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 .
DETAILED OFFICE ACTION
This action is responsive to the communication received June 12th, 2026. Claims 8-9, 11, 13-14 have been canceled. Claims 1-7, 10, 12 have been entered and are presented for examination.
Application 18/681,771 is a 371 of PCT/KR2022/011619 (08/05/2022) and claims benefit of Korean Application 10-2021-0104072 (08/06/2021).
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, filed June 12th, 2026, have been fully considered, but deemed moot in view of the new grounds of rejection which has been necessitated by Applicant’s amendment.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
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) 1-4, 10, 12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Babaei (US 2022/0312318) in view of R1-2104930 NR MBS for RRC_IDLE and INACTIVE UEs - May 2021 (Provided By Applicant).
Regarding claims 1, 10, 12, Babaei discloses a method (paragraph 0004 [at least one of: whether to resume transmitting paused uplink feedback or to stop transmitting uplink feedback associated with MBS data and whether to switch a periodicity associated with the uplink feedback; and transmitting or stopping transmitting of the uplink feedback based on the determining. The uplink feedback may be one of hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback]), the method comprising: based on a radio resource control (RRC) release message received from a base station, transitioning, by a user equipment (UE), from an RRC CONNECTED state to an RRC_INACTIVE state or an RRC_IDLE state (paragraph 0076 [The UE may transition from the RRC Idle state 720 to the RRC connected state 710 or from the RRC Connected State 710 to the RRC Idle state 720 using the RRC connection Establishment/Release procedures 740.]); receiving, by the UE from the base station, a first RRC message including configuration information related to a plurality of UE-common physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) resources for multicast (paragraphs 0176, 0181, 0185-0187, 0204 [the UE may receive configuration parameters of a PUCCH configuration indicating a plurality of PUCCH resources; common PUCCH resources; switch a periodicity, e.g., switch from a first periodicity to a second periodicity, for example in a plurality of periodicities. In an example, the plurality of periodicities may be configurable, e.g., based on one or more configuration parameters (e.g., one or more RRC parameters);]); based on the UE transitioning from the RRC_INACTIVE state or RRC_IDLE state to the RRC_CONNECTED state (paragraph 0190 [The UE may transition from the RRC inactive state to the RRC connected state; The UE may start transmitting uplink feedback in the RRC connected state (or transmitting uplink feedback with a higher frequency) after transitioning to the RRC connected state]), transmitting by the UE to the base station, a second PUCCH including second multicast HARK-ACK information for a second multicast PDSCH (paragraph 0192 [the uplink feedback may be one of hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback or channel state information (CSI) report]) based on a second UE-Common PUCCH resource among the plurality of the UE-Common PUCCH resources (paragraphs 0126-0127, 0176 [for RRC_CONNECTED UEs receiving multicast; for ACK/NACK based HARQ-ACK feedback for multicast, from per UE perspective, UE may feedback ACK or NACK. From UEs within the group perspective, PUCCH resource configuration for ACK/NACK feedback may be shared or separate PUCCH resources]).
Babaei further discloses for RRC_IDLE/RRC_INACTIVE UEs, common frequency resource(s) for group-common PDCCH/PDSCH may be defined/configured (paragraph 0138), but does not explicitly disclose based on a first multicast physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) being received from the base station, transmitting, by the UE to the base station, a first PUCCH including first multicast hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ)-acknowledge information for the first multicast PDSCH based on a first UE-common PUCCH resource among the plurality of UE-Common PUCCH resources.
However, R1-2104929 discloses based on a first multicast physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) being received from the base station, transmitting, by the UE to the base station, a first PUCCH including first multicast hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ)-acknowledge information for the first multicast PDSCH based on a first UE-common PUCCH resource among the plurality of UE-Common PUCCH resources (Section 2.2 [HARQ feedback may be supported for RRC_IDLE/INACTIVE UEs with a NACK only feedback mode; The PUCCH resource for the NACK transmission can be a cell-specific PUCCH resource; This mechanism can be re-used where the UEs can transmit NACK only in the selected PUCCH resource. Since the PRI field will be indicated to all UEs in the group, the PUCCH resource will be a common PUCCH resource and the NACK only transmission will be made in an SFN manner wherein the gNB can perform energy detection to detect a NACK]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the invention, to recognize a UE in the RRC IDLE/INACTIVE could send back NACK-only based HARQ to indicate to the gNB that it has failed to decode the last transmitted TB in the downlink (DL) using the PUCCH resources configured.
Regarding claim 3, the references as combined above disclose all the recited subject matter in claim 1.
However, Babaei further discloses wherein: the multicast HARQ-ACK information includes NACK only-based HARQ-ACK information (paragraph 0126 [for NACK-only based HARQ-ACK feedback for multicast, from per UE perspective, UE may only feedback NACK. From UEs within the group perspective, PUCCH resource configuration may be for NACK only feedback]).
Regarding claim 4, the references as combined above disclose all the recited subject matter in claim 1.
However, Babaei further discloses wherein: the broadcast channel includes at least one of a multicast control channel (MCCH) or a broadcast control channel (BCCH) (paragraph 0162 [BCCH and MCCH]).
Claim(s) 2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Babaei (US 2022/0312318) in view of R1-2104930 (Provided By Applicant) as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Yoshioka et al. (EP 4 340 442).
