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 .
The Examiner thanks the Applicant for the well-prepared amendment. The Examiner appreciates the Applicant’s effort to carefully analyze the Office action, and make appropriate arguments and amendments.
The Examiner left a message with the receptionist to invite applicant’s representative to discuss examiner’s amendment on February 4th 2026, no response is received.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-20 responded on December 22, 2025 are pending, claims 1-2, 4-6, 9, 11-12 and 15-19 are amended.
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 final rejection. 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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on December 18, 2025 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1 and 11 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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, 9-11 and 19-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kim et al. (US 2022/0046522 A1, hereinafter "Kim") in view of Wallentin et al. (US 2023/0262600 A1, hereinafter "Wallentin") .
Regarding claim 1, Kim discloses a method performed by a user equipment (UE) in a wireless communication system, the method comprising: receiving, from a base station, information for operating in a normal mode, wherein the UE performs a carrier aggregation (CA), a dual connectivity (DC), multiple downlink control information (DCI) reception, or repetition transmission and reception in the normal mode (Kim, [0009, 0183, 0800] provide a next-generation mobile communication system, carrier aggregation (CA) or dual connectivity (DC)…a UE 18-01 may receive a message in operation 18-05 (e.g., DCI of PDCCH…) from a base station, a state (or mode) may be configured for the UE via DCI of PDCCH with respect to each cell (PCell, PSCell, or SCells)).
receiving, from the base station, an indicator indicating a base station energy saving mode, while operating in the normal mode based on the information (Kim, [0800] When the message includes cell group configuration information, a cell group state, or a cell group indicator, the UE may determine in operation 18-10 whether configuration, addition, activation, or resumption of a cell group is indicated, or whether releasing, deactivation, or suspension of the cell group is indicated); and wherein, in case that the normal mode has a correlation to the base station energy saving mode indicated by the indicator, the method further comprises disabling operating in the normal mode, irrespective of the information for operating in the normal mode, and wherein, in case that the normal mode has no correlation to the base station energy saving mode indicated by the indicator, the normal mode is maintained (Kim, [0800] If configuration, addition, activation, or resumption of the cell group is indicated, cell group configuration, addition, activation, or resumption, proposed in the disclosure, may be performed in operation 18-20, and if releasing, deactivation, or suspension of the cell group is indicated, cell group releasing, deactivation, or suspension, proposed in the disclosure, may be performed in operation 18-30).
Kim does not explicitly disclose operating in the base station energy saving mode based on the indicator after a delay based on a UE capability.
Wallentin from the same field of endeavor discloses operating in the base station energy saving mode based on the indicator after a delay based on a UE capability (Wallentin, [0168] depending on how long the UE interrupted its normal operation with the SCG, and/or radio conditions, and/or UE capabilities there is some delay (wake-up time) in the UE before it can start e.g. monitoring the PDCCH on the PSCell).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified dual connectivity disclosed by Kim and UE capability disclosed by Wallentin with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve flexibility of wireless services (Wallentin, [0006]).
Regarding claim 9, Kim discloses wherein, in case that the information configures a carrier aggregation or a dual connectivity, the indicator is received from a designated secondary cell (SCell) among a plurality of SCells (Kim, [0177-0178] for an SCell or PSCell of the UE performing carrier aggregation or dual connectivity, a dormant bandwidth part (dormant BWP) may be configured…the UE receives, via a PCell, an indication of switching to a dormant bandwidth part), and wherein disabling operating in the normal mode comprises performing SCell deactivation for the designated SCell (Kim, [0399] including an indication (e.g., switching or activation to a dormant bandwidth part, or switching or activation to a normal bandwidth part) for bandwidth parts of SCells or SCell groups, or an indication of suspending or resuming a cell group (or secondary cell group) or a PSCell (or SCell) of a cell group (or secondary cell group).
Regarding claim 10, Kim discloses wherein the indicator is received via radio resource control signaling, medium access control-control element signaling or downlink control information signaling (Kim, [0132] each cell may be configured and indicated via a radio resource control (RRC) message, a medium access control (MAC) control element (CE), or downlink control information (DCI) of PDCCH).
Regarding claims 11 and 19-20, these claims recite "a user equipment" that disclose similar steps as recited by the method of claims 1 and 9-10, thus are rejected with the same rationale applied against claims 1 and 9-10 as presented above.
Claim(s) 2-4 and 12-14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kim et al. (US 2022/0046522 A1, hereinafter "Kim") in view of Wallentin et al. (US 2023/0262600 A1, hereinafter "Wallentin") as applied to claim above, and further in view of Sun et al. (US 2022/0303080 A1, hereinafter "Sun").
Regarding claims 2 and 12, Kim in view of Wallentin does not explicitly disclose in case that the information configures multiple DCI from a plurality of transmission and reception points (TRPs) and the normal mode is maintained, identifying a designated TRP of the plurality of TRPs based on the indicator, wherein a single DCI is received from the designated TRP.
Sun from the same field of endeavor discloses in case that the information configures multiple DCI from a plurality of transmission and reception points (TRPs) and the normal mode is maintained, identifying a designated TRP of the plurality of TRPs based on the indicator, wherein a single DCI is received from the designated TRP (Sun, [0044] when the UE 110 is configured with simultaneous multi-DCI and single-DCI based multi-TRP, the UE 110 may not monitor DCI scheduling from CORESETs in CORESETPoolIndex=1, e.g., the UE 110 will only monitor DCI scheduling for the primary cell).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Sun’s system for single DCI into Kim’s dual connectivity as modified by Wallentin with a motivation to make this modification in order to implement a suite of services that may be used to extend the functionalities of the UE (Sun, [0021]).
