DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is in response to the Applicants' communication filed on May 26, 2026. Claims 1-2, 4, 8-11 and 17-18 are amended, Claims 3 and 12 are cancelled, and presents arguments, is hereby acknowledged. Claims 1-2, 4-11 and 13-18 are currently pending and have been examined.
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 Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed on May 26, 2026 have been fully considered.
Applicant argues in its Argument that cited arts fail to teach limitations of the amended independent Claim 1.
Examiner replies: In response to applicant’s argument that there is no teaching, suggestion, or motivation to combine the references, the examiner recognizes that obviousness may be established by combining or modifying the teachings of the prior art to produce the claimed invention where there is some teaching, suggestion, or motivation to do so found either in the references themselves or in the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 5 USPQ2d 1596 (Fed. Cir. 1988), In re Jones, 958 F.2d 347, 21 USPQ2d 1941 (Fed. Cir. 1992), and KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007).
During patent examination, the pending claims must be given their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification. See MPEP § 2111. Further, although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993). See also MPEP § 2145(VI).
Regarding limitations the amended Claim 1 of the instant case,
A base station for supporting cell reselection of a user equipment (UE) in a multi-carrier based communication system, the base station comprising: a transceiver; and a controller coupled with the transceiver and configured to: determine loads for a plurality of carriers, wherein a load among the loads is determined based on a distribution of UEs in an active state for a carrier among the plurality of carriers, determine relative availabilities for the plurality of carriers, based on the determined loads, wherein a relative availability of a carrier among the plurality of carriers is determined inversely proportional to the load of the carrier, determine cell reselection priorities for the plurality of carriers based on the determined relative availabilities, in case that a cell reselection is to be performed in an idle mode by the UE, wherein each of the determined cell reselection priorities is one integer among 0 to 7, and the cell reselection priorities are determined as values proportional to the determined relative availabilities, allowing a carrier with a relatively higher availability to have a higher priority, and transmit, to the UE via the transceiver, a system information block (SIB) including information on the determined cell reselection priorities for the plurality of carriers.
Kim: Figs. 1-3, a system configuration that UE is configured by serving cell through MIB/SIB in Fig. 3 to inform UEs on performing cell reselection; Figs. 5-6 illustrate UE reselection process where the serving cell and neighbor cells were given priorities, and selected cell has a higher priority barring restrictions; par. 38-51, disclose SIB, reselection priorities for serving and neighbor cells).
Kim does not teach explicitly on the cell reselection priority being one integer among 0 to 7 and the priority is established based on cell or carrier load. However, Rangaiah and 3GPP standards teach Rangaiah: Fig. 2, a cell reselection process that performs measurement for each cell and carrier frequency of each cell, calculate rank value for each cell, order cells based on rank value, create cell ranking list, and reselect to neighbor cell with highest rank value; par. 8, 3GPP TS 45.008 V9.4.0 standardizes various cell reselection algorithms in Sections 6.6.5, 6.6.6, and 6.6.7, where ranking and priorities are defined for inter-RAT cell and intra-cell reselection, which are also illustrated in Figs. 10-15; Figs. 3-4, receiving neighbor cell list from serving cell in 304 for example; 3GPP TS 36.304 V15.3.0 e.g., section 5.2 cell selection and reselection procedures for a UE operating across multiple E-UTRA carries; 5.2.2 and Figs. 5.2.2-1, 5.2.2-2, cell reselection priorities for different E-UTRA frequencies while in RRC_IDLE mod; 3GPP TS 36.331 V10.1.0 in page 198, CellResectionPriority is defined as integer (0..7); 3GPP TR 36.902 V9.3.10 section 4.5-4.6 teaches mobility load balancing (MLB) where an eNB monitors traffic load of active connections and dynamically adapts “cell reselection parameters (e.g., SIB priorities in TS 36.304) to distribute idle UEs, preventing them from camping on a carrier heavily populated by active UEs; 4.6.5, load indicator, and load indicator and available capacity indicator exchanged neighboring eNBs are used for eNB to determine relative availability of carriers, and how to adjust cell reselection parameter.
