Prosecution Insights
Last updated: April 19, 2026
Application No. 18/686,513

USER EQUIPMENT, WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK AND METHODS

Non-Final OA §103§112
Filed
Feb 26, 2024
Examiner
NOORISTANY, SULAIMAN
Art Unit
2415
Tech Center
2400 — Computer Networks
Assignee
Sony Group Corporation
OA Round
1 (Non-Final)
77%
Grant Probability
Favorable
1-2
OA Rounds
3y 6m
To Grant
99%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 77% — above average
77%
Career Allow Rate
703 granted / 911 resolved
+19.2% vs TC avg
Strong +24% interview lift
Without
With
+24.4%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
3y 6m
Avg Prosecution
33 currently pending
Career history
944
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
6.1%
-33.9% vs TC avg
§103
51.5%
+11.5% vs TC avg
§102
19.8%
-20.2% vs TC avg
§112
14.0%
-26.0% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 911 resolved cases

Office Action

§103 §112
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 § 112 The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b): (b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention. The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph: The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention. Claims 3 & 4 “the start time” there is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim, it believes claims 3 & 4 were intended to depend on claim 2, however, appropriate correction is required. 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, 4-5, 14-15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jensen US 20190246353 in view of RANJAN US 20230269821 1. A user equipment forming a wireless communications device operating with a wireless communications network, the user equipment comprising; transceiver circuitry configured to transmit signals via a wireless access interface of the wireless communications network and configured to receive signals transmitted via the wireless access interface (Jensen: fig. 3, unit 300/340), control circuitry configured to control the transceiver circuity to transmit the signals to or receive the signals from the wireless communications network (Jensen: fig. 3, unit 104), and an energy storage device configured to provide energy to at least the transceiver circuitry for transmitting the signals to or receiving the signals from the wireless communications network (Jensen: fig. 3, unit 326/356 - energy storage device), wherein the control circuitry is configured to determine, during an idle or inactive mode (e.g., idle, sleep, standby, inactive or maintenance mode) in which the user equipment has no active connection for transmitting data to or receiving data from the wireless communications network, that an amount of energy which is available from the energy storage device will be insufficient for operating the transceiver circuitry during a blackout period (Jensen: [0105, 0308-0309] fig. 25-26, 29, unit 2912-2914 – e.g., at block 2912, the BLE bridge 104 invokes the BLE radio to enter a sleep mode and at block 2914, the BLE bridge 104 determines whether a measurement associated with a power supply satisfies a threshold), during which the transceiver circuitry cannot receive one or more signals transmitted from the wireless communications network or transmit signals to the wireless communications network (Jensen: [0105] the sleep mode or the standby mode can correspond to an example where the BLE interface 340 is disabled and/or otherwise not executing a radiofrequency operation), and Jensen merely discloses to transmit to the wireless communications network a blackout message indicating that the user equipment cannot receive one or more signals transmitted from the wireless communications network for the blackout period RANJAN further teaches to transmit to the wireless communications network a blackout message indicating that the user equipment cannot receive one or more signals transmitted from the wireless communications network for the blackout period (RANJAN: fig. 6, unit 608 [0075, 0077] an example the UE 602 may indicate to the base station 604, such as through a UE assistance information message, a proposed CDRX 608 with one or more CDRX related parameters being different from the default CDRX 606. The UE assistance information message may include a field for a DRX selection, where the UE may propose duration(s) for the DRX inactivity timer and/or the long DRX cycle within the DRX selection field. For example, the proposed CDRX 608 may have a different/adjusted (e.g., shorter) DRX inactivity timer 614 and/or a different/adjusted (e.g., longer) long CDRX timer 616) Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim inventio to include the above recited limitation into Bangolae’s invention in order to determine an optimal CDRX for its operation(s). 4. A user equipment according to claim 1, wherein the start time of the blackout period when the transceiver circuit will not be able to receive signals from the wireless communications network or to transmit signals to the wireless communications network is pre-configured (Jensen: fig. 17, unit 1404; RANJAN: [0080, 0084] configuration/update). 5. A user equipment according to claim 1, wherein the blackout message includes an indication of a duration of the blackout period when the transceiver circuit will not be able to receive signals from the wireless communications network or transmit signals to the wireless communications network (Jensen: [0105]; RANJAN: [0075, 0077] e.g., UE Assistance Information). 14. A user equipment according to claim 1, wherein the control circuitry is configured to determine that there is insufficient energy for the transceiver circuitry to receive the signals from the wireless communications network, and insufficient energy for the transceiver circuitry to transmit a response to the signals received from the wireless communications network, the blackout message including an indication of a full blackout indicating that the user equipment cannot receive signals and cannot transmit signals (Jensen: [0105]; RANJAN: [0070, 0075, 0077] no uplink and/or downlink activity). 15. A user equipment according to claim 1, wherein the control circuitry is configured to determine that there is sufficient energy which can be provided from the energy storage device to the transceiver circuitry for the transceiver circuitry to receive the signals from wireless communications network, and insufficient energy for the transceiver circuitry to transmit a response to the signals received from wireless communications network, the blackout message including an indication of a partial blackout indicating that the user equipment can receive signals but not respond to the receive signals, and to receive, during the blackout period, a paging message from the wireless communications network (Jensen: [0105]; RANJAN: [0069-0070] no uplink and/or downlink activity). Regarding claims 52, the independent claim and each dependent claim are related to the same limitation set for hereinabove in claims 1, where the difference used is a “wireless device” with a processor and a memory (Jensen: Referring to FIG. 3, the wireless device includes a processor, a memory & TX/RX) 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. Allowable Subject Matter Claim 2-3, 6-13, 16-19 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 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
Read full office action

Prosecution Timeline

Feb 26, 2024
Application Filed
Jan 30, 2026
Examiner Interview (Telephonic)
Feb 12, 2026
Non-Final Rejection — §103, §112
Apr 13, 2026
Interview Requested

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Study what changed to get past this examiner. Based on 5 most recent grants.

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Prosecution Projections

1-2
Expected OA Rounds
77%
Grant Probability
99%
With Interview (+24.4%)
3y 6m
Median Time to Grant
Low
PTA Risk
Based on 911 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allow rate.

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