DETAILED 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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The references listed in the Information Disclosure Statement, filed on 06 October 2023, 29 April 2025, have been considered by the examiner (see attached PTO-1449 form or PTO/SB/08A and 08B forms).
Specification
The title of the invention is not descriptive. A new title is required that is clearly indicative of the invention to which the claims are directed.
Claim Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The claims in this application are given their broadest reasonable interpretation using the plain meaning of the claim language in light of the specification as it would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. The broadest reasonable interpretation of a claim element (also commonly referred to as a claim limitation) is limited by the description in the specification when 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is invoked.
As explained in MPEP § 2181, subsection I, claim limitations that meet the following three-prong test will be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
(A) the claim limitation uses the term “means” or “step” or a term used as a substitute for “means” that is a generic placeholder (also called a nonce term or a non-structural term having no specific structural meaning) for performing the claimed function;
(B) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is modified by functional language, typically, but not always linked by the transition word “for” (e.g., “means for”) or another linking word or phrase, such as “configured to” or “so that”; and
(C) the term “means” or “step” or the generic placeholder is not modified by sufficient structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function.
Use of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim with functional language creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites sufficient structure, material, or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Absence of the word “means” (or “step”) in a claim creates a rebuttable presumption that the claim limitation is not to be treated in accordance with 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. The presumption that the claim limitation is not interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, is rebutted when the claim limitation recites function without reciting sufficient structure, material or acts to entirely perform the recited function.
Claim limitations in this application that use the word “means” (or “step”) are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action. Conversely, claim limitations in this application that do not use the word “means” (or “step”) are not being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, except as otherwise indicated in an Office action.
This application includes one or more claim limitations that do not use the word “means,” but are nonetheless being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because the claim limitation(s) uses a generic placeholder that is coupled with functional language without reciting sufficient structure to perform the recited function and the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier. Such claim limitation(s) is/are: “a reception unit”, “a decision unit”, “a notifying unit” in claims 1 and 3; “a storage unit” in claims 2 and 4; “a determination unit” in claim 5; “a transmission unit”, “a reception unit” in claim 12.
Because this/these claim limitation(s) is/are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, it/they is/are being interpreted to cover the corresponding structure described in the specification as performing the claimed function, and equivalents thereof.
If applicant does not intend to have this/these limitation(s) interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, applicant may: (1) amend the claim limitation(s) to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph (e.g., by reciting sufficient structure to perform the claimed function); or (2) present a sufficient showing that the claim limitation(s) recite(s) sufficient structure to perform the claimed function so as to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph.
Claim Objections
Claim 2 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Regarding claim 2, it is unclear whether the claimed limitation “a data rate” in lines 4 and 9 is meant the be the same as or different from the earlier mentions of “a data rate”.
Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claims 1-2, 12-15, 17-18, 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Adachi (PG Pub US 2018/0062713 A1) in view of Vos et al. (PG Pub US 2014/0295790 A1).
Regarding claims 1, 15, 18, Adachi discloses a communication apparatus, a control method, and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium.
a reception unit (receiver 403, fig. 19) configured to receive, from at least one other communication apparatus wirelessly connected to the communication apparatus, first information representing a permissible delay time until completion of data reception by the communication apparatus after data transmission by the at least one other communication apparatus, and a data length of data transmitted at once by the at least one other communication apparatus, which are requested by the at least one other communication apparatus (“The notification information may be set to data frames transmitted in UL-MU in addition to the data frames to be single-user transmitted” [0090], “notification information include .. information relating to a data amount of data for which UL-MU transmission is desired (a number of pieces or a size of the data or both) is also included, .. a value of communication delay allowable by the application (allowable delay) can be included” [0091]);
a decision unit (communication processor 401 or network processor 404, fig. 19) configured to decide, based on the first information, a data rate used for communication with the at least one other communication apparatus (“the base station may determine an MCS of each target terminal” [0127]); and
a notifying unit (transmitter 402, fig. 19) configured to notify the at least one other communication apparatus of second information about the decided data rate (“the base station may determine an MCS of each target terminal and specify information of the MCS in the terminal information field” [0127]).
However, Adachi does not explicitly disclose decide a data rate based on the first information.
