DETAILED ACTION
This action is a response to an application filed on 5/11/2026 in which claims 37-46 are pending.
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 .
Specification
The title of the invention is not descriptive. A new title is required that is clearly indicative of the invention to which the claims are directed.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
Claims 37, 41 and 45 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention. The claims are generally narrative and indefinite, failing to conform with current U.S. practice. They appear to be a literal translation into English from a foreign document and are replete with grammatical and idiomatic errors.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 37, 38, 41, 42 and 45, is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Gonzalez et al. (WO 2024/208918 A1), herein Gonzalez.
As to claim 37, Gonzalez teaches a method of a terminal device, comprising:
communicating with a network device, and receiving, from the network device, a first message comprising a first indication indicating that a mobile-terminated small data transmission, MT-SDT (Gonzalez [0056], a network entity, e.g., a gNB 20, triggers an SDT procedure to transmit downlink data (MT-SDT) to a UE 10 in RRC inactive state. The network entity triggers the uplink (UL) SDT procedure, e.g., as specified in Rel-17, to transmit DL data to the UE 10 in RRC inactive state. In one example, the network entity triggers the UL SDT procedure for the purpose of DL transmission (i.e., the network entity triggers MT-SDT) by means of a downlink SDT triggering message, for example a paging message. The UE 10 initiates the SDT procedure even though there is no uplink data available for transmission in the UE’s buffer) and
if first time interval between initiation of the MT-SDT procedure and configured grant (CG) occasion for the SDT is smaller than or equal to a first threshold interval, performing CG-SDT procedure (Gonzalez [0058] As discussed above, it is proposed that a timer is used to control when the UE 10 uses the CG-SDT resources and when the UE uses the RA-SDT resource, to transmit a response in MT-SDT. For example, the timer being starting when receiving the MT-SDT triggering message (e.g., paging message), the UE 10 may use: CG-SDT resources for transmitting a response to the gNB 20 if a CG occasion occurs before the timer expires)
As to claim 41, Gonzalez teaches a terminal device, comprising:
a memory configured to store instructions (Gonzalez Fig. 1 Memory) and
a processor configured to execute the instructions to (Gonzalez Fig. 1 processor):
communicate with a network device, and receive, from the network device, a first message comprising a first indication indicating that a mobile-terminated small data transmission, MT-SDT (Gonzalez [0056], a network entity, e.g., a gNB 20, triggers an SDT procedure to transmit downlink data (MT-SDT) to a UE 10 in RRC inactive state. The network entity triggers the uplink (UL) SDT procedure, e.g., as specified in Rel-17, to transmit DL data to the UE 10 in RRC inactive state. In one example, the network entity triggers the UL SDT procedure for the purpose of DL transmission (i.e., the network entity triggers MT-SDT) by means of a downlink SDT triggering message, for example a paging message. The UE 10 initiates the SDT procedure even though there is no uplink data available for transmission in the UE’s buffer) and
if first time interval between initiation of the MT-SDT procedure and configured grant(CG) occasion for the SDT is smaller than or equal to a first threshold interval, performing CG-SDT procedure (Gonzalez [0058] As discussed above, it is proposed that a timer is used to control when the UE 10 uses the CG-SDT resources and when the UE uses the RA-SDT resource, to transmit a response in MT-SDT. For example, the timer being starting when receiving the MT-SDT triggering message (e.g., paging message), the UE 10 may use: CG-SDT resources for transmitting a response to the gNB 20 if a CG occasion occurs before the timer expires)
As to claim 45, Gonzalez teaches a method of a network device, comprising: communicating with a terminal device, and sending, to the terminal device, a first message comprising a first indication indicating that a mobile-terminated small data transmission, MT-SDT (Gonzalez [0056], a network entity, e.g., a gNB 20, triggers an SDT procedure to transmit downlink data (MT-SDT) to a UE 10 in RRC inactive state. The network entity triggers the uplink (UL) SDT procedure, e.g., as specified in Rel-17, to transmit DL data to the UE 10 in RRC inactive state. In one example, the network entity triggers the UL SDT procedure for the purpose of DL transmission (i.e., the network entity triggers MT-SDT) by means of a downlink SDT triggering message, for example a paging message. The UE 10 initiates the SDT procedure even though there is no uplink data available for transmission in the UE’s buffer) and
if first time interval between initiation of the MT-SDT procedure and configured grant(CG) occasion for the SDT is smaller than or equal to a first threshold interval, performing CG-SDT procedure (Gonzalez [0058] As discussed above, it is proposed that a timer is used to control when the UE 10 uses the CG-SDT resources and when the UE uses the RA-SDT resource, to transmit a response in MT-SDT. For example, the timer being starting when receiving the MT-SDT triggering message (e.g., paging message), the UE 10 may use: CG-SDT resources for transmitting a response to the gNB 20 if a CG occasion occurs before the timer expires)
As to claim 38, Gonzalez teaches the method of claim 37, further comprising: receiving, from the network device, a second message including the first threshold interval (Gonzalez [0063] For example, the timer value may be configured by the gNB 20 through system information or through dedicated RRC signaling. In the latter case, the dedicated RRC signaling is for example an RRC reconfiguration message or an RRC release message [0064] In some examples, the gNB 20 may determine the timer value based on e.g. the latency requirement of the MT-SDT data to be transmitted to the UE 10. For example, the gNB 20 may configure a timer value that is shorter for delay sensitive services)
Claim 42 is rejected for the same reasons stated in claim 38.
