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 .
This office action is responsive to the response filed 1/29/26.
Claims 1-20 are pending.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1-3, 11-13, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hui et al., US 2023/0319878 in view of Jung et al., US 2019/0037592, (“Jung”).
Independent Claims
Regarding claim 1, Hui teaches “A wireless device comprising:
one or more processors (Fig. 15A, processing system 1518); and
memory (Fig. 15A, memory 1524) storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, causes the wireless device to:
determine, among an uplink transmission with a first priority and a sidelink transmission with a second priority and based on the second priority being higher than the first priority, to transmit the sidelink transmission (paragraph no. 0490, “The second wireless device (e.g., 2nd wireless device) 3520 may send (e.g., transmit) a sidelink transmission via one or more first resources based on a LBT success and a prioritization of a sidelink transmission over an uplink transmission”); and
transmit, based on determining to transmit the sidelink transmission and a failure of a listen-before-talk (LBT) procedure associated with the sidelink transmission” (paragraph no. 0490, “A second wireless device (e.g., 2nd wireless device) 3520 may determine a LBT failure of a LBT procedure 3555. The second wireless (e.g., 2nd wireless device) 3520 device may not send (e.g., transmit) a sidelink transmission 3560 via one or more first resources based on a LBT failure of a LBT procedure 3555”; paragraph no. 0494, “The second wireless device (e.g., 2nd wireless device) 3520 may determine (generate) a NACK message (e.g., HARQ feedback) 3550, for example, based on or in response to the LBT failure of the LBT procedure 3555 for the one or more first resources”).
Hui discloses transmitting a NACK message on an uplink when the LBT fails for the determined higher priority sidelink transmission (see paragraph no. 0494). However, Hui does not teach transmitting “the uplink transmission” of claim 1 since “the uplink transmission” appears to be referring back to the “uplink transmission with a first priority” of claim 1.
Jung discloses “The UE determines whether to keep the transmission of the data on the first transmission link or to perform the transmission of the data on a second transmission link when the transmission of the data is not successful (S720) … For example, the first transmission link is a sidelink and the second transmission link is an uplink, and if the transmission of the data on the sidelink is not successful via the lower layer, the UE determines to perform transmission of the data on the uplink” (see paragraph no. 0168). Hence, Jung remedies the deficiencies of Hui since it teaches transmitting the uplink data if the transmission of the sidelink data is not successful. In addition, it appears that since the UE attempts to transmit the sidelink data first, the sidelink data implicitly is of higher priority than the uplink data.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Hui by incorporating the teachings of Jung to enable the UE to be configured with one or more transmission links that the UE can dynamically select for transmissions (e.g., the UE can change the transmission link to another link upon detection of transmission failure on a current transmission link), as suggested by Jung in paragraph no. 0169. Furthermore, such a modification would enable the UE to transmit the lower priority uplink transmission when the higher priority sidelink transmission fails, thereby improving the uplink communications between the UE and the base station since the uplink data that was scheduled for transmission is in fact transmitted.
Regarding independent claims 11 and 20, these independent claims are corresponding method and computer readable medium claims of the apparatus claim 1 and recite similar subject matter. As such, the rationale behind the above rejection of claim 1 applies with equal force to these independent claims and as further amplified below to highlight the minor differences between the claims.
Regarding further independent claim 20, see Hui, Fig. 15A, memory 1524, for a computer readable medium.
Dependent Claims
Regarding claims 2 and 12, Hui teaches “wherein the instructions further cause the wireless device to determine to transmit the sidelink transmission without transmitting the uplink transmission” (paragraph no. 0490, “The second wireless device (e.g., 2nd wireless device) 3520 may send (e.g., transmit) a sidelink transmission via one or more first resources based on a LBT success and a prioritization of a sidelink transmission over an uplink transmission”).
Regarding claims 3 and 13, Hui teaches “wherein the instructions further cause the wireless device to determine to transmit the sidelink transmission further based on the sidelink transmission overlapping in time with the uplink transmission” (paragraph no. 0492, “The priority threshold value may be used to determine that a sidelink transmission may be prioritized over an uplink transmission of priority index 1, for example, based on or in response to an overlap in time of one or more first resources and one or more second resources”).
Claim(s) 4 and 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hui and Jung as applied to claims 1, 11 above, and further in view of Wang et al., US 2022/0159588, (“Wang”).
Regarding claims 4 and 14, Hui does not teach but Wang teaches “wherein the sidelink transmission overlaps with the uplink transmission in:
at least one first symbol of an uplink carrier associated with the uplink transmission (see Fig. 9A and paragraph no. 0394, “In other words, in one slot, a symbol location occupied by uplink transmission is the same as a symbol location occupied by sidelink transmission”); or
at least one second symbol of a sidelink carrier associated with the sidelink transmission.”
