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 .
Disposition of Claims
With the applicants submission dated 06/22/2026, the status of the claims are: claims 1-22 have been cancelled in a previous amendment; claims 23, 27-31, and 35-42, are pending; claims 24-26, and 32-34, have been cancelled in the current amendment; claims 39-42 are new claims; and claims 23, 27-29, 31, and 35-37, have been amended.
Response to Arguments
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102 and 103
Applicant’s arguments, see 102 Rejections, filed 06/22/2026, with respect to claims 23, 27-31, and 35-42 have been fully considered but are moot in view of new grounds of rejection.
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.
The factual inquiries 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.
Claim(s) 23-24, 27, 30-32, 35, and 38, is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kusashima et al. (US 2020/0383110 A1), in view of Liu et al. (US 2022/0232625 A1), and further in view of Ding et al. (US 2023/0421308 A1).
Regarding claims 23 and 31, Kusashima discloses:
a User Equipment (UE) (fig.1 depicts a plurality of user equipment, and fig.5) comprising:
a memory (fig.5 element 230); and
a processor (fig.5 depicts a control unit element 240) coupled with the memory (fig.5 element 230 communicatively coupled with element 240), wherein the processor is configured to:
perform a method of a User Equipment (UE) (fig.1 depicts a wireless communications network and a plurality of user equipment, element 200), the method comprising:
transmitting a Sidelink (SL) transmission (par.[0055] which recites, in part, “The terminal device 200 can also perform device-to-device (D2D) communication. That is, the terminal device 200 can transmit a sidelink signal of another terminal device 200 and receive a sidelink signal from the another terminal device 200.”) including a Physical Sidelink Shared Channel (PSSCH) (par.[0197] which describes the transmission of sidelink data over the PSSCH, which is the sidelink shared channel. The office notes that SCI is transmitted over the control channel PSCCH, as discussed in par.[0200] and sidelink data is sent over the shared channel PSSCH as discussed above); and
supporting a contention window adjustment procedure (par.[0104] which describes the contention window adjustment) for the SL transmission (par.[0064] which describes the D2D Communication using an unlicensed band. The use of unlicensed require the D2D devices to contend for the communications medium, thus the contention window), wherein the contention window adjust procedure is configured to adjust a value of a Contention Window for a priority class (CWp) (par.[0087] and table-1 show that each of the priority classes comprises a minimum and maximum contention window size, thus, depending on the priority class the contention window may be adjust between the minimum and maximum, par.[0103 - 0104]), and the value of CWp is used for a channel access procedure for the SL transmission (par.[0087] which describes the channel access related priority class, in combination with the above utilization for D2D/Sidelink utilizing unlicensed bands. The use of unlicensed frequency requires a channel access procedure such as Listen Before Talk (LBT) which is a Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) used for determining channel access), wherein the contention window adjustment procedure is configured to determine whether a first condition is fulfilled in a case where the SL transmission is enabled with a sidelink Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) feedback (par.[0104] which recites, in part, “The adjustment of the value of the contention window CW is performed….. In a case where the proportion of NACK in the HARQ response corresponding to the shared channel of at least the reference sub frame or reference HARQ process in the contention window adaptation procedure is higher than a threshold, the value of the contention window CW is increased, and otherwise, the value of the contention window CW is set to the minimum contention window.”. The transmission of the NACK means that at least one of the HARQ feedback modes are enabled).
While the disclosure of Kusashima teaches the method and User Equipment of claims, but may not explicitly disclose:
wherein the contention window adjustment procedure is configured to determine whether a first condition is fulfilled in a case where the SL transmission is enabled with the sidelink HARQ feedback and the SL transmission is a groupcast SL transmission; and
wherein the first condition is related to:
a ratio between a number of ACK in the sidelink HARQ feedback and a number of one or more UEs in a groupcast, or the number of ACK in the sidelink HARQ feedback.
In an analogous art, the disclosure of Liu teaches:
wherein the contention window adjustment procedure is configured to determine whether a first condition is fulfilled in a case where the SL transmission is enabled with the sidelink HARQ feedback (par.[0003] which recites, in part, “The rules are specific to particular transmission type(s) and the transmitting device adjusts the contention window size based on the presence/absence, and/or content of acknowledgement/negative-acknowledgement (ACK/NACK, or more simply A/N) feedback messages.”, par.[0126]) and the SL transmission is a groupcast SL transmission (fig.2 depicts groupcast transmission, and par.[0084], which recites, in part, “The connection based groupcast transmission type may include the transmitting device transmitting to a known group of receiving devices where the transmitting device can request A/N feedback from each receiving device.”); and
wherein the first condition is related to:
a ratio between a number of ACK in the sidelink HARQ feedback and a number of one or more UEs in a groupcast, (par.[0107] which recites, in part, “Transmitting device 205 may determine the ratio of ACK and/or NACK feedback messages with respect to an expected feedback message count (e.g., based on the number of feedback messages that transmitting device 205 is expecting to receive on PSFCH resource(s)). Transmitting device 205 may increase the contention window size if the ratio fails to satisfy a threshold and maintain or reset the contention window size if the ratio satisfies a threshold.”, wherein the transmit UE is in groupcast communications as discussed above relates to the groupcast communication).
and wherein the value of the CWp is set to a next higher allowed value in allowed values for the CWp, in a case where the ratio is smaller than a first threshold (par.[0107] which recites, in part, “Transmitting device 205 may increase the contention window size if the ratio fails to satisfy a threshold and maintain or reset the contention window size if the ratio satisfies a threshold.”, wherein the transmit UE is in groupcast communications as discussed above relates to the groupcast communication”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the instant application to combine the teachings Kusashima for sidelink over unlicensed with the disclosure of Liu which also discloses sidelink over unlicensed. The motivation/suggestion would have been that modifying the contention window size allows optimizing channel access with balancing the risk of collision while also considering latency of transmission opportunity to improve the overall system.