Examiner notes: The rejections are based on all cited references and some of them are industrial standards. Applicant’s arguments seem to focus on the selective references rather all references as presented. Kim uses UE power consumption, Rangaiah uses standard algorithms, 3GPP TR 36.902 V9.3.10 uses mobility load balancing, and etc. Regardless criteria be selected, all of them have a common concern, cell/carrier/channel operating conditions, which is load balancing related.
Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that Kim as modified teaches all limitations as claimed.
Conclusion: Examiner has shown the rejections set forth in the Office Action of February 24, 2026 are proper. In light of amended Claims, new grounds of rejection are set forth below. Since the new grounds of rejection are necessitated by Applicant's amendments to the claims, the present action is made final.
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 of this title, 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 1-2, 4-11 and 14-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over EP 1467586 B1 (Kim), in view of US 20120135731 A1 (Rangaiah) and in further view of 3GPP TS 36.304 V15.3.0 (TS 36.304), 3GPP TS 36.331 V10.1.0 (TS 36.331) and 3GPP TR 36.902 V9.3.10 ( TR 36.902).
Regarding Claims 1 and 10:
A base station for supporting cell reselection of a user equipment (UE) in a multi-carrier based communication system, the base station comprising: a transceiver; and a controller coupled with the transceiver and configured to: determine loads for a plurality of carriers, wherein a load among the loads is determined based on a distribution of UEs in an active state for a carrier among the plurality of carriers, determine relative availabilities for the plurality of carriers, based on the determined loads, wherein a relative availability of a carrier among the plurality of carriers is determined inversely proportional to the load of the carrier, determine cell reselection priorities for the plurality of carriers based on the determined relative availabilities, in case that a cell reselection is to be performed in an idle mode by the UE, wherein each of the determined cell reselection priorities is one integer among 0 to 7, and the cell reselection priorities are determined as values proportional to the determined relative availabilities, allowing a carrier with a relatively higher availability to have a higher priority, and transmit, to the UE via the transceiver, a system information block (SIB) including information on the determined cell reselection priorities for the plurality of carriers (Kim: Figs. 1-3, a system configuration that UE is configured by serving cell through MIB/SIB in Fig. 3 to inform UEs on performing cell reselection; Figs. 5-6 illustrate UE reselection process where the serving cell and neighbor cells were given priorities, and selected cell has a higher priority barring restrictions; par. 38-51, disclose SIB, reselection priorities for serving and neighbor cells).
Kim does not teach explicitly on the cell reselection priority being one integer among 0 to 7 and the priority is established based on cell or carrier load. However, Rangaiah and 3GPP standards teach (Rangaiah: Fig. 2, a cell reselection process that performs measurement for each cell and carrier frequency of each cell, calculate rank value for each cell, order cells based on rank value, create cell ranking list, and reselect to neighbor cell with highest rank value; par. 8, 3GPP TS 45.008 V9.4.0 standardizes various cell reselection algorithms in Sections 6.6.5, 6.6.6, and 6.6.7, where ranking and priorities are defined for inter-RAT cell and intra-cell reselection, which are also illustrated in Figs. 10-15; Figs. 3-4, receiving neighbor cell list from serving cell in 304 for example; 3GPP TS 36.304 V15.3.0 e.g., section 5.2 cell selection and reselection procedures for a UE operating across multiple E-UTRA carries; 5.2.2 and Figs. 5.2.2-1, 5.2.2-2, cell reselection priorities for different E-UTRA frequencies while in RRC_IDLE mod; 3GPP TS 36.331 V10.1.0 in page 198, CellResectionPriority is defined as integer (0..7); 3GPP TR 36.902 V9.3.10 section 4.5-4.6 teaches mobility load balancing (MLB) where an eNB monitors traffic load of active connections and dynamically adapts “cell reselection parameters (e.g., SIB priorities in TS 36.304) to distribute idle UEs, preventing them from camping on a carrier heavily populated by active UEs; 4.6.5, load indicator, and load indicator and available capacity indicator exchanged neighboring eNBs are used for eNB to determine relative availability of carriers, and how to adjust cell reselection parameter).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention was made to modify Kim with the cell reselection priority being one integer among 0 to 7 and the priority is established based on cell or carrier load as further taught by Rangaiah and 3GPP standards. The advantage of doing so is to addresses the problem of how to efficiently and effectively evaluate a candidate cell for re-selection and minimizes the need to tune to the frequency of a candidate cell and decode suitability parameters from candidate cells while avoiding the risk of discounting a candidate cell incorrectly (Rangaiah: Background).
