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 .
This action is response to the application filed on 03/05/2024. Claims 8, 14, 22, 24-31 are cancelled. Claims 1-7, 9-13, 15-21 and 23 are pending and herein considered.
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority based on an application 202111042736.1 filed with the Chinese Patent on September 7th, 2021 and PCT/CN2022/116760 filed on September 2nd, 2022.
Oath/Declaration
The receipt of oath/declaration is acknowledged.
Drawings
The drawings were received on 03/05/2024. These drawings are reviewed and accepted by the Examiner.
Specification
The lengthy specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS), submitted on 08/27/2024, is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CRR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claims 3, 7, 17 and 21 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Regarding claims 3, 7, 17 and 21, the term "and/or" is unclear whether the respective set of recited features are to be interpreted as mutual exclusive or not, and shall give on negative recited claimed limitation; and the resulting claim does not clearly set forth the metes and bounds of the patent protection desired. These dependent claims may cause the “or” in the corresponding independent claims to be essentially interpreted as an “and” which may be confusing. Examiner suggest clarifying the conjunctions used and/or the claim language. Appropriate correction is required.
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 of this title, 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 set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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.
Claims 1-3, 9, 15-17 and 23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cheng et al. (U.S 2024/0015637) in view of NPL- "Connection establishment for L2 UE-to-Network Relay," 3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #113bis electronic, R2-2102779, Online, April 12 - 20, 2021, Agenda Item: 8.7.4.1 , Source: MediaTek Inc; hereinafter “MediaTek- R2-2102779”.
For claim 1:
Chen discloses an information processing method performed by a relay User Equipment (UE), the information processing method comprising:
obtaining, by the relay UE, association information related to an on-demand System Information (SI) request (see Cheng, at least paragraph [0097]; [0141]; the UE 115-e may transmit (e.g., relay or forward) the on-demand SIB received from the base station 105-b to the UE 115-d. As such, the UE 115-d may receive and obtain the requested on-demand system information based on direct signaling forwarding between the UE 115-d and the base station 105-b using the UE 115-e),
the association information comprising first association information that is generated when the on-demand SI request is triggered by the relay UE (see Cheng, at least paragraph [0034]; transmitting, to the first UE, signaling triggering the establishing of the relay connection with the second UE and transmitting, to the first UE, and paragraph [0098]; the first UE 115 may transmit the request for the on-demand system information via different information elements, which may trigger different acquisition procedures between the second UE 115 and the base station 105, based on whether the first UE 115 is in a connected state, an idle state, or an inactive state); and
transmitting, by the relay UE, the association information to a network device (see Cheng, at least paragraph [0102]; the UE 115-b may communicate with the base station 105-a via the UE 115-a (e.g., the UE 115-a may function as a relay UE 115) and the relaying network between the UE 115-b and the base station 105-a may function as a standalone sidelink based UE-to-network and UE-to-UE relay.
Chen does not explicitly disclose on-demand SI request by the relay UE.
MediaTek- R2-2102779, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses what Cheng fails: on-demand system information request and Relay UE forwards this message to the base station (see MediaTek- R2-2102779, at least section 2, 2.1, 2.2).
Therefore, it would have been obvious statement before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a system comprises a method as taught by MediaTek- R2-2102779. The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks improving where the procedure for bi-directional configuration could be similar to how bi-directional sidelink radio bearer is configured between two UE in NR-V2X. RAN2 needs to decide the exact approach.
For claims 2 and 16:
In addition to rejection in claim 2 and 16, Cheng- MediaTek- R2-2102779 further discloses wherein the first association information comprises one or more of:
first sub-association information that is generated when the on-demand SI request is voluntarily triggered by the relay UE and on-demand SI is requested successfully; second sub-association information that is generated when the on-demand SI request is voluntarily triggered by the relay UE and the on-demand SI is requested unsuccessfully; third sub-association information that is generated when the relay UE plans to request for, but has not yet requested for, the on-demand SI; fourth sub-association information that is generated when the on-demand SI request is passively triggered by the relay UE and the on-demand SI is requested successfully; fifth sub-association information that is generated when the on-demand SI request is passively triggered by the relay UE and the on-demand SI is requested unsuccessfully; or sixth sub-association information that is generated when the on-demand SI request is passively triggered by the relay UE and the on-demand SI has not yet been requested, wherein the on-demand SI request triggered by the relay UE passively comprises an on-demand SI request triggered passively upon the receipt of an SI request message from a remote UE (see Cheng, at least paragraph [0148]-[0151]; the UE 115-f may receive the E-SIB according to a configured periodicity that is received from the UE 115-g or the base station 105-c or pre-configured at the UE 115:fln some examples, the UE 115-:f may acquire or decode the E-SIB subsequent to receiving the discovery message and prior to selecting to establish the relay connection with the UE 115-g. In some other examples, the UE 115:f may acquire or decode the E-SIB subsequent to selecting to establish the relay connection with the UE 115-g).
