DETAILED ACTION
This communication is responsive to applicant’s response filed under 37 C.F.R §1.111 in response to a non-final office action. Claim(s) 1, 4-6, 8-11, 13-16, 18-19, 21, 26, and 29 have been amended; Claims 3, 7, 17, 20, 22, 25, and 28 have been canceled; Claim(s) 30-33 have been added. Claim(s) 1-2, 4-6, 8-16, 18-19, 21, 23-24, 26-27, and 29-33 are subject to examination.
Acknowledgement is made to the applicant’s amendment to 1-29 to obviate the previous 35 U.S.C. 112(b) rejection to claims 1-29. The previous 35 U.S.C. 112(b) rejection to claims 1-29 is/are hereby withdrawn.
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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 06/02/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant’s Arguments
The applicant argues in substance that KAR, VIGER, KISHIDA, HEDAYAT, KIM, and HUANG do not teach the amended limitations of claim 1 individually or in view of each other, especially as HEDAYAT has not been proven prior art.
Examiner’s Response:
The examiner respectfully disagrees. HEDAYAT teaches the amended limitation (para 77). Although HEDAYAT has a filing date of 09/12/2023. It claims subject matter priority of the provisional filed 10/14/2022, which is before the priority date of the claimed invention. For the sake of prosecution, the examiner has attached the priority document (see attached NPL). Specifically, para 75-77 of the provisional application teaches the same subject matter disclosed in para 77 of HEDAYAT. Therefore, para 77 of HEDAYAT can claim the earlier priority date of the provisional filed 10/14/2022.
Regarding all other arguments presented by the applicant, the arguments are substantially the same as those which have already been addressed above and in the interest of brevity; the examiner directs the applicant to those response above.
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.
Claim(s) 18-19 and 30 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over CIOCHINA-KAR et al. (US 20230308943 A1) (see 892 03/11/2026), hereby referred to as KAR, in view of HEDAYAT et al. (US 20240129952 A1) (see 892 03/11/2026), hereby referred to as HEDAYAT (see attached NPL: HEDAYAT et al. (Provisional Application 63/416,336)).
Claim 30:
KAR teaches a method of latency-sensitive traffic transmission for communications between a first WLAN (wireless local area network) device and a second WLAN device (KAR: para 65 (“Within a WLAN environment…”)), comprising: scheduling, by the first WLAN device a set of low latency (LL) traffic stream windows with the second WLAN device (KAR: FIG. 17 and para 76 (“…establishing low latency sensitive traffic stream (LLTS) sessions to inform about the low latency traffic stream characteristics and preemption parameters.”) wherein the first WLAN is the AP STA MAC); having LL traffic for transmission during at least one of the LL traffic stream windows (KAR: para 57 (“…the upper layers of the AP indicate the need to send high priority data to a different STA…the AP sends a new PPDU (herein also called preemtpive data unit or pPPDU) to pSTA.”) and para 73 (“…there is a high priority low latency traffic…than contained in the ongoing transmission…”) wherein there is LL traffic for a session/window); pre-empting, by the first WLAN device, a TXOP (transmission opportunity) of the second WLAN device if the at least one of the LL traffic stream windows overlaps with the second WLAN device’s TXOP (KAR: FIG. 7 the second WLAN being the pSTA and para 73 (“The truncation notification indicates that the ongoing transmission of a data unit shall be truncated, if truncation conditions are satisfied and a preemptive data unit shall be received from and/or transmitted to the third communication device….then decide to truncate the PPDU.”) wherein the second WLAN device has LL traffic stream overlapping/in its TxOP, and so then low latency priority data TxOP is prempted over other TxOPs); and transmitting, by the first WLAN device, the LL traffic during the TXOP of the second WLAN device that was pre-empted (KAR: FIG. 7 and FIG. 10 item 113 (“receive/transmit preemptive data unit”) wherein the first WLAN schedules LL traffic transmission); and wherein the first WLAN device is an AP (access point) and the second WLAN device is a non-AP STA (station) (KAR: FIG. 6 wherein the first WLAN device is an AP and the second WLAN is a non-AP STA).
However, KAR does not explicitly disclose announcing, by the AP a TXOP preemption time period information in a broadcast management or action frame.
HEDAYAT, in the same field of endeavor, teaches announcing, by the AP, a TXOP preemption time period information in a broadcast management frame(HEDAYAT: para 77 (“…the periodicity of the preemption announcements may be configured….as a network parameter for the network provided by the AP wireless device…in a beacon frame…The preemption periodicity could be interpreted by beneficiary STAs as the period where the STA shall wake up and look for a new frame…”) the time period information being the preemption periodicity and the beacon frame being a broadcast management frame) (see attached NPL: para 76 (“announced in a beacon frame”)).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to have modified KAR with HEDAYAT, the combination hereby referred to as KAR-HEDAYAT, for the benefit of preventing performance degradation for low latency traffic (HEDAYAT: para 4).
Claim 18:
KAR-HEDAYAT teaches the method of claim 30: wherein the announcement informs various non-AP STAs that a set of LL traffic pre-emption time periods have been defined (HEDAYAT: para 77 (“…the periodicity of the preemption annoucments may be configured….as a network parameter for the network provided by the AP wireless device…in a beacon frame…The preemption periodicity could be interpreted by beneficiary STAs as the period where the STA shall wake up and look for a new frame…”) wherein the preemption periodicity is the defined set of LL traffic pre-emption time periods and the beacon frame is the announcement) (see attached NPL: para 76); and wherein the announcement informs the various non-AP STAs that any non-AP STA holding a TXOP during a time overlapping any one of these time periods may have their traffic pre-empted (HEDAYAT: para 77 (“…The preemption periodicity could be interpreted by beneficiary STAs as the period where the STA shall wake up and look for a new frame…and, if detected, to process the received frame…Once the transmission preemption is announced, the AP wireless device may stop the transmission of the remainder of the first data transmission. The recipient of the first data transmission may correspondingly stop processing the first data transmission.”) (see attached NPL: para 76) where the transmission to any non-AP STAs which overlapped by the time period will be pre-empted).
Claim 19:
KAR teaches the method of claim 30: wherein the AP transmits the announcement in either a broadcast management frame, an action frame, or a beacon frame (HEDAYAT: para 77 (“…the periodicity of the preemption announcements may be configured….as a network parameter for the network provided by the AP wireless device…in a beacon frame…The preemption periodicity could be interpreted by beneficiary STAs as the period where the STA shall wake up and look for a new frame…”) (see attached NPL: para 76) wherein the beacon frame is also a broadcast management frame).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date, to have modified KAR with HEDAYAT, for the benefit of preventing performance degradation for low latency traffic (HEDAYAT: para 4).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-2, 4-6, 8-16, 21, 23-24, 26-27, 29, and 31-33 allowed.
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANGELIE T NGO whose telephone number is (571)272-0180. The examiner can normally be reached Mon - Thur: 8am - 5pm; 2nd Fri: 8am - 3pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Noel Beharry can be reached at (571) 270-5630. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/A.T.N./Examiner, Art Unit 2416
/NOEL R BEHARRY/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2416
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