Nevertheless, Vos discloses “a low data rate is used with relaxed latency. For example, UHCM may allow for data size on the order of 100 bytes/message in the uplink and 20 bytes/message in the downlink, and an allowed latency of up to 10 seconds for downlink and up to 1 hour in uplink. Large data block sizes may be employed to leverage improved coding gains. Other methods may be used to increase coverage gains, for example, increasing block sizes, higher coding, more repetition (e.g. larger TTI bundling), power boosting (e.g. transmitting more power from eNB), power spectral density boosting (e.g. using narrower frequency transmission techniques), use of relaxed performance requirements (e.g. allowing more time to decode some signals), increasing use of HARQ retransmission, increased segmentation (e.g. sending more and smaller packets), lowering of modulation order (e.g. increased use of low-order modulations such as BPSK), and the like” [0032].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to decide a data rate based on the first information because “increased coverage may be achieved by selection of an appropriate MCS having one or more of: a robust modulation type, for example a lower-order modulation type rather than a higher-order modulation type, a relatively low coding rate, and the like” [0032].
Regarding claim 2, Adachi, Vos discloses everything claimed as applied above.
In addition, Adachi discloses a storage unit (memory device 406, fig. 19) configured to store a plurality of data rates usable for communication with the at least one other communication apparatus, wherein the decision unit calculates, from the permissible delay time and the data length, a data rate requested by the at least one other communication apparatus, decides, from the plurality of data rates, at least one data rate not lower than the requested data rate, and decides, as a data rate used for communication with the at least one other communication apparatus, a minimum data rate among the decided at least one data rate (“MAC/PHY manager 60 of the base station may define a supported rate set which is a rate set supported by the base station. The supported rate set may include mandatory rates that should compulsorily supported by the terminal that is connected to the station itself and optional rates” [0060], “The base station manages a state of each terminal by storing the notification information notified from each terminal in the notification field in an internal storage device and by managing the notification information of each terminal” [0114], “the base station may determine an MCS of each target terminal and specify information of the MCS in the terminal information field so that the PPDU length of each target terminal carrying out UL-MU communication becomes equal or close to each other. Even in the case of the same data size, for example, the occupied time length is different if the applied MCS is different. Thus, when the data size of each terminal is different, the occupied time length of PPDU of each terminal may be brought to the same or close to each other by adjusting the MCS. Regarding the MCS, in addition to the MCS applied to the MAC frame, if the MCS can be specified to a part of or all of the fields of the physical header, the MCS may be specified to the field of the physical header” [0127]).
Regarding claims 12, 17, 20, Adachi discloses a communication apparatus, a control method, and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium.
a transmission unit (transmitter 402, fig. 19) configured to transmit first information to another communication apparatus (“The notification information may be set to data frames transmitted in UL-MU in addition to the data frames to be single-user transmitted” [0090]); and
a reception unit (receiver 403, fig. 19) configured to receive, from the other communication apparatus, second information about a data rate that is decided by the other communication apparatus based on the first information and used for communication with the other communication apparatus (“the base station may determine an MCS of each target terminal and specify information of the MCS in the terminal information field” [0127]),
wherein the first information represents a permissible delay time until completion of data reception by the communication apparatus after data transmission by the communication apparatus, and a data length of data transmitted at once by the communication apparatus, which are requested by the communication apparatus, or represents a requested data rate calculated by the communication apparatus from the permissible delay time and the data length (“notification information include .. information relating to a data amount of data for which UL-MU transmission is desired (a number of pieces or a size of the data or both) is also included .. a value of communication delay allowable by the application (allowable delay) can be included” [0091]).
However, Adachi does not explicitly disclose decide a data rate based on the first information.
Nevertheless, Vos discloses “a low data rate is used with relaxed latency. For example, UHCM may allow for data size on the order of 100 bytes/message in the uplink and 20 bytes/message in the downlink, and an allowed latency of up to 10 seconds for downlink and up to 1 hour in uplink. Large data block sizes may be employed to leverage improved coding gains. Other methods may be used to increase coverage gains, for example, increasing block sizes, higher coding, more repetition (e.g. larger TTI bundling), power boosting (e.g. transmitting more power from eNB), power spectral density boosting (e.g. using narrower frequency transmission techniques), use of relaxed performance requirements (e.g. allowing more time to decode some signals), increasing use of HARQ retransmission, increased segmentation (e.g. sending more and smaller packets), lowering of modulation order (e.g. increased use of low-order modulations such as BPSK), and the like” [0032].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to decide a data rate based on the first information because “increased coverage may be achieved by selection of an appropriate MCS having one or more of: a robust modulation type, for example a lower-order modulation type rather than a higher-order modulation type, a relatively low coding rate, and the like” [0032].
