DETAILED ACTION
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.
and/or Applicant’s claim for the benefit of a prior-filed application under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) or under 35 U.S.C. 120, 121, 365(c), or 386(c) is acknowledged.
Information Disclosure Statement (IDS)
The information disclosure statements submitted on December 12, 2024, and January 9, 2025, have been considered by the Examiner and made of record in the application file.
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 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.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1-5, 7, 9, 10, and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Inohiza, US 12218787 B2, hereinafter “Inohiza,” in view of Huang et al., US 12177023 B2, hereinafter “Huang.”
Consider claim 1. Inohiza discloses:
a method, applied to an access point, for transmitting a physical layer protocol data unit (limitation is in the preamble and it is not tied to the body of the claim but could still be read on Here, the base station 102 is, for example, an Access Point (hereinafter abbreviates as an AP) in compliance with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 series standards - column 3 lines 17-20), the method comprising:
generating an extremely high throughput multiple user physical layer protocol data unit (EHT MU PPDU) (column 13 lines 20-21), wherein the EHT MU PPDU includes a resource unit allocation subfield (column 13 lines 43-45),
indicating resource unit allocation of a plurality of stations (fig. 1; column 10 lines 39-43; column 11, lines 59-62), and
sending the EHT MU PPDU (column 10 lines 43-47).
But Inohiza is silent regarding a resource unit corresponding to at least one of the plurality of stations is used for duplicate transmission.
Huang, in related art, suggests a resource unit corresponding to at least one of the plurality of stations is used for duplicate transmission (see column 8 lines 25-32: FIG. 2D shows a diagram of mapping of the two EHT-SIG-B content channels (namely EHT-SIG-B content channel 1 and EHT-SIG-B content channel 2) in an 80 MHz EHT MU PPDU. When L=1, in an 80 MHz channel comprising four 20 MHz subchannels, EHT-SIG-B content channel 1 is duplicated and transmitted in the 1st and 3rd 20 MHz subchannels while EHT-SIG-B content channel 2 is duplicated and transmitted in the 2nd .and 4th 20 MHz subchannels).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to consider Huang’s teachings in relation to the claimed invention, thus implementing communication apparatuses and methods that provide feasible technical solutions for HARQ operation in the context of EHT WLAN, in order to provide better link adaptation and higher throughput over 11 ax HE WLAN, as discussed by Huang (see column 1 lines 34-38).
Consider claim 2. Inohiza in view of Huang teaches claim 1; and Huang further suggests wherein a user specific field included in the EHT MU PPDU includes a plurality of user fields, one user field, from the plurality of user fields, includes one station identifier and corresponds to one resource unit, and station identifiers in at least two user fields, from the plurality of user fields, are the same, to and indicate that at least two resource units corresponding to the at least two user fields are used for the duplicate transmission (column 6 lines 45-46; column 8 lines 25-31; column 12 lines 33-38).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to consider Huang’s teachings in relation to the claimed invention, thus implementing communication apparatuses and methods that provide feasible technical solutions for HARQ operation in the context of EHT WLAN, in order to provide better link adaptation and higher throughput over 11 ax HE WLAN, as discussed by Huang (see column 1 lines 34-38).
Consider claim 3. Inohiza in view of Huang teaches claim 2; and Huang further suggests wherein the at least two resource units are consecutive or non-consecutive (column 22 lines 59-62).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to consider Huang’s teachings in relation to the claimed invention, thus implementing communication apparatuses and methods that provide feasible technical solutions for HARQ operation in the context of EHT WLAN, in order to provide better link adaptation and higher throughput over 11 ax HE WLAN, as discussed by Huang (see column 1 lines 34-38).
Consider claim 4. Inohiza in view of Huang teaches claim 2; and Huang further suggests wherein a value of a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) field of at least one user field of the at least two user fields that are included in the EHT MU PPDU and that correspond to the at least two resource units is 15, and indicates that dual carrier modulation is used for the at least two resource (Table 1; column 15 lines 17-21).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to consider Huang’s teachings in relation to the claimed invention, thus implementing communication apparatuses and methods that provide feasible technical solutions for HARQ operation in the context of EHT WLAN, in order to provide better link adaptation and higher throughput over 11 ax HE WLAN, as discussed by Huang (see column 1 lines 34-38).