Regarding claim 2, the references as combined above disclose all the recited subject matter in claim 1, but do not explicitly disclose the first UE-common PUCCH resource among the plurality of UE-common PUCCH resources is indicated by first downlink control information (DCI) and the second UE-common PUCCH resource among the plurality of UE-common PUCCH resources is indicated by second DCI.
However, Yoshioka et al. suggests the first UE-common PUCCH resource among the plurality of UE-common PUCCH resources is indicated by first downlink control information (DCI) and the second UE-common PUCCH resource among the plurality of UE-common PUCCH resources is indicated by second DCI (paragraphs 0122-0128 [The predetermined resource may be set in advance or may be set each time by DCI or RRC; among signals or information pertaining to DCI reception for scheduling MBS PDSCH, HARQ feedback = {ACK/NACK feedback, NACK-only feedback} corresponding to MBS PDSCH reception may be specified based on at least one of DCI format, DCI reception configuration; ACK/NACK feedback and NACK-only feedback may be specified in different DCI formats. In other words, ACK/NACK feedback and NACK-only feedback may be specified in different DCI formats. In this case, the DCI format used may not be particularly limited, but DCI 1_0, DCI 1_1 or DCI 1_2, or a new DCI format may be used; Specifically, the control unit 270 may determine the ACK/NACK feedback or NACK-only feedback corresponding to the MBS PDSCH reception based on the field (signal) related to the slot/resource determination to which the PUCCH is allocated among the fields of the DCI (or DCI format) for scheduling the MBS PDSCH]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the invention, to recognize sending DCIs based on the HARQ-ACK feedback type to be received. The motivation for this is to use a different feedback scheme based on the RRC state of the UE as disclosed by the references as combined above.
Claim(s) 5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Babaei (US 2022/0312318) in view of R1-2104930 (Provided By Applicant) as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Liu et al. (US 2021/0021321).
Regarding claim 5, the references as combined above disclose all the recites subject matter in claim 1, but do not explicitly disclose wherein: based on a beam failure recovery procedure being performed, a third PUCCH including a third multicast HARQ-ACK information for third multicast PDSCH is transmitted to the base station based on the configuration information.
However, Liu et al. suggests wherein: based on a beam failure recovery procedure being performed, a third PUCCH including multicast HARQ-ACK information for the third group common PDSCH is transmitted to the base station based on the configuration information (paragraph 0035 [receiving a downlink data over a Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH); transmitting a Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) Acknowledgement (ACK) or Non-Acknowledgement (NACK) over PUCCH in response to the downlink data; and determining, when an ACK is transmitted, that the BFR has succeeded when no further Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) is received for scheduling retransmission of the downlink data, or determining, when a NACK is transmitted]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the invention, to recognize sending a NACK or HARQ-ACK using a PUCCH resource to indicate the status of the BFR.
Claim(s) 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Babaei (US 2022/0312318) in view of R1-2104930 (Provided By Applicant) as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Yi et al. (US 2021/0050968).
Regarding claim 6, the references as combined above disclose all the recites subject matter in claim 1, but do not explicitly disclose wherein: based on a radio link failure being detected and an RRC reconfiguration procedure being performed, a fourth PUCCH including multicast HARQ-ACK information for a fourth group common PDSCH is transmitted to the base station based on the configuration information.
However, Yi et al. suggests wherein: based on a radio link failure being detected and an RRC reconfiguration procedure being performed, a fourth PUCCH including a fourth multicast HARQ-ACK information for a fourth multicast PDSCH is transmitted to the base station based on the configuration information (paragraph 0274 [When an RLF of the second RLM occurs, the wireless device, until reconfiguration is received, may transmit one or more HARQ-ACK feedbacks/SRs/UCIs through the primary cell]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the invention, to recognize based on an RLF and reconfiguration, a UE can transmit one or more HARQ-ACK feedbacks to indicate the status of the recovery.
Claim(s) 7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Babaei (US 2022/0312318) in view of R1-2104930 (Provided By Applicant) as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Raghavan et al. (US 2023/0180204).
Regarding claim 7, the references as combined above disclose all the recites subject matter in claim 1, but do not explicitly disclose wherein: based on a handover command being received from the base station, a fifth PUCCH including multicast HARQ-ACK information for a fifth multicast PDSCH is transmitted to the base station based on the configuration information in a target cell.
However, Raghavan et al. suggests wherein: based on a handover command being received from the base station, a fifth PUCCH including multicast HARQ-ACK information for a fifth group common PDSCH is transmitted to the base station based on the configuration information in a target cell (paragraphs 0006, 0017 [the UE receives an RRC over a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) containing a BWP switch command; transmitting a command to the UE to perform a BWP switch and monitoring a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) for an acknowledgement or a negative acknowledgement (ACK/NACK)]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the invention, to recognize a switch command could be sent via the PDSCH wherein the NACK could be sent via PUCCH to indicate unsuccessful handover.
Conclusion
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHRISTOPHER T WYLLIE whose telephone number is (571)270-3937. The examiner can normally be reached 4pm-11:30pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ayman Abaza can be reached at (571)270-0422. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CHRISTOPHER T WYLLIE/Examiner, Art Unit 2465
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