Regarding claim 13, Adachi, Vos discloses everything claimed as applied above. In addition, Adachi discloses the first information further represents at least one of a permissible error rate requested by the communication apparatus, and whether the communication apparatus requests power-saving communication (“the parameter information, at least one of a data length allowed for transmission, an error correcting code scheme” [0125], “a more data field in the Fragmentation field used for notifying presence of remaining data for downlink to some terminal in a power-save mode may be used also as the notification information” [0094], “a frame related to the power save operation in the wireless communication device” [0220]).
Regarding claim 14, Adachi, Vos discloses everything claimed as applied above.
In addition, Adachi discloses the second information includes at least one of a frequency bandwidth, a length of a guard interval, allocation information of a resource unit, Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) information, and the number of spatial streams for implementing the data rate (“the base station may determine an MCS of each target terminal and specify information of the MCS in the terminal information field” [0127]).
Claims 3-4, 10-11, 16, 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Adachi in view of Shen et al. (PG Pub US 2007/0237217 A1).
Regarding claims 3, 16, 19, Adachi discloses a communication apparatus, a control method, and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium.
a reception unit (receiver 403, fig. 19) configured to receive, from at least one other communication apparatus wirelessly connected to the communication apparatus, first information representing a requested data rate requested by the at least one other communication apparatus (“a desired resource (a resource block for OFDMA and a stream for MU-MIMO) or a number of resources according to the communication scheme may be also included” [0091]);
a decision unit (communication processor 401 or network processor 404, fig. 19) configured to decide, based on the first information, a data rate used for communication with the at least one other communication apparatus (“the base station may determine an MCS of each target terminal” [0127]); and
a notifying unit (transmitter 402, fig. 19) configured to notify the at least one other communication apparatus of second information about the decided data rate (“the base station may determine an MCS of each target terminal and specify information of the MCS in the terminal information field” [0127]).
However, Adachi does not explicitly disclose decide a data rate based on the requested data rate.
Nevertheless, Shen discloses “Each of the modulation and coding schemes in the set 405 has an associated data rate 435” [0029], “the decision logic 535 selects the modulation and coding scheme from the list of saved candidate modulation and coding schemes that provides the highest overall system throughput and/or meets the data rate requested by the presently considered device” [0044].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to decide a data rate based on the requested data rate because “Based upon the corresponding expected throughputs (e.g., the values determined via EQN 2) and overall system throughputs, the decision logic 535 selects a modulation and coding scheme” [0037].
Regarding claim 4, Adachi, Shen discloses everything claimed as applied above.
In addition, Shen discloses a storage unit configured to store a plurality of data rates usable for communication with the at least one other communication apparatus, wherein the decision unit decides, from the plurality of data rates, at least one data rate not lower than the requested data rate, and decides, as a data rate used for communication with the at least one other communication apparatus, a minimum data rate among the decided at least one data rate (“an example table to store and/or represent modulation and coding schemes 405 supported by the example BTS” [0029], “the decision logic 535 selects the modulation and coding scheme from the list of saved candidate modulation and coding schemes that provides the highest overall system throughput and/or meets the data rate requested by the presently considered device” [0044]).
Regarding claim 10, Adachi, Shen discloses everything claimed as applied above. In addition, Adachi discloses the notifying unit notifies the at least one other communication apparatus of the second information by a trigger frame (“a trigger frame (a physical packet including the trigger frame to be more precise) 507 which becomes a trigger of the UL-MU transmission” [0086]).
Regarding claim 11, Adachi, Shen discloses everything claimed as applied above. In addition, Adachi discloses the second information includes at least one of a frequency bandwidth, a length of a guard interval, allocation information of a resource unit, Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) information, and the number of spatial streams for implementing the data rate decided by the decision unit (“the base station may determine an MCS of each target terminal and specify information of the MCS in the terminal information field” [0127]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-9 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHRISTINE D FUQUA whose telephone number is (571)270-1664. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 8 AM - 6 PM EST with every other Friday off.
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CHRISTINE DUONG FUQUA
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2462
/CHRISTINE T DUONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2462 03/02/2026