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 Amendment
Applicant's submission filed on 1/27/2026 has been entered. Claim(s) 1-5, 7-13 is/are pending in the application.
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.
Claim(s) 1-3, 7-9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over 3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #112 electronic R2-2009588 Online, November, 2020 herein referred to as 3GPP in view of Panteleev (WO 2017/171895 A1).
Regarding claim 1,
3GPP teaches a method performed by a remote user equipment (UE), the method comprising: selecting a relay UE; receiving one or more signals from the selected relay UE; based on the one or more signals, performing measuremen (See 2.1, 2.2, 3GPP teaches selecting a relay UE)
based on a result of the measurement, performing searching for one or more candidate relay UEs which satisfy a specific condition; and (See 2.1, 2.2, 3GPP teaches performing measurement of signal)
selecting one from the one or more candidate relay UEs, wherein the measurement includes measuring at least one of sidelink discovery (SD)-reference signals received power (RSRP) or sidelink (SL)-RSRP, and (See 2.1, 2.2, 3GPP teaches SL-RSRP and SD-RSRP can both be used to trigger)
3GPP does not explicitly teach but Panteleev teaches wherein, based on that path loss-based power control is performed for a transmission associated with the SL- RSRP, the relay UE is excluded from the one or more candidate relay UEs, (See abstract, pages 5-6, Panteleev teaches not transmitting without valid path loss power control UE
where, based on that the path loss-based power control is not performed for the transmission, the measurement includes measuring of the SD-RSRP and the SL-RSRP. (See abstract, pages 6-7, Panteleev teaches SL-RSRP and SD-RSRP are measured)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have combined the references because Panteleev enhances medium time scale link adaptation for transmission power level control and MCS selection purposes since two additional measurements are performed.
Regarding claim 2,
3GPP teaches the method of claim 1, wherein measurement based on the SD-RSRP is performed only when there is no data transmission for measuring the SL-RSRP. (See 2.1, 2.2, 3GPP)
Regarding claim 3,
3GPP teaches the method of claim 1, wherein, the specific condition includes that the SD-RSRP of each of the one or more candidate relay UEs exceeds a predefined threshold. (See 2.1, 2.2, 3GPP)
Regarding claim 7,
3GPP teaches the method of claim 1, searching for the one or more candidate relay UEs is performed based on that a result of the measurement is equal to or less than a specific threshold value. (See 2.1, 2.2, 3GPP)
Regarding claim 8,
3GPP teaches the method of claim 1, wherein: the SD-RSRP is available when a discovery message is received within a preset time a preset number of times or more; and the SL-RSRP is available when a data-related message is received within a preset time a preset number of times or more. (See 2.1, 2.2, 3GPP)
Regarding claim 9,
3GPP teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the relay UE uses a keep alive message in measurement based on that there is no available SL-RSRP. (See 2.1, 2.2, 3GPP)
Claim(s) 4, 5, 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over 3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #112 electronic R2-2009588 Online, November, 2020 herein referred to as 3GPP in view of Panteleev (WO 2017/171895 A1) in view of ETSI TS 138 321 V16.3.0 (2021-01) herein referred to as ETSI.
Regarding claim 4,
3GPP and Panteleev teach the method of claim 1.
3GPP and Panteleev do not explicitly teach but Etsi teaches further comprising: receiving information indicating whether the path loss-based power control is performed.. (See Etsi, 5.4.6)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have combined the references because Etsi helps avoid redundant measurements and reduce unnecessarily processing.
Regarding claim 5,
3GPP, Panteleev, and Etsi teach the method of claim 4, wherein, based on that the information indicates that the path loss-based power control is performed, the SL-RSRP of the relay UE is compared with the SD-RSRP of a candidate relay UE during reselection of the relay UE.. (See 2.1, 2.2, 3GPP)
Regarding claim 10,
3GPP and Panteleev teach the method of claim 1, wherein
3GPP and Panteleev do not explicitly teach but Etsi teaches based on that there is no available SL-RSRP, the relay UE triggers NAS/CSI reporting to perform SL-RSRP measurement.(See Etsi, 5.1.2)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have combined the references because Etsi helps avoid redundant measurements and reduce unnecessarily processing.
Claim(s) 11-13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over 3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #112 electronic R2-2009588 Online, November, 2020 herein referred to as 3GPP in view of Panteleev (WO 2017/171895 A1) in view of Paladugu (U.S. Patent App Pub 20230247513 ).
Claim 11 list all the same elements of claim 1, but in device form rather than method form. Therefore, the supporting rationale of the rejection to claim 1 applies equally as well to claim 11. Further 3GPP does not explicitly teach but Paladuga teaches A remote user equipment (UE), comprising: at least one processor; and at least one computer memory operatively connected to the at least one processor and configured to store instructions that when executed causes the at least one processor to perform operations including: (See paragraphs 81-84, Paladuga)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have combined the references because Paladuga enables configuring and triggering conditional handover for UE mobility between a direct connection to the base station (Uu) connection and/or a relay connection in an efficient manner. (See paragraphs 3-5, Paladuga)
Claim 12 list all the same elements of claim 1, but in device form rather than method form. Therefore, the supporting rationale of the rejection to claim 1 applies equally as well to claim 12 Further 3GPP does not explicitly teach but Paladuga teaches A processor for performing operations for a remote user equipment (UE), the operations comprising: (See paragraphs 81-84, Paladuga)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have combined the references because Paladuga enables configuring and triggering conditional handover for UE mobility between a direct connection to the base station (Uu) connection and/or a relay connection in an efficient manner. (See paragraphs 3-5, Paladuga)
Claim 13 list all the same elements of claim 1, but in medium form rather than method form. Therefore, the supporting rationale of the rejection to claim 1 applies equally as well to claim 13. Further 3GPP does not explicitly teach but Paladuga teaches A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium for storing at least one computer program including an instruction for causing at least one processor to perform operations for a remote user equipment (UE) when being executed by the at least one processor, the operations comprising: (See paragraphs 81-84, Paladuga)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to have combined the references because Paladuga enables configuring and triggering conditional handover for UE mobility between a direct connection to the base station (Uu) connection and/or a relay connection in an efficient manner. (See paragraphs 3-5, Paladuga)
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure and located in the PTO-892 form.
1.Xiong, U.S. Patent App 20190306923, teaches a user equipment (UE) can include processing circuitry coupled to memory. To configure the UE for New Radio (NR) communications above a 52.6 GHz carrier frequency, the processing circuitry is to decode radio resource control (RRC) signaling to obtain a cyclic shift value in time domain. The cyclic shift value is associated with a demodulation reference signal (DM-RS) antenna port (AP) of a plurality of available DM-RS APs. A single carrier based waveform DM-RS sequence corresponding to the DM-RS AP is generated using a base sequence and the cyclic shift value. The single carrier based waveform DM-RS sequence is encoded with uplink data for transmission to a base station using a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) using a carrier above the 52.6 GHz carrier frequency.
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
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/NINOS DONABED/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2444