For claims 3 and 17:
In addition to rejection in claim 3 and 17, Cheng- MediaTek- R2-2102779 further discloses wherein the association information comprises one or more of:
a type of requested SI (see Cheng, at least abstract; the first UE may initiate on-demand SIB acquisition after establishment of the relay connection and based on a connection type of the first UE); the quantity of requests; a type of a UE requesting for the SI, the type of the UE comprising a relay UE and/or a remote UE (see Cheng, at least paragraph [0119]; the UE 115-b may transmit an indication of requestSIBx in an RRCReconfigurationSidelink message to the UE 115-a for an on-demand SIB (e.g., an on-demand "SIBx"); a quantity of UEs requesting for the SI; or Identities (IDs) of UEs requesting for the SI.
For claim 9:
For claim 9, claim 9 is directed to an information processing method performed by a remote User Equipment (UE) which has similar scope as claim 1. Therefore, claim 9 remains un-patentable for the same reasons.
Chen discloses an information processing method performed by a remote User Equipment (UE), the information processing method comprising:
obtaining, by the remote UE, second association information that is generated when an on-demand System Information (SI) request is triggered by the remote UE on its own initiative (see Cheng, at least paragraph [0097]; [0102]; the UE 115-b may function as or be an example of a remote UE 115 and may attempt to communicate with the base station 105-a via the UE 115-a; and transmitting, by the remote UE, the second association information to a network device or a relay UE (see Cheng, at least paragraph [0123]; [0125]; the remote UE 302 may communicate with the relay UE 304.
Chen does not explicitly disclose on-demand SI request by the remote UE.
MediaTek- R2-2102779, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses what Cheng fails: a Remote UE in RRC_IDLE/RRC_INACTIVE has on-demand system information to acquire and sends out RRCSystemlnfoRequest (see MediaTek- R2-2102779, at least section 2, 2.1, 2.4; configuration over PC5 for the Relay UE to transmit the SRB0 response to Remote UE can be same or different from the configuration for the Remote UE to send SRB0 to Relay UE).
Therefore, it would have been obvious statement before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a system comprises a method as taught by MediaTek- R2-2102779. The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks improving where the procedure for bi-directional configuration could be similar to how bi-directional sidelink radio bearer is configured between two UE in NR-V2X. RAN2 needs to decide the exact approach.
For claim 15:
For claim 15, claim 15 is directed to a relay User Equipment (UE) which has similar scope as claim 1. Therefore, claim 15 remains un-patentable for the same reasons.
For claim 23:
For claim 23, claim 23 is directed to a remote User Equipment (UE)which has similar scope as claim 9. Therefore, claim 23 remains un-patentable for the same reasons.
Claims 4 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cheng et al. (U.S 2024/0015637) in view of NPL- "Connection establishment for L2 UE-to-Network Relay," 3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #113bis electronic, R2-2102779, Online, April 12 - 20, 2021, Agenda Item: 8.7.4.1 , Source: MediaTek Inc; hereinafter “MediaTek- R2-2102779” further in view of Chang et al. (U.S 2022/0264280)
(Note: For citation purposes, hereinafter, Chang et al. (KR-10-2021-0020170) filed on 02.15.2021 AND (KR-10-2021-0042994) filed on 04-01.2021, which qualifies as prior art date).
For claims 4 and 18:
In addition to rejection in claim 4 and 18, Cheng- MediaTek- R2-2102779 further discloses what contain in claim 1, wherein subsequent to obtaining the association information related to the on-demand SI request, the information processing method further comprises: transmitting a first notification message to the network device when the relay UE is in a connected state (see Cheng, at least paragraph [0019]; [0035]; [0253]; the connection state of the first UE being a connected state), but does not explicitly disclose the first notification message is used to notify the network device that the association information is stored in the relay UE.
Chang, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses what Cheng fails: the relay terminal may receive the request for transmission of system information from the remote terminal. Then, the relay terminal may transmit system information to the remote terminal in response thereto. Meanwhile, each of the remote terminal and the relay terminal may perform the subsequent sidelink connection establishment procedure using the stored system information (see Cheng, at least paragraph [0097]- [0098]; [0133]; [0135]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious statement before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a system comprises a method as taught by Chang. The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks improving where the operations of the relay terminal receiving the paging message may be increased.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-7, 10-13 and 19-21 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in all independents form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims and if rewritten or amended to overcome any objection claims set forth in this Office action.
Conclusion
The prior arts made or record and not relied upon are considered pertinent to applicant's disclosures. Lin et al. (U.S 2022/0095411), discloses method for remote UE 501 transmits a SRB0 message (e.g., RRCSystemInfoReq) or a message with the same purpose to relay UE 502, via a new or existing PC5-RRC message/SL SRB for on-demand system information request.
Liao et al. (U.S 11,653,286), discloses the relay UE receives a connection request message from a remote UE over a corresponding sidelink. The relay UE transmits a connection response message to the remote UE such that a higher layer connection between the serving base station and the remote UE is established through the relay UE.
Paladugu et al. (U.S 2021/0219385), discloses a request to relay data between the remote UE and the network entity is received from the remote UE via the inter-working function device.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LAN HUONG TRUONG whose telephone number is (571)270-5829. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri (7:30AM-5:00PM).
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, RICKY NGO can be reached on 571-272-3139. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Lan-Huong Truong/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit: 2464
03/20/2026