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 .
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 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tsai US 20210250752 in view of Jin EP 4340240
1. A method performed by a user equipment (UE) in a wireless communication system, the method comprising:
receiving, from a primary-transmission reception point (TRP), UE capability enquiry message (Tsai: [0042-0043] the UE receives a UE capability enquiry message from the serving cell);
transmitting, to the primary-TRP, UE capability information (Tsai: [0042-0043] sends a UE capability information message to the serving cell in response to receiving the UE capability enquiry message);
receiving, from the primary-TRP, a radio resource control (RRC) reconfiguration message (Tsai: [0041-0042] the UE 601 receives an RRCReconfiguration message with configuration from the serving cell);
transmitting, to the primary-TRP, a RRC reconfiguration complete message (Tsai: [0042] the UE 601 sends an RRCReconfigurationComplete message to the serving cell); and
Tsai merely discloses transmitting data to the primary-TRP and a secondary-TRP,
wherein the UE capability information includes beam information related to whether the UE uses at least one of a phase array antenna (PAA) and multi-beams, and
wherein at least one resource of the primary-TRP and the secondary-TRP is allocated based on the beam information.
Jin further teaches receiving, from a primary-transmission reception point (TRP), UE capability enquiry message (Jin: FIG. 1o, unit 1o-05 - receiving, from the base station, user equipment, UE, capability enquiry message);
transmitting, to the primary-TRP, UE capability information (Jin: FIG. 1o, unit 1o-10 - receives corresponding UE capability information);
receiving, from the primary-TRP, a radio resource control (RRC) reconfiguration message (Jin: FIG. 1o, 1o-15, the eNB provides configuration information related to the plurality of TRPs according to the UE capability and TRP support to the UE through the RRC message); and
transmitting data to the primary-TRP and a secondary-TRP (Jin: FIG. 1o, 1o-25, the corresponding transmission/reception resources may be transmitted in each TRP (TRP 1 and TRP 2) through the downlink beam (TCI state) and the uplink beam (PUCCH resource transmission beam) for which activation is indicated. The UE performs uplink and downlink data reception through a beam configured for communication with the eNB),
wherein the UE capability information includes beam information related to whether the UE uses at least one of a phase array antenna (PAA) and multi-beams (Jin: FIG. 2D - UE capability information including whether simultaneous beam updating for a plurality of carriers and BWPs is supported may be included), and
wherein at least one resource of the primary-TRP and the secondary-TRP is allocated based on the beam information (Jin: FIG. 2B - A UE 2b-20 receives the configuration of the direction of beam (2b-06 to 2a-08, 2b-11 to 2a-13, 2b-16 to 2a-18) through which a CSI-RS resource and a downlink data resource are transmitted to the configured eNB (serving cell) and a plurality of TRPs 2b-05, 2b-10, and 2b-15).
Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include the above recited limitation into Tsai’s invention in order to supporting simultaneous transmission and reception to a plurality of transmission and reception points (TRPs), as taught by Jin
2. The method of claim 1, wherein resource information of the primary-TRP and the secondary-TRP is updated based on the RRC reconfiguration message (Tsai: [0028, 0039]).
Claim(s) 3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tsai US 20210250752 in view of Jin EP 4340240 further in view of Finne US 20160165626
3. The method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving, from the primary-TRP, downlink control information (DCI) for an uplink coordinated multi-point (CoMP) is received, wherein the DCI is based on a measurement value based on channel estimation of the primary-TRP (Finne:[0063-0079] FIG. 5-6, unit 5-5 scheduling uplink grants for a wireless device UE that is using UL CoMP reception in serving base station BS-1 according to a DCI (Downlink Control Information) format).
Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include the above recited limitation into Tsai’s invention to improve coverage, support high data rates, improve cell-edge throughput and/or to increase system throughput, as taught by Finne.
Claim(s) 4-7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tsai US 20210250752 in view of Jin EP 4340240 further in view of Zhang US 20220014344
4. The method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving a synchronization signal from the secondary-TRP (Zhang: [0081] the UE may measure SSB beams transmitted by one or more neighbor TRPs during an SSB measurement timing configuration (SMTC) window…the UE may measure an RSRP associated with the SSB beams transmitted by the neighbor TRP(s)), and transmitting, to the primary-TRP, a received signal received power (RSRP) value, which is measured based on the synchronization signal (Zhang: [0082] than the UE is using to communicate with the serving TRP).
Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include the above recited limitation into Tsai’s invention in order to determine whether the neighbor TRP(s) satisfy one or more criteria to be paired in the full-duplex communication mode or the simultaneous half-duplex mTRP mode based at least in part on the RSRP measurements associated with the SSB beams transmitted by the neighbor TRP(s), as taught by Zhang
5. The method of claim 4, wherein the synchronization signal includes a primary synchronization signal (PSS) and a secondary synchronization signal (SSS) (Tsai: [0037]).
6. The method of claim 5, wherein the synchronization signal is transmitted by the secondary-TRP based on a synchronization signal transmission instruction, and is transmitted toward the UE (Zhang: [0073, 0081] periodically measure SSB beams transmitted by one or more neighbor TRPs).Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include the above recited limitation into Tsai’s invention in order to determine whether the neighbor TRP(s) satisfy one or more criteria to be paired in the full-duplex communication mode or the simultaneous half-duplex mTRP mode based at least in part on the RSRP measurements associated with the SSB beams transmitted by the neighbor TRP(s), as taught by Zhang.
7. The method of claim 5, wherein the synchronization signal is periodically transmitted by the secondary-TRP (Zhang: [0073, 0081] periodically measure SSB beams transmitted by one or more neighbor TRPs).Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include the above recited limitation into Tsai’s invention in order to determine whether the neighbor TRP(s) satisfy one or more criteria to be paired in the full-duplex communication mode or the simultaneous half-duplex mTRP mode based at least in part on the RSRP measurements associated with the SSB beams transmitted by the neighbor TRP(s), as taught by Zhang.
Regarding claims 8-15, the independent claim and each dependent claim are related to the same limitation set for hereinabove in claims 1-7, where the difference used is a “method & UE” with a processor and a memory (Tsai: Referring to FIG. 2, the wireless device 211 includes a processor 213, a memory 212) and the wordings of the claims were interchanged within the claim itself or some of the claims were presented as a combination of two or more previously presented limitations. This change does not affect the limitation of the above treated claims. Adding these phrases to the claims arid interchanging the wording did not introduce new limitations to these claims. Therefore, these claims were rejected for similar reasons as stated above.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Sulaiman Nooristany whose telephone number is (571) 270-1929. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F from 9 to 5. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, Jeffrey Rutkowski, can be reached on (571) 270-1215. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300. Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free).
/SULAIMAN NOORISTANY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2415