Consider claim 5. Inohiza in view of Huang teaches claim 1; and Huang further suggests wherein a user field of the EHT MU PPDU includes first information, and the first information indicates that a resource unit corresponding to the user field is used for the duplicate transmission (column 6 lines 45-46; column 8 lines 25-31; column 12 lines 33-38).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to consider Huang’s teachings in relation to the claimed invention, thus implementing communication apparatuses and methods that provide feasible technical solutions for HARQ operation in the context of EHT WLAN, in order to provide better link adaptation and higher throughput over 11 ax HE WLAN, as discussed by Huang (see column 24 lines 48-67 through column 25 lines 1-17).
Consider claim 7. Inohiza in view of Huang teaches claim 5; and Huang further suggests wherein the first information is carried in a bit B15 in the user field of the EHT MU PPDU, a value of a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) field in the user field of the EHT MU PPDU is 14, or the value of the MCS field is any one of 16 to 31, and indicates that the resource unit is used for the duplicate transmission (Table 1; column 15 lines 17-21).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to consider Huang’s teachings in relation to the claimed invention, thus implementing communication apparatuses and methods that provide feasible technical solutions for HARQ operation in the context of EHT WLAN, in order to provide better link adaptation and higher throughput over 11 ax HE WLAN, as discussed by Huang (see column 1 lines 34-38).
Consider claim 9. Inohiza in view of Huang teaches claim 5; and Inohiza further suggests wherein the first information or the second information are carried in one or more of the following bits in the EHT MU PPDU: data bits B20 to B25 of a 1.sup.st symbol in a universal signal (U-SIG) field, a data bit B2 or B8 of a 2.sup.nd symbol in the U-SIG, or data bits B13 to B16 of a 1.sup.st symbol in an extremely high throughput signal (EHT-SIG) field (column 9 lines 39-43).
Consider claim 10. Inohiza in view of Huang teaches claim 1; and Huang further suggests wherein the resource unit allocation subfield indicates that the resource unit is used for the duplicate transmission (column 6 lines 45-46; column 8 lines 25-31; column 12 lines 33-38).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to consider Huang’s teachings in relation to the claimed invention, thus implementing communication apparatuses and methods that provide feasible technical solutions for HARQ operation in the context of EHT WLAN, in order to provide better link adaptation and higher throughput over 11 ax HE WLAN, as discussed by Huang (see column 24 lines 48-67 through column 25 lines 1-17)
Claim 18 claims an apparatus for performing the method applied to the access point of claim 1; therefore, similar rejection rationale applies.
Consider claim 19. Inohiza in view of Huang teaches claim 18; and Huang further suggests wherein a user specific field included in the EHT MU PPDU includes a plurality of user fields, one user field, of the plurality of user fields, includes one station identifier and corresponds to one resource unit, and station identifiers in at least two user fields, of the plurality of user fields, are the same, and indicate that at least two resource units corresponding to the at least two user fields are used for duplicate transmission (column 6 lines 45-46; column 8 lines 25-31; column 12 lines 33-38).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to consider Huang’s teachings in relation to the claimed invention, thus implementing communication apparatuses and methods that provide feasible technical solutions for HARQ operation in the context of EHT WLAN, in order to provide better link adaptation and higher throughput over 11 ax HE WLAN, as discussed by Huang (see column 1 lines 34-38).
Consider claim 20. Inohiza in view of Huang teaches claim 19; and Huang further suggests wherein the at least two resource units are consecutive or non-consecutive (column 22 lines 59-62).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6 and 8 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.
Claims 11-17 are allowed.
Pertinent Prior Art
The following references, although not relied upon, are considered to be pertinent prior art since they disclose subject matter related to the invention claimed by the present application, i.e., techniques for control signaling in extreme high throughput environments.
US 12452854 B2 US 12317299 B2 US 12225533 B2
US 11949508 B2 US 11916714 B2 US 11765713 B2
US 20230217491 A1 US 11616681 B2 US 12212448 B2
US 11569953 B2 US 20220095347 A1 US 11272490 B2
US 11165544 B2
Conclusion
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Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the Examiner should be directed to Amancio González, whose telephone number is (571) 270-1106. The Examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Thursday from 8:00am to 5:00pm.
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/AMANCIO GONZALEZ/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2642
December 9, 2025