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Hui and Jung by incorporating the teachings of Wang to enable the UE to avoid symbol collision between the sidelink and the uplink data transmissions by transmitting the sidelink data in lieu of the uplink data where the collision occurs.
Claim(s) 5 and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hui and Jung as applied to claims 1, 11 above, and further in view of Wu et al., US 2022/0346118, (“Wu”).
Regarding claims 5 and 15, Hui does not teach but Wu teaches “wherein the instructions further cause the wireless device to reduce, based on a total transmission power, comprising a first transmission power for the sidelink transmission and a second transmission power for the uplink transmission, exceeding a threshold, the second transmission power of the uplink transmission to a third transmission power” (see paragraph no. 0344, “the TX UE reduces the power of the uplink transmission of the overlapping area so that the total transmit power of the uplink transmission and the sidelink transmission does not exceed the maximum transmit power”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Hui and Jung by incorporating the teachings of Wu to enable the UE to use different carriers for the sidelink and the uplink as suggested by Wu in paragraph no. 0344. In addition, such a modification would reduce the interference caused by the UE to the surrounding UEs and/or reduce the total power consumption at the UE, thereby prolonging the battery power of the UE.
Claim(s) 6-7, 9-10, 16-17, and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hui and Jung as applied to claims 1, 11 above, and further in view of Alfarhan et al., US 2022/0210823, (“Alfarhan”).
Regarding claims 6 and 16, Hui does not teach but Alfarhan teaches “wherein the instructions further cause the wireless device to increase, in response to the failure of the LBT procedure, a transmission power of the uplink transmission from a first value to a second value” (see paragraph no. 0230).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Hui and Jung by incorporating the teachings of Alfarhan to enable the UE to improve the reliability of the uplink data transmission to the base station.
Regarding claims 7 and 17, the limitations “wherein the instructions further cause the wireless device to transmit the uplink transmission with the transmission power at the second value” are deemed to logically follow from the above modification of Hui and Jung in view of Alfarhan, vis a vis the rejection of claims 6 and 16. In other words, the modification of Hui and Jung in view of Alfarhan would logically yield these limitations since Alfarhan teaches that the uplink transmission is performed at a higher uplink transmission power.
Regarding claims 9 and 19, Hui does not teach but Alfarhan teaches “wherein the instructions further cause the wireless device to adjust a transmission power of the uplink transmission from a first value to a second value in response to determining the failure of the LBT procedure” (see paragraph no. 0230).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Hui and Jung by incorporating the teachings of Alfarhan to enable the UE to improve the reliability of the uplink data transmission to the base station.
Regarding claim 10, the limitation “wherein the uplink transmission starts at least a time interval after the sidelink transmission” would logically follow from the above modification of Hui and Jung, vis a vis the rejection of claim 1, since Jung teaches that the uplink data is transmitted after the sidelink transmission fails and the transmission of the uplink data would begin at some time interval after the time the sidelink transmission fails.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 8 and 18 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.
Regarding claims 8 and 18, the prior art of record does not teach or fairly suggest the claim limitations “wherein increasing the transmission power of the uplink transmission from first value to the second value is based on the uplink transmission being scheduled to start after an earliest symbol of the sidelink transmission.”
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 1/29/26 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues, re each independent claim, that “Jung fails to cure this defect of Hui. The cited sections of Jung show a UE having a switching layer that routes a single transmission to either a sidelink channel or an uplink channel: "The UE determines whether to keep the transmission of the data on the first transmission link or to perform the transmission of the data on a second transmission link when the transmission of the data is not successful" (Jung,1 [0168]). Because Jung discloses sending the same transmission but on different links, Jung also fails to show a device that falls back to sending an uplink transmission based on failure of an LBT procedure or transmission prioritization.” Applicant then argues “Consequently, the asserted combination of Hui and Jung fails to teach or suggest the claim 1 features of "transmit, based on determining to transmit the sidelink transmission and a failure of a listen-before-talk (LBT) procedure associated with the sidelink transmission [with the second priority], the uplink transmission [with the first priority]." (see page 7 of the response).
These arguments are not persuasive since applicant is arguing against the references individually. In response to applicant's arguments against the references individually, one cannot show nonobviousness by attacking references individually where the rejections are based on combinations of references. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 208 USPQ 871 (CCPA 1981); In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091, 231 USPQ 375 (Fed. Cir. 1986). In particular, the secondary reference Jung teaches that if the transmission of the data on the sidelink is not successful, the UE determines to perform transmission of the data on the uplink (see paragraph no. 0168). Hence, this teaching of Jung sufficiently remedies the deficiency of Hui as noted above since Hui merely fails to teach that the lower priority uplink transmission is transmitted when the LBT procedure fails for the higher priority sidelink transmission. Hence, the combined teachings of these two references render the claimed subject matter of, e.g., claim 1, obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
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/WON TAE C KIM/Examiner, Art Unit 2414