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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 20 is directed to a “non-transitory computer-readable medium having instructions … for execution of the method according to claim 1.” However, Claim 1 is directed to an apparatus, rather than a method.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-19 are allowed.
Claim 20 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the claimed subject matter is directed to “a passive self-announcing reconfigurable intelligent surface” where “self-conjugating elements disposed together with the reconfigurable elements on a single passive reflective surface” (Claim 1) provides the function to allow the “detecting a presence of the RIS based on a preamble encoded into a retroreflected signal from the RIS” (Claims 12 and 19). The improvements over the prior art is described in the specification, paragraph 0062. Sahraei et al. (US 2025/0055502 A1) teach various antenna elements that are disposed together including passive reconfigurable intelligent surfaces RIS (Figure 6 and paragraph 0103), but do not teach “self-conjugating elements.” Sahraei et al. (US 2025/0038791 A1) teach uplink watermarking using preambles on RIS (paragraphs 0125 and 0139), but the watermarking for the RIS ID is provided by the base station instead of the RIS itself. Dardar et al. publication (‘Grant-free Random Access with Self-conjugating Metasurfaces’ filed in the IDS dated 5/3/2024) teach that self-conjugating metasurface is a particular type of RIS (page 3), but do not teach “self-conjugating elements disposed together with reconfigurable elements on a single passive reflective surface” such that the RIS is self-announcing. Albanese et al. (US 2026/0012227 A1) teach a newly deployed RIS with self-announcing broadcast messages to pre-deployed and configured RIS, but do not teach “self-conjugating elements disposed together with reconfigurable elements on a single passive reflective surface” such that the RIS is self-announcing using “a presence of the RIS based on a preamble encoded into a retroreflected signal from the RIS.”
Conclusion
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MELVIN C. MARCELO
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2463
/MELVIN C MARCELO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2463 April 3, 2026
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