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
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 3/10/26 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
This office action is in response to amendment filed on 3/10/26. Claims 21, 23-29, 31-37, and 39-43 are currently pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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.
Claim(s) 21, 23-29, 31-37, and 39-43 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Kim et al. (US 2023/0130569).
Regarding claim 21, Kim teaches a method, comprising:
sending, by an access point (AP), a trigger frame (EHT trigger frame), wherein sending the trigger frame triggers a station (non-AP STA) to send an extremely high throughput trigger based physical layer protocol data unit (EHT TB PPDU) (see “When a PPDU is transmitted as a response to the EHT-based trigger frame, the additional information field includes additional information for generating the EHT TB PPBU” [par 162] and “In this case, the trigger frame may be recognized as an EHT trigger frame, and the non-AP STA may respond through an EHT TB PPDU” [par 163]), and a special user information field (additional information field) of the trigger frame comprises a first field (first spatial reuse field) and a second field (second spatial reuse field) (see “…the additional information field may include an additional bandwidth field, a puncturing mode field, and/or a UL spatial reuse field for additional spatial reuse” [par 160] and “The additional information field may be referred to as a special user information field” [par 167] and “…the additional UL spatial reuse field may include another four spatial reuse fields” [par 169] which in combination suggests that the trigger frame may comprises an additional information field, or “special user information field”, which includes at least a first and second spatial reuse field); and
receiving, by the AP, the EHT TB PPDU sent by the station, wherein a value of a spatial reuse parameter 1 (SRP1) field in a universal signal field (U-SIG) of the EHT TB PPDU is set to a value of the first field, and a value of a spatial reuse parameter 2 (SRP2) field in the U-SIG of the EHT TB PPDU is set to a value of the second field (see “When a PPDU is transmitted as a response to the EHT-based trigger frame, the additional information field includes additional information for generating the EHT TB PPDU” [par 162] and “For example, when the location of the RU allocated to the non-AP STA is included in a secondary BW or a format related to the trigger frame is an EHT format (for example, when a format of a user information field is the EHT format), the non-AP STA may generate an EHT TB PPDU by using spatial reuse fields included in the additional information field, and transmit the generated EHT TB PPDU” [par 196] and “when the TB PPDU generated by STA 1 to STA n is the EHT TB PPDU, spatial reuse fields 1 to 4 may be spatial reuse fields included in the additional information field of the trigger frame” [par 198] which suggests that non-AP STA generates EHT TB PPDU in response to the trigger frame with spatial reuse fields 1-4 included, or copied, from the additional information field which reads on the claimed “special user information field” as discussed above);
wherein a common information field of the trigger frame comprises four uplink spatial reuse parameter (UL SRP) fields (see “Specifically, STA1 to STA N having received trigger frames from an AP STA may identify a UL spatial reuse field included in a common information field of the trigger frame, and generate a TB PPDU by encoding values of four spatial reuse fields included in the UL spatial reuse field to respective spatial reuse fields 1 to 4 included in a U-SIG field of a TB PPDU” [par 191] and Fig 12 which illustrates Spatial Reuse fields 1-4 in the common field of the trigger frame), two of the four UL SRP fields carry a first same value (80 MHz), and the other two carry a second same value (80 MHz) (see “Four of eight spatial reuse fields indicated by the trigger frame for a 320 (or 160+160) MHz bandwidth may indicate a spatial reuse value corresponding to low 160 or 80 MHz…” [par 176] which suggests that the common information field, or Spatial Reuse fields 1-4, may carry a 80 MHz value which reads on the claimed “first same value” and the ”second same value” since all 4 Spatial Reuse fields carry 80 MHz which in total equals 320 MHz);
wherein the value of the first field (80 MHz) is equal to a value of either of the two UL SRP fields that carry the first same value, and the value indicated by the second field (80 MHz) is equal to a value of either of the other two UL SRP fields that carry the second same value (see “…and the remaining four spatial reuse fields may indicate a spatial reuse value corresponding to high 160 or 80 MHz” [par 176] which suggests the additional information (Spatial Reuse fields 5-8), or “first field” and “second field”, may also carry a 80 MHz value which is the same value as the value carried by the four UL SRP fields (Spatial Reuse fields 1-4) in the common information).