While the disclosures Kusashima and Liu substantially disclose the claimed subject matter, they do not disclose:
and the next higher allowed value is a maximum allowed value in the allowed values for the CWp in a case where the value of the CWp is equal to the maximum allowed value, wherein the allowed values for the CWp are {3, 7} for the priority class being a first priority class, the allowed values for the CWp are {7,15} for the priority class being a second priority class, and the allowed values for CWp are {15, 31, 63, 127, 255, 511, 1023} for the priority class being a third priority class.
In an analogous art, the disclosure of Ding teaches:
and the next higher allowed value (par.[0050] and Table-1 depicts a plurality of Channel Access priority (p), wherein each priority comprises a CWmin,p and a CWmax,p the max being the highest allowed maximum in the CWp) is a maximum allowed value in the allowed values for the CWp (par.[0050 – 0051] and table-1 wherein the CWmax,p is the maximum allowed value) in a case where the value of the CWp is equal to the maximum allowed value (par.[0050 – 0051] which describes increasing, if needed the contention window size to a maximum value in the priority class), wherein the allowed values for the CWp are {3, 7} for the priority class being a first priority class (Table-1 and CWp 1 has allowable values 3,7), the allowed values for the CWp are {7,15} for the priority class being a second priority class (Table-1 and the CWp for priority 2 utilizes the contention window sizes 7 and 15), and the allowed values for CWp are {15, 31, 63, 127, 255, 511, 1023} for the priority class being a third priority class (Table-1 and the CWp for 3 are the list of numbers associated with the third priority class).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the instant application to combine the teachings Kusashima for sidelink over unlicensed with the disclosure of Liu which also discloses sidelink over unlicensed with the disclosure Ding. The motivation/suggestion would have been provide a mechanism for avoiding network collisions, and balance network spectrum sharing, by dividing channel access into separate priority groups, when multiple users are attempting to access the communications medium.
Regarding claims 27 and 35, Kusashima discloses:
the method according to wherein the contention window adjustment procedure is configured to determine whether a second condition is fulfilled in a case where the SL transmission is enabled with the sidelink HARQ feedback and the SL transmission is a unicast SL transmission (par.[0104] wherein the UE detects a ratio of HARQ feedback, ACK/NACK, and depending on the if ratio is above, below, or at threshold the contention window is increased, decreased, or sustained. The disclosure of Kusashima contemplates unicast transmission in this scenario).
Regarding claims 28 and 36, Liu discloses:
the UE according to wherein the second condition is related to a number of ACK in the sidelink HARQ feedback and a number of NACK in the sidelink HARQ feedback (par.[0018] which recites, in part, “determining that a ratio of ACK feedback messages, NACK messages, or both, to an expected feedback message count satisfies a threshold, and resetting, based on the ratio satisfying the threshold, the contention window size for performing the one or more subsequent transmissions”).
Regarding claims 30 and 38, Kusashima discloses:
method according to wherein the UE is configured to perform the channel access procedure (par.[0008] describes sidelink channel sensing for channel access by the User Equipment).
Regarding claim 39, Ding discloses:
the value of the CWp is set to a minimum allowed value in the allowed values for the CWp, in a case where the ratio is greater than or equal to the first threshold (par.[0136] which recites, in part, “and/or when the quantity of the received ACKs is greater than or equal to a threshold T, the contention window corresponding to each priority can be adjusted to a minimum allowable value.”).
Claim(s) 29 and 37 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kusashima, Liu, and Ding, as applied to claims 23, in view of Moon et al. (US 2023/0354275 A1).
Regarding claim(s) 29 and 37, the disclosure of Kusashima, Liu, and Ding, teaches the adjustment of the contention window, but may not explicitly disclose:
wherein the contention window adjustment procedure is configured to adjust the value of CWp based on the priority class in a case where the SL transmission is not associated with a sidelink Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) feedback.
In an analogous art, the disclosure of Moon teaches:
wherein the contention window adjustment procedure is configured to adjust the value of CWp based on the priority class in a case where the SL transmission is not associated with a sidelink Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) feedback (par.[0098] which recites, in part, “the size of the contention window may be changed by a type of the signal to be transmitted, channel access priority class (CAPC), frequency regulation, whether a previous transmission is successful or not (e.g., HARQ-ACK reception), or the like.” That is, the contention window adjustment can be made based on the channel access priority class alone, or HARQ feedback, or a combination as discussed each prior art reference.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of Kusashima, Liu, and Ding, for modifying a contention window in sidelink unlicensed communications with the disclosure of Moon which is directed to the same field of endeavor. The motivation/suggestion would have been to provide a QoS of service ensuring that high priority traffic faster channel access absent other contention window modification constraints.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 39-42 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.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Xue et al. (US 2022/0070935 A1) “Effective Contention Windows for New Radio Sidelink Over Unlicensed Bands”
Wang (US 2022/0264646 A1) “Data Sending Method, Data Receiving Method, and Apparatus”
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JAMAAL HENSON whose telephone number is (571)272-5339. The examiner can normally be reached M-Thu: 7:30 am - 6:30 pm.
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JAMAAL HENSON
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2411
/JAMAAL HENSON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2411
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