Regarding claims 3 and 13, Kim discloses wherein the indicator comprises a coresetPoollndex indicating the designated TRP among the plurality of TRPs (Kim, [0213] information of a control resource set (CORESET) may be identified
by identifying a master system information block (MIB) or minimum system information (MSI), and initial bandwidth part (initial BWP) information may be identified by reading system information).
Regarding claims 4 and 14, Kim discloses monitoring a physical downlink control channel corresponding to the designated TRP (Kim, [0010] the terminal needs to perform physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) monitoring for each cell (i.e. designated TRP)).
Claim(s) 5 and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kim et al. (US 2022/0046522 A1, hereinafter "Kim") in view of Wallentin et al. (US 2023/0262600 A1, hereinafter "Wallentin") as applied to claim above, and further in view of Chin et al. (US 2022/0361279 A1, hereinafter "Chin").
Regarding claims 5 and 15, Kim in view of Wallentin does not explicitly disclose in case that the information configures the repetition transmission and reception, performing a fallback from the repetition transmission and reception to a single transmission and
reception.
Chin from the same field of endeavor discloses n case that the information configures the repetition transmission and reception, performing a fallback from the repetition transmission and reception to a single transmission and Reception (Chin, [0420-0421] the UE determines to perform MAC reset after receiving the fallback indication, the RRC layer of the UE may indicate to the MAC layer of the UE to perform (partial) MAC reset…Fallback Action 10: Stop/terminate the UL resource repetition transmission).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Chin’s system for single DCI into Kim’s dual connectivity as modified by Wallentin with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve data rate, latency, reliability, and mobility (Chin, [0003]).
Claim(s) 6-8 and 16-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kim et al. (US 2022/0046522 A1, hereinafter "Kim") in view of Wallentin et al. (US 2023/0262600 A1, hereinafter "Wallentin") as applied to claim above, and further in view of Zhou et al. (US 2024/0049069 A1, Provisional application No. 63/394,521 filed on Aug, 22, 2022, hereinafter "Zhou").
Regarding claims 6 and 16, Kim in view of Wallentin does not explicitly disclose wherein, in case that the information configures a carrier aggregation or a dual connectivity, operating in the base station energy saving mode comprises operating in the base station energy saving mode for a primary cell (PCell), wherein the indicator is received from the PCell.
Zhou from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein, in case that the information configures a carrier aggregation or a dual connectivity, operating in the base station energy saving mode comprises operating in the base station energy saving mode for a primary cell (PCell), wherein the indicator is received from the PCell (Zhou, [0334] dynamic PCell switching for network energy saving. A first wireless device (e.g., UE1) may be configured with a plurality of cells comprising a PCell (e.g., 1st cell located in frequency point F2) and a SCell (e.g., 2nd cell located in frequency point F1). A second wireless device (e.g., UE2) may be configured with a plurality of cells comprising a PCell (e.g., 2nd cell located in frequency point F1) and a SCell (e.g., 1st cell located in frequency point F2). The PCell of UE1 may be served and/or configured as a SCell for UE2. The PCell of UE2 may be served and/or configured as a SCell for UE1).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Zhou’s system for single DCI into Kim’s dual connectivity as modified by Wallentin with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve performance of a wireless network, system throughput, transmission efficiencies of a wireless network, and/or data rate of transmission (Zhou, [0218]).
Regarding claims 7 and 17, Kim in view of Wallentin does not explicitly disclose wherein operating in the base station energy saving mode further comprises operating in the base station energy saving mode for a secondary cell (SCell).
Zhou from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein operating in the base station energy saving mode further comprises operating in the base station energy saving mode for a secondary cell (SCell) (Zhou, [0334] dynamic PCell switching for network energy saving. A first wireless device (e.g., UE1) may be configured with a plurality of cells comprising a PCell (e.g., 1st cell located in frequency point F2) and a SCell (e.g., 2nd cell located in frequency point F1). A second wireless device (e.g., UE2) may be configured with a plurality of cells comprising a PCell (e.g., 2nd cell located in frequency point F1) and a SCell (e.g., 1st cell located in frequency point F2). The PCell of UE1 may be served and/or configured as a SCell for UE2. The PCell of UE2 may be served and/or configured as a SCell for UE1).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Zhou’s system for single DCI into Kim’s dual connectivity as modified by Wallentin with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve performance of a wireless network, system throughput, transmission efficiencies of a wireless network, and/or data rate of transmission (Zhou, [0218]).
Regarding claims 8 and 18, Kim discloses performing a secondary cell (SCell) deactivation for a designated SCell, wherein the indicator comprises information on the designated SCell (Kim, [0250] the UE may, according to the indicator or configuration information on each SCell of the cell group, which is included in the RRC message, activate or deactivate each SCell, make each SCell dormant, or activate a dormant bandwidth part, or the UE may activate or deactivate each SCell of the cell group).
Conclusion
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/LUNA WEISSBERGER/Examiner, Art Unit 2415