Regarding claim 23, Kim teaches the method according to claim 21, wherein the special user information field comprises an association identifier 12 field (association identifier) , and a value of the association identifier 12 field is a special value (2007) (see “For example, when a value of an identifier (for example, an association identifier (AID)) of the additional information field is configured as a preset value (for example, AID=2007), it may indicate that the additional information field is included after the common information field” [par 164]).
Regarding claim 24, Kim teaches the method according to claim 21, wherein a bandwidth of the EHT TB PPDU is 80 MHz, 160 MHz, or 320 MHz ( see “In this case, six of eight (or 16) BW modes which can be indicated by 2 bits of the bandwidth field and 1 bit (or 2 bits) of the additional UL BW field may correspond to 20 MHz, 40 MHz, 80 MHz, 160 (80+80) MHz, 240 (160+80) MHz, and 320(160+160) MHz” [par 168]).
Regarding claim 25, Kim teaches the method according to claim 22, wherein the four UL SRP fields are a UL SRP1field, a UL SRP2 field, a UL SRP3 field, and a UL SRP4 field (see FIG 12, Spatial Reuse fields 1-4], values the UL SRP1 field and the UL SRP2 field carry a same value, the UL SRP3 field and the UL SRP4 field carry a same value (see ““Four of eight spatial reuse fields indicated by the trigger frame for a 320 (or 160+160) MHz bandwidth may indicate a spatial reuse value corresponding to low 160 or 80 MHz…” [par 176] which suggests that Spatial Reuse fields 1-4 may carry the same 80 MHz value).
Regarding claim 26, Kim teaches the method according to claim 22, wherein a bandwidth of the EHT TB PPDU is 320 MHz, the four UL SRP fields respectively indicate SRP values of four 40 MHz subchannels on a primary 160 MHz channel in ascending order of frequencies (see “For example, when a total bandwidth is 320 MHz, four spatial reuse fields 0 corresponding to primary 160 MHz may correspond to low 40 MHz of low 80 MHz, high 40 MHz of low 80 MHz, low 40 MHz of high 80 MHz, and high 40 MHz of high 80 MHz, respectively” [par 179] which suggests “four 40 MHz subchannels”), and SRP values of four 40 MHz subchannels on a secondary 160 MHz (low 160 Mhz) channel are respectively the same as the SRP values of the four 40 MHz subchannels on the primary 160 MHz channel (see Fig. 12 Spatial Reuse fields 1-4 may be a low 160 Mhz which comprises “four 40 MHz subchannels”).
Regarding claim 27, Kim teaches the method according to claim 22, wherein the four UL SRP fields are a UL SRP1field, a UL SRP2 field, a UL SRP3 field, and a UL SRP4 field, and values carried by the four UL SRP fields are the same (see “In addition, when the trigger frame indicates a 20 MHz bandwidth, all eight spatial reuse fields may indicate a spatial reuse value corresponding to the primary 20 MHz” [par 184]); and
when a bandwidth of the EHT TB PPDU is 20 MHz, the value of the SRP1 field and the value of the SRP2 field in the U-SIG of the EHT TB PPDU are equal to a value indicated by any of the four UL SRP fields (see “when the TB PPDU generated by STA 1 to STA n is the EHT TB PPDU, spatial reuse fields 1 to 4 may be spatial reuse fields included in the additional information field of the trigger frame” [par 198] which suggests that when the bandwidth of the EHT TB PPDU is 20 MHz, the value of spatial reuse fields 1 to 4, or “SRP 1 field” and ”SRP2 field”, would be 20 MHz which is the same as the “four UL SRP fields” of the trigger frame which would also have a value of 20 MHz since “all eight spatial reuse fields may indicate a spatial reuse value corresponding to the primary 20 MHz” as indicated in par 184).
