Detailed Action
The office action is in response to the communications filed on 01/16/2026.
Claims Status
Claims 12, 15-16, and 19-20 have been cancelled.
Claims 21-22 have been newly added.
Claims 1-11, 13-14, 17-18, and 21-22 are pending.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-11, 13-14, 17-18, and 21 are allowed.
Prior Art Made of Record
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Patil et al. (Publication No. US 20160112984), the prior art discloses that one or more contention window parameters may be adjusted such that acknowledgments, such as trigger messages, are given higher priority than a data transmission.
Response to Arguments
Regarding claim 22, Applicant remarks, filed on 01/16/2026, indicate that the cited portion of the prior art, individually or in combination, fails to discloses the features in the new claim 22, which includes subject matter of independent claim 1 and dependent claim 15. Examiner agrees, based on the remarks, that the new claim 22 overcome the prior art rejection. However, a new ground of rejection necessitated by the new claim is set forth below
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of AIA 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under AIA 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim 22 is rejected under AIA 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Greenberg et al. (Publication No. US 2012/0155468, hereinafter referred as Greenberg) in view of Manja Ppallan et al. (Publication No. US 2022/0369151, hereinafter referred as Manja) and further in view of Vajapeyam et al. (Publication No. US 2017/0048857, hereinafter referred as Vajapeyam).
Regarding claim 22, Greenberg discloses at least one transceiver (It is inherent that a wireless node includes at least one transceiver in order to perform the operations recited in the claim.);
at least one memory comprising instructions (It is inherent that the wireless node includes a memory in order to perform the operations recited in the claim.); and
one or more processors configured to execute the instructions to cause the wireless node to (It is inherent that the apparatus includes one or more processors configured to execute the instructions and cause the apparatus to perform the operations recited in the claim.):
receive, via the at least one transceiver and a first link, a first signal comprising one or more packets (A sender computing device transmits a traffic flow [first signal] over multiple communications links to a recipient computing device; see figure 5 numeral 506.);
transmit, via the at least one transceiver if the channel quality degrades, a second signal (The sender computing device receive an indication [second signal] from the recipient computing device [apparatus]; see figure 5 numeral 508 & ¶ 0053.) based on communication parameters associated with a channel quality (The indication is received because the data packets in the traffic flow were received outside of the particular sequence [channel quality]; see figure 5 numeral 508.).
Greenberg fails to disclose that the channel quality comprises radio metric and a flow metric, and the channel quality degradation comprises the quantity of the one or more packets are less than an expected quantity. However, in analogous art, Manja discloses that detecting a fluctuation in the quality of the channel, wherein the quality of the channel comprises the signal quality parameters [radio metric] and the wireless channel events [flow metric]; see figure 4 numeral 402. When the quality of the channel does not meet [below] the lower channel quality threshold, send duplicate acknowledgments [second signal]; see figure 4 numeral 406a & ¶ 0080. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Greenberg acknowledgement mechanism with the threshold technique of Manja in order to be capable to cope with variations in wireless channel quality, which affects a user experience; see ¶ 0004.
Greenberg fails to disclose receiving, via the at least one transceiver, a grant that is configured to provide the wireless node with multiple sets of resources; and wherein the second signal is transmitted via a first set of resources of multiple sets of resources based on the first set of resources having a higher reliability relative to other sets of the multiple sets of resources which have a lower reliability relative to the first set of resources. However, in analogous art, Vajapeyam discloses that the base station transmits, to the UE, one or more uplink grants, wherein the uplink grant include one or more uplink resources in the dedicated radio frequency spectrum band and/or one or more uplink grants for resources in the shared radio frequency spectrum band, wherein the transmissions in the dedicated radio frequency spectrum band may be associated with a higher priority than the transmissions in the shared radio frequency spectrum band; and wherein the UE map data associated with retransmission (e.g. ACK) [second signal]; see figure 4 step 425 & ¶¶ 0085-0087. The uplink data priority identifier may be used to identify a priority parameter associated with data to be transmitted on an uplink carrier, wherein the priority parameter includes that the data comprises a TCP ACK; see ¶ 0093. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Greenberg acknowledgement mechanism with the grant mechanism of Vajapeyam in order to avoid the intermittent availability of carriers in a shared radio frequency spectrum band by transmitting the higher priority data over a carrier in a dedicated radio frequency spectrum band; see ¶ 0008.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to HECTOR REYES whose telephone number is (571)270-0239. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 6-5.
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/H.R/Examiner, Art Unit 2472
/KEVIN T BATES/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2472
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