DETAILED ACTION
Claims status
In response to the application filed on 04/17/2026, claims 11-13 and 20 have been withdrawn from consideration and thus claims 1-10 and 14-19 are currently pending for the examination. The present application, filed on or after March l16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
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 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.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 04/17/2026 has been placed in the application file, and the information referred therein has been considered as to the merits.
Drawings
Drawing figures submitted on 04/17/2026 have been reviewed and accepted.
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.
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 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.
Claims 1 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Park et al. (US 2019/0174527 A1) in view of Harrison et al. (US 2019/0103949 A1).
Regarding claim 1; Park teaches a method for indicating downlink control information is provided, comprising:
receiving, by a terminal, downlink control information (DCI) for scheduling a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) (See Fig. 15: the UE to receive, from the base station, downlink control information (DCI) for scheduling of an uplink shared channel (e.g., PUSCH) in step S1505. ¶ [0694]); and
determining, by the terminal based on maximum transmission rank information for the PUSCH (See Fig. 15: the UE to determine a maximum number of layers supported for the uplink transmission. ¶ [0015]), a bit length of a target field of the DCI (See Fig. 14 and 15: a method may be considered to unify a size of a corresponding SRI field (i.e., target field) to a minimum bitwidth (i.e., bit length) capable of supporting a case where maximum SRI states…allocate the SRI field to DCI. ¶ [0679]) and significant bits in the target field, wherein the target field (See Fig. 15: a bitwidth of the SRI field (i.e., target field) may be determined based on a number of SRS resources in a SRS resource set configured to the UE. ¶ [0015]) comprises at least one of the following:
at least one sounding reference signal resource indicator (SRI) field (See Fig. 15: a bitwidth of the SRI field (i.e., the target field) may be determined based on a number of SRS resources in a SRS resource set configured to the UE. ¶ [0015]).
Park doesn’t explicitly state using the significant bits in the target field.
However, Harrison discloses using the significant bits in the target field (Harrison-the SRI is encoded directly as a bit stream rather than first being encoded as a decimal number and then mapped to a number of bits in the DCI. For example, the binary representation of Y(g.sub.1, g.sub.2, g.sub.L.sub.max) may be mapped to the most significant bits, then the binary representation of X.sub.1 is mapped to the subsequent bits, then the binary representation of X.sub.2 and so forth until X.sub.L is mapped to the least significant bits. ¶ [0091]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to provide using the significant bits in the target field as taught by Harrison to have incorporated in the system of Park, so that it would provide the embodiments of the invention that facilitate efficient signaling of an indication of SRS resources to be used. Harrison-¶ [0075].
Regarding claim 14: Park teaches a terminal, comprising a processor, a memory, and a program or instructions stored in the memory and capable of running on the processor, wherein when the program or instructions are executed by the processor, following steps are implemented:
receiving, by the terminal, downlink control information (DCI) for scheduling a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) (See Fig. 15: the UE to receive, from the base station, downlink control information (DCI) for scheduling of an uplink shared channel (e.g., PUSCH) in step S1505. ¶ [0694]); and
determining, by the terminal based on maximum transmission rank information for the PUSCH (See Fig. 15: the UE to determine a maximum number of layers supported for the uplink transmission. ¶ [0015]), a bit length of a target field of the DCI (See Fig. 14 and 15: a method may be considered to unify a size of a corresponding SRI field (i.e., target field) to a minimum bitwidth (i.e., bit length) capable of supporting a case where maximum SRI states…allocate the SRI field to DCI. ¶ [0679]) and significant bits in the target field, wherein the target field (See Fig. 15: a bitwidth of the SRI field (i.e., target field) may be determined based on a number of SRS resources in a SRS resource set configured to the UE. ¶ [0015]) comprises at least one of the following:
at least one sounding reference signal resource indicator (SRI) field (See Fig. 15: a bitwidth of the SRI field (i.e., the target field) may be determined based on a number of SRS resources in a SRS resource set configured to the UE. ¶ [0015]).
Park doesn’t explicitly state using the significant bits in the target field.
However, Harrison discloses using the significant bits in the target field (Harrison-the SRI is encoded directly as a bit stream rather than first being encoded as a decimal number and then mapped to a number of bits in the DCI. For example, the binary representation of Y(g.sub.1, g.sub.2, g.sub.L.sub.max) may be mapped to the most significant bits, then the binary representation of X.sub.1 is mapped to the subsequent bits, then the binary representation of X.sub.2 and so forth until X.sub.L is mapped to the least significant bits. ¶ [0091]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to provide using the significant bits in the target field as taught by Harrison to have incorporated in the system of Park, so that it would provide the embodiments of the invention that facilitate efficient signaling of an indication of SRS resources to be used. Harrison-¶ [0075].
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-10 and 14-19 are objected to as being dependent upon the rejected base claims but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Xiong et al. (US 2021/0092759 A1 to discuss Multi-Transmission TTI scheduling for data Transmission).
Contact Information
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/SAI AUNG/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2416
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