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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 09/27/2023, 01/27/2025. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Amendment
The Amendment filed 07/30/2025 has been entered. Claims 6, 10, and 14 have been amended.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's argument(s) filed on 01/20/2026 with respect to the rejection of claims under rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground rejection.
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed in parent Application No. JP2021-062885 filed on 04/01/2021.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claims 6-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kundu (US 20210029731 A1), hereinafter Kundu in view of Cirik (US 20210006376 A1), hereinafter Cirik.
Regarding claim 6,
Kundu teaches a user equipment (UE), comprising: reception circuitry configured to receive, from a base station, system information including a first radio resource control (RRC) parameter, wherein the first RRC parameter provides a first cell-specific physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) resource set on an initial uplink (UL) bandwidth part (BWP); and ([0148] enabling cell-specific PUCCH resource set configuration using interlace based PUCCH.... a PUCCH resource set is provided .... with interlace based PUCCH resource (for example, provided with RRC parameter .... ) for transmission of HARQ-ACK information on PUCCH in an initial UL BWP) and [0301-0303] a method of operating a UE ... determining an index of a row of the preconfigured table ... on PUCCH in an initial uplink bandwidth part ... receiving an RRC parameter ... determine that the UE is configured with interlace-based PUCCH resource based on said receipt of the RRC parameter. ... receiving an RRC parameter pucch-ResourceCommon; and determining the index based on the RRC parameter); and (fig. 11 - 13 and [0257] Process 12 ... determine an index of a row of a PUCCH resource configuration ... for transmission of hybrid automatic repeat request-acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) information over a PUCCH in an initial uplink (UL) bandwidth part (BWP) ) ... operation 1202, the UE 502 determines a PUCCH resource set based on the index ... operation 1302, the UE 502 transmits a PUCCH transmission using frequency hopping when the UE is not provided with a useInterlacePUCCH-PUSCH parameter in a BWP-UplinkCommon IE of the RRC configuration or another RRC configuration).
Kundu does not explicitly teach control circuitry configured to determine a cell-specific PUCCH resource set used for a PUCCH transmission with HARQ-ACK information on the initial UL BWP, wherein
in a case that a second RRC parameter providing a second cell-specific PUCCH resource set on the initial UL BWP is present in the system information, the second cell-specific PUCCH resource set is used for the PUCCH transmission with HARQ-ACK information on the initial UL BWP, and
in a case that the second RRC parameter is not present in the system information, the first cell-specific PUCCH resource set is used for the PUCCH transmission with HARQ-ACK information on the initial UL BWP.
Cirik teaches control circuitry configured to determine a cell-specific PUCCH resource set used for a PUCCH transmission with HARQ-ACK information on the initial UL BWP, wherein in a case that a second RRC parameter providing a second cell-specific PUCCH resource set on the initial UL BWP is present in the system information, the second cell-specific PUCCH resource set is used for the PUCCH transmission with HARQ-ACK information on the initial UL BWP, and in a case that the second RRC parameter is not present in the system information, the first cell-specific PUCCH resource set is used for the PUCCH transmission with HARQ-ACK information on the initial UL BWP ([0419] A wireless device may send (e.g., transmit) one or more PUCCH with HARQ-ACK information in a slot. The PDSCH-to-HARQ-timing-indicator field values may map to {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}, ... [0422] PUCCH resource indicator field values may map to values of a set of PUCCH resource indexes. The indexes may be provided by RRC parameter ResourceList for PUCCH resources. The PUCCH resources may be from a set of PUCCH resources provided by PUCCH-ResourceSet (e.g., with a maximum of eight PUCCH resources ... [0423] A wireless device may detect ... indicating a first resource for a PUCCH transmission with corresponding HARQ-ACK information in a slot. ... t. The wireless device may not expect to multiplex HARQ-ACK information corresponding to the second DCI format in a PUCCH resource in the slot, for example, if the PDCCH reception that includes the second DCI format is not earlier than N_3 symbols from a first symbol of the first resource for PUCCH transmission in the slot.)
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to add the teaching of Cirik to the teaching of Kundu . The motivation for such an addition would be to improve performance of a wireless network ([0354] Cirik).
Regarding claim 7,
Kundu and Cirik teach the UE of claim 6,
Kundu further teaches wherein both the first cell-specific PUCCH resource set and the second cell-specific PUCCH resource set include a plurality of cell-specific PUCCH resources, and each of the plurality of the cell-specific PUCCH resources corresponds to a PUCCH format, a first symbol, a duration, a PRB offset, and an initial cyclic shift index ([0258] each corresponding to a PUCCH format, a first symbol, a duration, a PRB offset … and a cyclic shift index set for a PUCCH transmission).
Regarding claim 8,
Kundu and Cirik teach the UE of claim 6,
Kundu further teaches wherein the PUCCH transmission with HARQ-ACK information using the first cell-specific PUCCH resource set or the second cell-specific PUCCH resource set is in response to a reception of a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) scheduled by downlink control information (DCI) format 1_0 with cyclic redundancy check (CRC) scrambled by a TC-RNTI ([0023][0024] If the UE 502 receives a … (PDSCH) without receiving a corresponding … (PDCCH), or if the UE receives a PDCCH indicating a semi-persistent scheduling (SPS) PDSCH release, the UE generates one corresponding HARQ-ACK information bit. If the UE is not provided higher layer parameter PDSCH-CodeBlockGroupTransmission, the UE generates one HARQ-ACK information bit per transport block. A UE does not expect to be indicated to transmit HARQ-ACK information for more than two SPS PDSCH receptions in a same PUCCH. … the CRC for a DCI format is scrambled with a Radio Network Temporary Identifier (RNTI) …. For example, the CRC for DCI format 1_0 is scrambled with a C-RNTI.
and [0093] …instead of C-RNTI, TC-RNTI (temporary C-RNTI) available during initial access may be used as scrambling ID).
Regarding claim 9,
Kundu and Cirik teach the UE of claim 6,
Kundu further teaches wherein the UE is not provided, from the base station, with dedicated PUCCH resource configuration for the initial UL BWP ([0026] UE 502 (see e.g., FIG. 5) does not have dedicated PUCCH resource configuration, provided by PUCCH-ResourceSet in PUCCH-Config, a PUCCH resource set is provided by pucch-ResourceCommon through an index to a row of Table 1 for transmission of HARQ-ACK information on PUCCH in an initial UL BWP of NBWPsize Physical Resource Blocks (PRBs))
Claims 10-13 (base station) and 14 (UE method) are rejected under the same reasoning as claims 6-9 (UE apparatus), where Kundu teaches both device and method of base station and UE (figs. 8 and 9).
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 VAN T NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)272-6178. The examiner can normally be reached 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM (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, Ayman A Abaza can be reached at (571) 270-0422. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/VAN TA NGUYEN/Examiner, Art Unit 2465
/AYMAN A ABAZA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2465
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