Regarding Claims 2 and 11, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 1, wherein the load of the carrier is determined based on a number of the UEs in the active state using the carrier (Rangaiah: Fig. 2, a cell reselection process that performs measurement for each cell, calculate rank value for each cell, order cells based on rank value, create cell ranking list, and reselect to neighbor cell with highest rank value, where cell reselection are due to mobility, cell balance due to load distribution and etc.; TR36.902: e.g., 4.5.2., load metric used for balancing includes hardware/radio resource utilization directly tied to the number of active users (i.e., UEs in RRC_CONNECTED state) currently utilizing the carrier).
Regarding Claims 4 and 13, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 1, wherein the controller is further configured to obtain information on the load of the carrier among the plurality of carriers (Rangaiah: Fig. 2, a cell reselection process that performs measurement for each cell, calculate rank value for each cell, order cells based on rank value, create cell ranking list, and reselect to neighbor cell with highest rank value, where cell reselection are due to mobility, cell balance due to load distribution and etc.; TR36.902: e.g., 4.5.2., eNB continuously obtains and monitors load metrics, both internally for its own carriers and externally via X2 for neighboring carriers).
Regarding Claims 5 and 14, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 4, wherein the information on the load includes at least one of information on the distribution of the UEs in the active state or information on a carrier distribution (TR36.902: e.g., 4.5., mobility load balancing (MLB) where an eNB monitors traffic load of active connections and dynamically adapts “cell reselection parameters (e.g., SIB priorities in TS 36.304) to distribute idle UEs, preventing them from camping on a carrier heavily populated by active UEs).
Regarding Claims 6 and 15, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 5, wherein the information on the distribution of the UEs in the active state indicates a distribution of the UEs in the active state using a same carrier for each frequency band (TR36.902: e.g., 4.5., mobility load balancing (MLB) where an eNB monitors traffic load of active connections and dynamically adapts “cell reselection parameters (e.g., SIB priorities in TS 36.304) to distribute idle UEs, preventing them from camping on a carrier heavily populated by active UEs).
Regarding Claims 7 and 16, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 5, wherein the information on the carrier distribution indicates a distribution of cells using a same frequency band (TR36.902: e.g., 4.5.2., eNB continuously obtains and monitors load metrics, both internally for its own carriers and externally via X2 for neighboring carriers).
Regarding Claims 8 and 17, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 5, wherein the distribution of the UEs in the active state is obtained based on a ratio of a number of the UEs in the active state for the carrier to a permissible maximum number of UEs for the carrier (TR36.902: e.g., 4.6.5, load indicator, and load indicator and available capacity indicator exchanged neighboring eNBs are used for eNB to determine relative availability of carriers, and how to adjust cell reselection parameter, where this is general SON admission control standard practice prior to 2011).
Regarding Claims 9 and 18, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 5, wherein the carrier distribution is obtained based on a ratio of a number of carriers using a same frequency band to a maximum number of carriers in the base station (TR36.902: 4.5-4.6, teaches for eNB to balance load across multiple carriers, where calculating the distribution of those carriers by dividing the number of carriers on one frequency by the total numbers of carriers on the eNB is simply the application of simple mathematics to a known telecommunication process).
Conclusion
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 extension fee 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 ZHITONG CHEN whose telephone number is (571)270-1936. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 9:30am - 5pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Yuwen Pan can be reached on 571-272-7855. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ZHITONG CHEN/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2649
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