Regarding claim 28, Kim teaches the method according to claim 22, wherein the four UL SRP fields are a UL SRP1field, a UL SRP2 field, a UL SRP3 field, and a UL SRP4 field, values of the UL SRP1 field and the UL SRP3 field are the same, and values of the UL SRP2 field and the UL SRP4 field are the same (see “In addition, when the trigger frame indicates a 40 MHz bandwidth, four of eight spatial reuse fields may correspond to bandwidths of 20 MHz (low 20 MHz and high 20 MHz), respectively, and the remaining six may be encoded to the same value as spatial reuse field values, each corresponding to 20 MHz” [par 183]); and
when a bandwidth of the EHT TB PPDU is 40 MHz, the value indicated by the SRP1 field in the U-SIG of the EHT TB PPDU is equal to the value indicated by the UL SRP1 field or the value indicated by the UL SRP3 field, and the value indicated by the SRP2 field in the U-SIG of the EHT TB PPDU is equal to the value indicated by the UL SRP2 field or the value indicated by the UL SRP4 field (see “when the TB PPDU generated by STA 1 to STA n is the EHT TB PPDU, spatial reuse fields 1 to 4 may be spatial reuse fields included in the additional information field of the trigger frame” [par 198] which suggests that when the bandwidth of the EHT TB PPDU is 40 MHz, the value of spatial reuse fields 1-4, or “SRP1 field” and “SRP2 field”, of the EHT TB PPDU is 20 MHz which is the same value as spatial reuse fields 1-4 of the trigger frame, or “UL SRP1 – UL SRP4” of the trigger frame since “four of eight spatial reuse fields may correspond to bandwidths of 20 MHz (low 20 MHz and high 20 MHz), respectively, and the remaining six may be encoded to the same value as spatial reuse field values, each corresponding to 20 MHz” as indicated in par 183).
Claims 29 and 37 recite subject matter similar to claim 21 and are therefore rejected on the same basis.
Claims 30 and 38 recite subject matter similar to claim 22 and are therefore rejected on the same basis.
Claims 31 and 39 recite subject matter similar to claim 23 and are therefore rejected on the same basis.
Claims 32 and 40 recite subject matter similar to claim 24 and are therefore rejected on the same basis.
Claims 33 and 41 recite subject matter similar to claim 25 and are therefore rejected on the same basis.
Claims 34 and 42 recite subject matter similar to claim 26 and are therefore rejected on the same basis.
Claims 35 and 43 recite subject matter similar to claim 27 and are therefore rejected on the same basis.
Claim 36 recites subject matter similar to claim 28 and is therefore rejected on the same basis.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 3/10/26 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Regarding claim 21, Applicant submits that KIM does not teach the limitations of claim 21 which the Examiner respectfully disagrees based on the modified ground(s) of rejection above. In summary, Figure 12 illustrates a trigger frame comprising spatial reuse fields 1-4 which are common information that reads on the claimed “four UL SRP fields” and spatial reuse fields 5-8 which are additional information that reads on the claimed “first field” and “second field” of the “special information field”. KIM discloses “…when the TB PPDU generated by STA 1 to STA n is the EHT TB PPDU, spatial reuse fields 1 to 4 may be spatial reuse fields included in the additional information field of the trigger frame” [par 198] which suggests that a station transmits an EHT TB PPDU in response to a trigger frame with spatial reuse fields 1 to 4 with the same, or a copied/duplicated value, as the value carried by the additional information of the trigger frame. Therefore, in the cited examples above when a 320 MHz [par 176], 20 MHz [par 184], and 40 MHz [183] EHT TB PPDU is triggered, four UL SRP fields (spatial reuse fields 1-4 of the trigger frame), a first and second field of the special information filed (additional information/spatial reuse fields 5-8 of the trigger frame), and SRP1 and SRP2 field of the EHT TB PPDU (spatial reuse fields 1-4) all have the same value. For 320 MHz the value of all the aforementioned fields is 80 MHz, for 20 MHz the value of all the aforementioned fields is 20 MHz, and for 40 MHz the value of all the aforementioned fields is 20 MHz. KIM therefore teaches all the limitations of claim 21 in these examples. Claims 29 and 37 recite subject matter similar to claim 21 and are therefore not allowable over KIM for the same reasons.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Nam T Huynh whose telephone number is (571)272-5970. The examiner can normally be reached 9am-5pm.
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/NAM T HUYNH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2647
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