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 05/28/2026, have been considered but are moot in view of new ground(s).
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1-6, 9-16, and 19-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over R1-2402568 “Discussion on frame structure and timing aspects for A-IoT,” in view of 3GPP TR 23.700-13 V0.2.0 “Study on Architecture support of Ambient power-enabled Internet of Things (Release 19)” and in view of Gupta et al. (US 20250261141).
Regarding claim 1, R1-2402568 discloses a method performed by a wireless transmit receive unit (WTRU) configured to perform as an intermediate node (In case of dedicated inventory, gNB or intermediate UE will paging for a specific tags; page 11), the method comprising:
receiving, from a network, configuration information including first information associated with a first type of access procedure and second information associated with a second type of access procedure (alignment with FDD frame structure is good for gNB to manage intermediate UE’s inventory time resource, for example, gNB can assign the slots for UE to perform inventory; §.2.3, p. 5
design of random access is used for the inventory process. Considering the use cases of inventory, common/group inventory, and dedicated inventory can be considered. Different random access procedure designs can be considered according to different types of inventory; § 5, p. 8);
determining, based on the received configuration information and on the received identification of a plurality of devices, access occasions of first type comprising access occasions reserved for accesses using the first type of access procedure (Common/group inventory: the main purpose of common/group inventory is for querying. The reader can initiate periodically or on demand to get knowledge about tags within range; § 5, p. 8.
In case of common/group inventory, there are still cases that multiple tags respond at the same slot; § 5.1, p. 10);
determining, based on the received configuration information and on the received identification of a plurality of devices, access occasions of second type comprising occasions reserved for accesses using the second type of access procedure (MsgB for NR can carry a fallback RAR to schedule a PUSCH or a successRAR which may followed by HARQ-ACK. Since no HARQ will be supported, therefore successRAR seems not needed. If the successRAR is to indicate changing of inventory flag, it is meaningless since no contention for this case, and after the MsgA is reported, the dedicated inventory is succeed, no following inventory comands for this round. NAK is also not needed, since gNB can not judge whether a tag replies or not, and in case it does not correctly receives the target tag’s reply, it can initiate another inventory; § 5.1, p. 11);
transmitting, to the devices identified in the received identification of a plurality of devices, an inventory initiation message (The following figure give an example of RFID inventory. A Query command initiates one round of inventory, and it carries a parameter Q, which is used by the Reader (Interrogator) to regulate the probability of Tag response; § 5.1, p. 11);
receiving, from the first device, during an access occasion of first type, a message from the first device, wherein the message from the first device includes a first device ID, wherein the first device ID is a device ID of first type (Tag sends Msg1, which can be a random number with length 16 or other length. Based on the Msg2, the tag sends corresponding tag specific parameters asked by paging for inventory, i.e. EPC like data, this is referred to Msg3. Fig 7, Msg. 1 RN 16, Msg. 3 EPC; The RN16 and EPC IDs are transmitted separately; § 5.1, p. 10);
receiving, from the second device, during an access occasion of second type, a message from the second device, wherein the message from the second device includes a second device ID, wherein the second device ID is a device ID of second type (The tag which is paged responses with both the RN16 and the corresponding tag parameters asked by paging information, such as EPC like data. Fig 8, Msg A. RN 16 + EPC; The RN16 and EPC IDs are transmitted together; § 5.1, p. 11.), and
wherein the first type of device ID is different from the second type of device ID (Fig 7, Msg.1 RN 16, Msg. 3 EPC; Fig 8, Msg A. RN 16 + EPC; RN 16 or EPC on their own are a different type from RN 16 + EPC; page 10-11).
R1-2402568 does not expressly disclose receiving, from the network, identification of a plurality of devices, wherein the plurality of devices comprise a first device and a second device; transmitting, an inventory initiation message, including information indicating one or more resources for each device of the plurality of devices; and receiving, from the first device, data using the indicated one or more resources for the first device.
In an analogous art, TR 23.700-13 discloses receiving, from the network, identification of a plurality of devices, wherein the plurality of devices comprise a first device and a second device (The device information could be device ID, device group ID, and/or device type. The AIOTF sends an NGAP message (Inventory Request) to the A-RANs with the internal area information, device information and inventory strategy information, and optional location required information. The A-RAN (reader) initiates inventory based on device information as well as the inventory strategy information provided by the AF; §.6.8.2.1, p. 38).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to add the features taught by TR 23.700-13 into the system of R1-2402568 in order to enable support of information transfer for Ambient IoT services and related system functionality, including the information transfer for an Ambient IoT device and for a group of Ambient IoT Devices (TR 23.700-13; §.5.3.1).
The combination of R1-2402568 and TR 23.700-13 does not expressly disclose transmitting, an inventory initiation message, including information indicating one or more resources for each device of the plurality of devices; and receiving, from the first device, data using the indicated one or more resources for the first device.
In an analogous art, Gupta discloses transmitting, an inventory initiation message, including information indicating one or more resources for each device of the plurality of devices; and receiving, from the first device, data using the indicated one or more resources for the first device (the query message may include information identifying a selection of a subset of tags to which the query message is directed. the query message may include information identifying resources that the tag 160 is to use to transmit one or more responses to the query message. the tag 160 may transmit the tag response message in a resource identified by, for example, the reader 610 in the query message; [0117, 0119]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to add the features taught by Gupta into the system of R1-2402568 and TR 23.700-13 in order to improve the performance and reduce network resource utilization associated with retransmitting dropped communications (Gupta; [0033]).
