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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group I claims 1-17 in the reply filed on 6/22/26 is acknowledged.
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.
Claim(s) 1-2, 4-5, 8-9, 11-12 and 15-16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Terry et al. (US 2009/0161571 A1) in view of Sammour et al. (US 2015/0023370 A1).
Consider claim 1, Terry teaches a user equipment (UE) for wireless communication (abstract), comprising:
at least one memory; and at least one processor coupled with the at least one memory (Fig. 1, UE would have a memory and processor) and configured to cause the UE to:
determine, by the RLC transmission entity and based at least in part on the received information, one or more RLC packet data units (PDUs) that satisfy a condition (paragraph 15, RLC entity discards PDUs when a threshold is reached);
trigger, by the RLC transmission entity, transmission of RLC control information that comprises one or more sequence numbers (SNs) associated with the one or more RLC PDUs that satisfy the condition (paragraph 7-9, transmission of segmentation includes a sequence number);
generate an RLC control PDU that includes the RLC control information (Fig. 4, step 402 and Fig. 5, step 502); and
transmit the generated RLC control PDU from the RLC transmission entity to a peer receiving RLC entity (paragraph 27-29 and paragraph 40-43).
Terry does not teach receive, by a radio link control (RLC) transmission entity, information from an upper layer.
Sammour further teaches receive, by a radio link control (RLC) transmission entity, information from an upper layer (paragraph 47 and 64, a PDCP entity receives a PDCP service data unit SDU from upper layers).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify and utilize the above teachings for the purposes of operating in the same protocol stack (PDCP/RLC) for the purposes of informing RLC of discarded events therefore reduction in unnecessary retransmission.
Consider claims 8 and 15, claims 8 and 15 having similar limitations as claim 1, therefore, claims 8 and 15 are rejected for the same reasons claim 1 is rejected.
Consider claims 2, 9 and 16, Sammour further teaches wherein the information received from the upper layer comprises a discard indication for the one or more RLC PDUs received from a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) layer (paragraph 48).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify and utilize the above teachings for the purposes of informing RLC of discarded events therefore reduction in unnecessary retransmission.
Consider claims 4-5 and 11-12, Sammour further teaches wherein the one or more RLC PDUs that satisfy the condition comprise RLC PDUs for which an associated delay budget is exceeded and wherein the at least one processor is configured to cause the UE to determine an RLC PDU satisfies the condition when a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) discard timer of a corresponding PDCP service data unit (SDU) is expired (paragraph 47 and 115, discard based on timer expiring).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify and utilize the above teachings for the purposes of informing RLC of discarded events therefore reduction in unnecessary retransmission.
Claim(s) 6-7 and 13-14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Terry et al. (US 2009/0161571 A1) in view of Sammour et al. (US 2015/0023370 A1) and He et al. (US 2026/0058913 A1).
Consider claims 6 and 13, Terry and Sammour do not teach wherein the RLC PDU includes: a field that indicates a smallest SN value for the one or more SNs; and a bitmap field that indicates the one or more RLC PDUs that satisfy the condition.
He further teaches wherein the RLC PDU includes: a field that indicates a smallest SN value for the one or more SNs; and a bitmap field that indicates the one or more RLC PDUs that satisfy the condition (paragraph 107).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify and utilize the above teachings for the purposes of only relevant SNs are transmitted, therefore, reduces control overhead.
Consider claims 7 and 14, He further teaches wherein the bitmap field indicates outdated RLC PDUs and RLC PDUs that are not outdated (paragraph 37, 95 and 185).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify and utilize the above teachings for the purposes of only relevant SNs are transmitted, therefore, reduces control overhead.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3, 10 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JUSTIN YE LEE whose telephone number is (571)272-5258. The examiner can normally be reached 9:30-8:00.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Kathy Wang-Hurst can be reached at 5712705371. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JUSTIN Y LEE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2644 8/3/26
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