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 .
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) 25, 28 and 31 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li (US 2024/0155615) in view of Ahn et al. (US 2021/0376967, “Ahn”).
Examiner’s note: in what follows, references are drawn to Li unless otherwise mentioned.
Li comprises the following features:
With respect to independent claims:
Regarding claim 25, a method, performed by a terminal device, the method comprising:
receiving, from a network device, first downlink control information (DCI) for a unicast service indicating a first physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) resource (Note that Li discloses multiplexing HARQ-ACKs in one PUCCH and resources. However, Li does not specifically describe about DCIs. This will be discussed in view of Ahn.);
receiving, from the network device, second DCI for a multicast service indicating a second PUCCH resource (This will be discussed in view of Ahn.); and
transmitting, to the network device ([0048] “the terminal multiplexes the first HARQ-ACK and the second HARQ-ACK onto one PUCCH.”), a first hybrid automatic repeat request- acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) feedback for the unicast service and a second HARQ-ACK feedback for the multicast service in a same PUCCH resource ([0048] “that the PUCCH carrying the first HARQ-ACK and the PUCCH carrying the second HARQ-ACK are in a same time unit”),
wherein the unicast service and the multicast service are with a same priority index ([0048] “In a case that a first HARQ-ACK and a second HARQ-ACK of the same priority are present”, and [0049] “the first HARQ-ACK and the second HARQ-ACK are both high-priority, with a corresponding priority index of 1”).
It is noted that while disclosing combining HARQ-ACK feedbacks, Li does not specifically teach about receiving DCIs. It, however, had been known in the art before the effective date of the instant application as shown by Ahn as follows;
receiving, from a network device, first downlink control information (DCI) ([Ahn, claim 1] “receiving first downlink control information (DCI) for scheduling first downlink data from the first base station”) for a unicast service indicating a first physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) resource ([Ahn, claim 1] “the first configuration information including configuration information of a first physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) format for feedback for a unicast transmission scheme”, [Ahn, claim 9] “a first PUCCH resource indicated by the first DCI”, and [Ahn, claim 13] “the first DCI is configured to allocate a plurality of PUCCH resource blocks (RBs)”);
receiving, from the network device, second DCI for a multicast service ([Ahn, claim 9] “receiving, from the first base station, second DCI for scheduling second downlink data to be transmitted according to the multicast transmission scheme”) indicating a second PUCCH resource ([Ahn, claim 1] “configuration information of a second PUCCH format for feedback for a multicast transmission scheme”, and [Ahn, claim 9] “a second PUCCH resource indicated by the second DCI”)
the same PUCCH resource is the first PUCCH resource indicated by the first DCI for the unicast service ([Ahn, claim 9] “the feedback operation for the first downlink data and the feedback operation for the second downlink data are both performed through a first PUCCH resource.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of instant application to modify Li by using the features of Ahn in order to efficiently configure feedback schemes such that “a method and an apparatus for transmitting and receiving a feedback signal in order to efficiently perform feedback scheme configuration and feedback signal transmission and reception.” [Ahn, 0008].
Regarding claim 28, it is a terminal claim corresponding to the method claim 1, except the limitations, “a processor” ([0162 and Fig. 6] “as shown in FIG. 6, an embodiment of this application further provides a terminal 600, including a processor 601”), and is therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of claim 1.
Regarding claim 31, it is a method claim performed by a network device in a reciprocal manner of the method claim 1, and is therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of claim 1.
Claim(s) 26, 29 and 32 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li (US 2024/0155615) in view of Ahn et al. (US 2021/0376967, “Ahn”) and further in view of Bae et al. (US 2023/0421302, “Bae”, provisional application 63104456 (“456”)).
Examiner’s note: in what follows, references are drawn to Li unless otherwise mentioned.
Regarding claims 26, 29 and 32, it is noted that while disclosing combining HARQ-ACK feedbacks, Li does not specifically teach about appending HARQ-ACKs. It, however, had been known in the art before the effective date of the instant application as shown by Bae as follows;
the method of claim 25, the terminal device of claim 28 and the method of claim 31, respectively, wherein the second HARQ-ACK feedback is appended to the first HARQ-ACK feedback in the same PUCCH resource ([Bae, 0429] “the first HARQ-ACK information and the third HARQ-ACK information may be appended to HARQ-ACK information scheduled to be performed on the second resource so that the first HARQ-ACK information and the third HARQ-ACK information may be included in the HARQ-ACK UCI.” See [456, pg18].).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of instant application to modify Li by using the features of Bae in order to improve reliability and latency such that “a new method for the BS to efficiently receive/transmit uplink/downlink data and/or uplink/downlink control information from/to the UE(s) using the limited radio resources is needed.” [Bae, 0006].
Claim(s) 27, 30 and 33 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li (US 2024/0155615) in view of Ahn et al. (US 2021/0376967, “Ahn”) and further in view of Yang et al. (US 2025/0267669, “Yang”, provisional application 63140676 (“676”)).
Examiner’s note: in what follows, references are drawn to Li unless otherwise mentioned.
Regarding claims 27, 30 and 33, it is noted that while disclosing combining HARQ-ACK feedbacks, Li does not specifically teach about a slot overlapped. It, however, had been known in the art before the effective date of the instant application as shown by Yang as follows;
the method of claim 25, the terminal device of claim 28 and the method of claim 31, respectively, wherein the same PUCCH resource corresponds to a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) occasion, and the PDSCH occasion is determined based on a slot overlapped for the unicast service and the multicast service ([Yang, 0093] “Feedback transmission scheme 400 may illustrate an example of subslot-based feedback transmission in a case that one subslot 415 (e.g., a subslot 415-d) of PUCCH 410 overlaps with two slots 420 of PDSCH 405.” See [676, 0088].).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of instant application to modify Li by using the features of Yang in order to provide effective resource usages such that “techniques provide for a user equipment (UE) to transmit subslot-based feedback messages (e.g., via an uplink channel) associated with downlink transmissions” [Yang, 0004].
Conclusion
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/HARRY H KIM/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2411