aggregation operation)”).
Although it is implicit in Teyeb to receive an indication of coverage information for a first cell (in order to perform the handover from the first cell to the second cell), Teyeb does not explicitly disclose receiving an indication of coverage information, transmitting a message indicating timing information, performing a measurement-based handover.
Chai discloses receiving an indication of coverage information, transmitting a message indicating timing information, and performing a measurement-based handover (see paragraph 171: receiving coverage information, transmitting timing information, and “the UE to perform signal strength and/or signal quality measurement on a cell at a frequency of a cell of the second network node or only on the cell of the second network node, or the first network node directly hands over the UE to a cell of the second network node,” i.e. measurement-based handover).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Teyeb and combine it with the noted teachings of Chai. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a cell discovery method (see paragraph 2 of Chai).
Teyeb does not specifically disclose to transmit a message that indicates a timing information associated with a measurement-based handover for the UE, wherein the measurement-based handover is from the first cell to a second c ell associated with a non-terrestrial network.
Bontu discloses to transmit a message that indicates a timing information associated with a measurement-based handover for the UE, wherein the measurement-based handover is from the first cell to a second c ell associated with a non-terrestrial network (see figure 2 (reproduced below for convenience) and claim 1: a method at a user equipment for handover from a serving cell to a target cell, the method comprising: measuring, at the user equipment, a downlink difference between times of arrival for the target cell and the serving cell; sending a measurement report to the serving cell, the measurement report including the downlink difference between times of arrival for the target cell and the serving cell; thus, the measurement report that the UE transmits comprises timing information associated with said measurement-based handover).
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It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Teyeb and combine it with the noted teachings of Bontu. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a handover method in heterogenous networks that avoid data interruptions and prevent additional packet delays (see col. 1 lines 7-27 of Bontu).
Teyeb does not specifically disclose determining whether the handover can be completed prior to the UE exiting the coverage area supported by the first cell.
Park discloses that a handover can be completed prior to the UE exiting the coverage area supported by the first cell (see paragraph 57: “finish the handover from the cell B to the cell C before the UE leaves the coverage area of the cell B”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Teyeb and combine it with the noted teachings of Park. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method for transmitting a handover report message in a wireless communication system (see paragraph 1 of Park).
Consider claims 2, 31, 38, and 42, Teyeb discloses receiving, from the non-terrestrial network, a configuration to transmit the message indicating the timing information, the message indicating the timing information being transmitted in response to the configuration received from the non-terrestrial network (see paragraphs 123 and 124: the WTRU may be provided with multiple configurations…the explicit configuration and/or indication may be a control message).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 3 is allowed.
Claims 4-16, 32-36, 40, and 43 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jamal Javaid whose telephone number is 571-270-5137 and email address is Jamal.Javaid@uspto.gov.
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/JAMAL JAVAID/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2412
Prosecution Insights