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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after allowance or after an Office action under Ex Parte Quayle, 25 USPQ 74, 453 O.G. 213 (Comm'r Pat. 1935). Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, prosecution in this application has been reopened pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 06/04/2026 has been entered.
DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is in response to the Applicant's communication filed on 06/04/2026. In virtue of this communication, claims 1, 5 – 7, 11, 12, 14, 15 have been amended. Claims 1 – 15 are currently pending in the instant application.
Notes: claim 10 was suggested in an examiner amendment for overcome 101 rejection (see the Notice of Allowance mailed 03/04/2026 in page 6), however, it is not presented in set claims filed 06/04/2026. Thus, a rejection is provided herein.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
4. Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter as follows. Claim 10 as a whole define “A computer-readable recording medium". Variations of the term “recording” is not necessarily considered to limit a medium claim to non-transitory embodiments because content may be considered to be recorded on a signal during propagation (e.g., a cable). It is recommended to amend and narrow the claims to cover only statutory embodiments to avoid a rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 by adding the limitation "non-transitory" to the claims, therefore, for example, in claim 10, claim 10 should recite –A non-transitory computer-readable recording medium--.
Reasons for Allowance
5. Claims 1 - 15 are allowed.
6. The following is an Examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
2022/0271878 (Lin) is the closest prior art to the application invention, which discloses a UE can be provided with a configuration for a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) based PEI (paging early indication), such that a PEI is included in a downlink control information (DCI) format via a PDCCH, which indicate the following UE behavior(s) for PDCCH monitoring in an associated paging occasion (PO): the PEI indicates the UE to monitor or skip monitor PDCCHs in the associated PO, wherein the DCI format can include a number of N PEI(s) and the DCI format has CRC bits scrambled by PEI-RNTI. Lin teaches that for the DCI format that includes the PEI, the UE can be provided with a payload size of the DCI format, the payload size can be provided by higher layers, and also include information in addition to PEI, the information can be an availability indication for TRS/CSI-RS for idle/inactive UEs. Lin also teaches that the UE determines the K>=1 PDCCH receptions occasion(s) for PEI to be the last K consecutive PDCCH reception occasion(s) before the start of the first PO from the M consecutive PO(s) according to the configuration of the search space set in common search space.
2022/0046585 (Wu et al.) discloses that in 5G, one PO is no longer a subframe but several PDCCH monitoring occasions, the mode for correspondence is determined by the parameter firstPDCCH-MonitoringOccasionOfPO in PDCCH-ConfigCommon in SIB1, the PEI can indicate that there is a paging message to be transmitted on the corresponding PO, the PEI corresponds to the same POs in M paging cycles, the PEI can be indicated with M bits of information, and upon receiving the PEI, the corresponding action of the UE is to monitor a PO with a paging message to be transmitted or to skip a PO without a paging message to be transmitted. Wu et al. also teaches that a PEI is carried by a DCI, that is, the base station carries a PEI by transmitting a PDCCH, and the terminal receives the PEI by monitoring the PDCCH, wherein the DCI carrying a PEI contains bitmap information and the short message, and the above DCI carrying a PEI can scramble the CRC with a RNTI value fixed with a whole network fixed RNTI value (i.e., PEI-RNTI) different from that of the PDCCH used for scheduling paging messages.
2023/0146553 (Liao et al.) discloses that the BS transmits a PEI message including the PEI to the UE, a format of the PEI message includes a DCI format, the PEI message include: at least one bit configured as PEI(s) for one or more UE(s) under idle mode, and a plurality of fields of wake-up signal(s) (WUS(s)) and SCell dormancy indication(s) (SDI(s)) for one or more UE(s) under connected mode, and the UE determines whether to monitor a PDCCH scrambled with P-RNTI at a PO according to the PEI. Liao also teaches that an occasion for the PEI is a set of S consecutive PDCCH monitoring occasions, where S is the number of actual transmitted SSBs determined according to a parameter of ssb-PositionInBurst in system information block-1 (SIB1), and when RS information is supported and multiple RS sets are broadcasted to the UE under idle mode, the PEI message may include at least one bit configured as the PEI(s) for one or more UEs, at least one bit of indicating availability of RS set(s), and a plurality of fields of WUS and SDI for one or more UEs, and the reserved bits field is configured for indicating availability of RS set (s).
2024/0089914 and 2024/0073864 (Nagano et al.) teach that a terminal receives, from a base station, system information including information for indicating a total number of subgroups of the paging occasion and information for indicating a number of paging occasions corresponding to one Paging Early Indication (PEI) monitoring occasion; and performs monitoring of a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) for first downlink control information (DCI) including a field of a PEI in the PEI monitoring occasion, wherein performs monitoring of a PDCCH for second DCI in the paging occasion in a case where a value of the PEI indicates the subgroup of the paging occasion to which the terminal belongs; and performs no monitoring of the PDCCH for the second DCI in the paging occasion in a case where the PEI is not detected, or a value of the PEI does not indicate the subgroup of the paging occasion to which the terminal belongs, and a number of bits for the field of the PEI is determined based on the information for indicating the total number of subgroups of the paging occasion and the information for indicating the number of paging occasions corresponding to the one PEI monitoring occasion.
Regarding claims 1 and 11, the prior art of record above fails to disclose singly or in combination to render obvious that monitoring a second PDCCH for paging in a paging occasion (PO) associated with the PEI based on detection of the DCI having the format for the PEI, wherein the configuration information for the PEI includes information regarding a DCI payload size 'N' of the format for the PEI, wherein the DCI having the format for the PEI includes first information bits related to the paging and second information bits related to tracking reference signal (TRS) availability in the RRC idle or RRC inactive state, wherein a size 'M' of total information bits of the DCI having the format for the PEI is equal to or less than the DCI payload size 'N', and wherein based on the size 'M' of the total information bits and the DCI payload size 'N', remaining 'N' - 'M' bits are reserved bits, as defined in the Specification in combination with all other limitations in the claim(s) as defined by Applicant(s). Therefore, the claims 1 and 11 are allowed.
Regarding claims 14 and 15, the prior art of record above fails to disclose singly or in combination to render obvious that transmitting a second PDCCH for paging in a paging occasion (PO) associated with the PEI based on the DCI having the format for the PEI, wherein the configuration information for the PEI includes information regarding a DCI payload size 'N' of the format for the PEI, wherein the DCI having the format for the PEI includes first information bits related to the paging and second information bits related to tracking reference signal (TRS) availability in the RRC idle or RRC inactive state, wherein a size 'M' of total information bits of the DCI having the format for the PEI is equal to or less than the DCI payload size 'N', and wherein based on the size 'M' of the total information bits and the DCI payload size 'N', remaining 'N' - 'M' reserved bits are configured as reserved bits in the DCI having the format for the PEI, as defined in the Specification in combination with all other limitations in the claim(s) as defined by Applicant(s). Therefore, the claims 14 and 15 are allowed.
Claims 2 – 10 and 12 – 13 depend from allowable base claims 1 and 11 respectively; therefore, these claims are also allowed if overcome the 101 rejection above.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MONG-THUY THI TRAN whose telephone number is (571)270-3199. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday: 9AM - 6PM (IFP).
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/MONG-THUY T TRAN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2645
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