Regarding claim 2, the combination of R1-2402568, Gupta, and TR 23.700-13, particularly R1-2402568 discloses wherein the first type of access procedure comprises a 2-step random access procedure and the second type of access procedure comprises a 4-step random access (For this contention based case, according to table 2, it is suggest to use 4-step RACH procedure. The 4-step random access is illustrated in Figure.7, since the traffic type is DO-DTT, RACH procedure will be started from gNB or intermediate UE. For common/group common inventory, whether to support 2-step random access procedure needs more study; §.5.1).
Regarding claim 3, the combination of R1-2402568, Gupta, and TR 23.700-13, particularly R1-2402568 discloses wherein the first type of access does not include a contention resolution phase and the second type of access contains a contention resolution phase (Common/group inventory, In case of common/group inventory, there are still cases that multiple tags respond at the same slot, so contention resolution is needed. Dedicated inventory In case of dedicated inventory, gNB or intermediate UE will paging for a specific tags. Only the tag satisfies the strict characteristic indicated by paging for inventory will response, contention free access procedure initiated by the reader can be supported by this case; §.5.1).
Regarding claim 4, the combination of R1-2402568, Gupta, and TR 23.700-13, particularly R1-2402568 discloses wherein the configuration information further comprises an identification of a plurality of access occasions (As shown in figure.11, it gives one example of TDM of tags between two paging commands, 3 tags response Msg.1(RN16) in non overlapped time, and the gNB can identify them, and sends Msg2(ACK) sequentially to 3 tags. Then it can be seen that, when paged, different tags will wait different time before sending, this can be non-immediate reply; §.6.2).
Regarding claim 5, the combination of R1-2402568, Gupta, and TR 23.700-13, particularly R1-2402568 discloses wherein the inventory initiation message comprises at least one of: identification of access occasions of first type, or identification of access occasions of second type (Table 2, Query/QueryRep/QueryAdjust, Query initiate and specifies an inventory round, QueryRep: instructs Tags to decrement their slot counters and, if slot=0 after decrementing, to backscatter an RN16 to the Interrogator. Query Adjust: adjusts Q without changing without changing any other any other round; §.5.1).
Regarding claim 6, the combination of R1-2402568, Gupta, and TR 23.700-13, particularly TR 23.700-13 discloses determining, based on the received identification of a plurality of devices, a number of devices that already have a context established (For the application inventory or periodic inventory, depends on device capabilities, the authentication and authorization may be performed, and the CN allocated device ID which is similar as 5G-GUTI may be passed to the device. For those devices, the device contexts are stored in AIOTF, including the security contexts; §.6.8.1).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to add the features taught by TR 23.700-13 into the system of R1-2402568 and Gupta in order to enable support of information transfer for Ambient IoT services and related system functionality, including the information transfer for an Ambient IoT device and for a group of Ambient IoT Devices (TR 23.700-13; §.5.3.1).
Regarding claim 9, the combination of R1-2402568, Gupta, and TR 23.700-13, particularly R1-2402568 discloses selecting, upon receiving the device ID of second type from the second device, a new device ID of first type, and sending, to the second device, a message with the received device ID of second type and the selected new device ID of first type (gNB decides to initiate common/group common inventory, Msg.0 Query/QueryRep, Tag decides the condition to response is satisfied, Msg.1 RN16, Msg.2 RAR, Msg.3 EPC, Msg.4 QueryRep/NACK; § 5.1).
Regarding claim 10, the combination of R1-2402568, Gupta, and TR 23.700-13, particularly R1-2402568 discloses wherein the determination of the access occasions of first type and access occasions of second type is further based on at least one of: measured reference signal received power (RSRP), cause of triggering the access, requirements on the data being requested, capability of the devices being triggered, or location of the devices being triggered (For R2D timing, the processing time mainly depends on, a) device decoding speed of downlink commands: since for downlink, OOK is likely to be used, the decoding is simple. Although type 2 devices may have some advanced decoding scheme than type 1 devices, it also has higher capability, so this part can be common for different A-IOT devices. For D2R timing, the processing time mainly depends on gNB decoding uplink data and preparing following downlink command, Reader capability is high to do some complicated processing for both type 1 and type 2 devices to improve performance, therefore, common processing time can be supposed for different A-IoT devices; § 5.1).
Regarding claim 11, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 1.
Regarding claim 12, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 2.
Regarding claim 13, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 3.
Regarding claim 14, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 4.
Regarding claim 15, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 5.
Regarding claim 16, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 6.
Regarding claim 19, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 9.
Regarding claim 20, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 10.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 7 and 17 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.
Claim 7, if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims, would comprise a combination of elements which is not taught by the prior art of record. The same remarks apply to dependent claim 17 mutatis mutandis.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Song et al. (US 20260195552), “TRANSMISSION METHOD AND APPARATUS, RESPONDER DEVICE, AND READER/WRITER DEVICE.”
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.
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/OUSSAMA ROUDANI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2413
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