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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 3/1/24, 8/5/25, 8/6/25 was filed. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Drawings
The drawings are objected to under 37 CFR 1.83(a). The drawings must show every feature of the invention specified in the claims. Therefore, the “a plurality of lower UMACs” in claim 1 must be shown or the feature(s) canceled from the claim(s). No new matter should be entered.
Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. The figure or figure number of an amended drawing should not be labeled as “amended.” If a drawing figure is to be canceled, the appropriate figure must be removed from the replacement sheet, and where necessary, the remaining figures must be renumbered and appropriate changes made to the brief description of the several views of the drawings for consistency. Additional replacement sheets may be necessary to show the renumbering of the remaining figures. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
- Regarding to claim 1, the term “diversity” does not have a well defined meaning in the technical field.
- Regarding to claim 2, the step “at one or more overlapping times” is not clear what case of one overlapping time is supposed to imply in a technical sense.
- Regarding to claim 3, the step “selecting the plurality of lower UMACs based on physical and/or pathloss proximity to the state” is not clear how to determine the proximity of the lower UMACs since lower UMACs inside a device.
- Regarding to claim 4, the step “remove…replacing..” is not clear how to remove and replace by a connection to another upper UMAC.
- Regarding to claim 7, the step “a race between a lower UMAC to lower UMAC communication path’ is unclear what kind the race in a technical term.
- Regarding to claim 9, the steps is not clear how “retire a MAC PDUs state in a transmit queue” and how “a peer lower UMAC” is supposed to be defined.
- Regarding to claim 11, the step “wherein STA actor sends a block acknowledgement that reflects medium access controller (MAC) Protocol Data Units (MPDUs) delivered by substantially all AP actors.” is not clear what it means in particulars as there is no prior introduction of an AP actor in the set of claims.
- Regarding to claim 17, the term “proximal upper UMAC” is not clear which upper UMAC is supposed to be.
- Regarding to claim 18, the target of the transmitting from the reorder buffer is not defined.
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.
Claims 1-3, 8, 10, 14, 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mark Hamilton (IEEE 11-20-1639-14-00BE).
- With respect to claims 1 and 19-20, Mark teaches a method of providing enhanced diversity and reliability for a continued wireless connection (e.g. slide 17 shows a non-AP MLD associate to the AP MLD as a whole, establishing multiple links), the method comprising: establishing an upper upper medium access controller (UMAC) and a plurality of lower UMACs (e.g. slide 17 discloses the upper MLD MAC which is an upper UMAC and upper local mgmt. MAC which is lower UMAC also in slide 15-16); discovering the upper UMAC by each of the plurality of lower UMACs (e.g. slide 17 shows arrows between the lower MACs and the upper MLD MAC in the figure imply a discovery of the upper UMAC, same as slide 15-16); connecting a station (STA) actor to each of the plurality of lower UMACs (see slide 6 and 14 discloses STA connect to lower UMAC); connecting each of the plurality of lower UMACs to the upper UMAC (e.g. slide 17 discloses the upper MLD MAC which is an upper UMAC and upper local mgmt. MAC which is lower UMAC also in slide 15-16); and establishing a connection through the upper UMAC and each of the plurality of lower UMACs to the STA actor (e.g. slide 12-16 and 17 shows the upper UMAC, lower UMAC and STA as PHY connection). Mark explicitly fails to lower UMAC, but teach Upper local mgmt MAC which would be obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date to consider the upper local mgmt MAC for processing data in the upper MAC without delay.
- With respect to claim 2, Mark teaches the connection through the upper UMAC and each of the plurality of lower UMACs occurs at one or more overlapping time (e.g. slide 7 discloses the timing alignment across the links)
- With respect to claim 3, Mark teaches the selecting the plurality of lower UMACs based on physical and/or pathloss proximity to the station (e.g. the upper local mgmt MAC with impl. Choice in slide 15-16)
- With respect to claim 8, Mark teaches wherein each of the plurality of lower UMACs can add medium access controller (MAC) Protocol Data Units (MPDUs) received from the upper UMAC to a transmit queue (see slide 3-12, 17, 26).
- With respect to claim 10, Mark teaches wherein each of the plurality of lower UMACs at a trigger forward a current starting sequence number (SSN) and MPDU bitmap to peer lower UMACs (see slide 4).
- With respect to claim 14, Mark teaches further comprising distributing state from each of the plurality lower UMACs to one or more additional lower UMACs through the upper UMAC (see slide 3-6, 12-17 and 26).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-7, 9, 11-13, 15-18 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include 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. See PTO-892.
. Examiner's Note: Examiner has cited particular paragraphs or columns and line numbers in the references applied to the claims above for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings of the art and are applied to specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested from the applicant in preparing responses, to fully consider the references in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the Examiner.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PHUC H TRAN whose telephone number is (571)272-3172. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8-5 Flex.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Sujoy K. Kundu can be reached at 571-272-8586. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/PHUC H TRAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2471