Detailed Office 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 .
This office action is in response to the communication dated 2/5/24.
Claims 1-20 are pending
Claims 5-13 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.
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 1-4 and 14-17 and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Khoshnevisan et al. U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2021/0111835 [hereinafter Khoshnevisan] in view of Salim et al. U. S. Patent application Publication No. 20220224491[hereinafter Salim]
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.
As per claim 1, 14 and 20 Khoshnevisan A communication method, comprising:
sending, using a multicast resource, first information to a second communication apparatus group, comprising a plurality of at least two second communication apparatuses (see par. 0084-0085, 0092, where a base station 105 may send multicast transmissions to multiple UEs 115 (multicast group) in a PDSCH subframe within a single cell.) and
detecting, frequency resource, and from a first communication apparatus in the communication apparatus group, feedback information indicating that the first communication apparatus has failed to correctly receive the first information on the multicast resource.
Khoshnevisan does not explicitly disclose detecting, on a unified time-frequency resource, and wherein the unified time-frequency resource is a shared feedback resource useable by all communication apparatus in the second communication apparatus group.
Salim discloses a system for FEEDBACK RESOURCE DETERMINATION FROM SIDELINK SHARED CHANNEL, including detecting, on a unified time-frequency resource, and wherein the unified time-frequency resource is a shared feedback resource useable by all communication apparatus in the second communication apparatus group(see par. 0046, 0109, where unified or same time-frequency feedback resources is utilized in communication apparatus group). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art prior to effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Salim into the system of Khoshnevisan because assigning feedback resource to each active group may be more efficient than dimensioning and making association of all feedback resources. Therefore, when ACK-NACK groupcast transmission is being configured, its feedback address is indicated as part of group configuration.
As per claim 2, and 15 Salim discloses the method of claim 1, comprising sending first configuration information, wherein the first configuration information indicates indicating the unified first time-frequency resource(see par. 0120)
As per claim 3., and 16 Salim discloses the method according to of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises: comprising receiving, from the unified time-frequency resource, capability information of the first communication apparatus ( see par. 0055, capability of one time-frequency PSFCH resource, where n UEs can have different K configurations matching their capabilities and requirements, offering more flexibility).
As per claim 4 and 17 Khoshnevisan the method of claim 1, wherein when detecting the feedback information on the unified time-frequency resource, the method comprises sending, using the multicast resource, second information, and wherein the second information is the same as the first information or is based on original information corresponding to the first information(see par. 0046).
As per claim 19 Salim discloses the method according +te-of claim 14, wherein a signal that carries the feedback information comprises one or more sequences;, and wherein at least one of the one or more sequences is: predefined or preconfigured or obtained according to a predefined rule or obtained according to a predefined and or preconfigured parameter and-a and according to a predefined rule(see par. 0011, 0081)
Conclusion
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/ABDULLAHI E SALAD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2466