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.
Claim(s) 39, 40, 43, 44 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gonzalez and Tsai et al. (Pub. No.: 2021/0337625), herein Tsai.
As to claim 39, Gonzalez teaches the method of claim 37, further comprising:
Gonzalez does not teach
indicating, by a radio resource control layer of the terminal device to a medium access control layer of the terminal device, that the MT-SDT is triggered
determining, by the medium access control layer, whether the random access based MT- SDT or the configured grant based MT-SDT is performed for the terminal device
However Tsai does teach
indicating, by a radio resource control layer of the terminal device to a medium access control layer of the terminal device, that the MT-SDT is triggered (Tsai [0100] For example, when there is UL data received from the upper layer (e.g., RRC, SDAP, PDCP, and/or RLC) by the LCH (e.g., CCCH, DCCH, and/or DTCH), the MAC entity of the UE may determine that there is UL data available); and
determining, by the medium access control layer, whether the random access based MT- SDT or the configured grant based MT-SDT is performed for the terminal device (Tsai [0100] If there is no valid PUCCH resource, the UE may initiate an RA procedure (e.g., on an SpCell and/or a cell which UE camped on in an RRC_IDLE/RRC_INACTIVE state) [0101] It should be noted that UL resources may be considered available when the UE/MAentity has an active configuration for either type of configured uplink grants (e.g., type 1 or type 2), or when the UE/MAC entity has received a dynamic uplink grant, or when both of these conditions are met.
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Gonzalez and Tsai, because Tsai teaches us [0103] Based on the recent 3GPP NR releases (e.g., R-15 and/or R-16), when a UE is in an RRC_INACTIVE state, if the UE needs to transmit UL data, the UE may need to resume its connection (e.g., move to an RRC_CONNECTED state). To do so, the UE may initiate an RRC connection resume procedure and/or initiate a transmission of the RRCResumeRequest message. The RRCResumeRequest message may be transmitted via a logical channel (e.g., CCCH). From the UE/MAC entity's perspective, if there is UL data received by a LCH (and none of other logical channels contains any available UL data), the UE may trigger a BSR. Since there is no UL resource is available in the RRC_INACTIVE state, the UE may trigger an SR. As such, when there is no valid PUCCH resource in the RRC_INACTIVE state, the UE may initiate an RA procedure. Consequently, the UE may use the UL resource of the RA procedure to transmit the RRCResumeRequest message. In some implementations, the UL resource may be an MSG A PUSCH. In some implementations, the UL resource may be received in a RAR.
Claim 43 is rejected for the same reasons stated in claim 39.
As to claim 40, Gonzalez teaches the method of claim 37, further comprising:
determining whether a configured grant resource is available for small data transmission, SDT; in accordance with a determination that the configured grant resource is available for SDT, determining that the configured grant based MT-SDT is performed for the terminal device; and in accordance with a determination that no configured grant resource is available for SDT, determining that the random access based MT-SDT is performed for the terminal device (Gonzalez [0058] As discussed above, it is proposed that a timer is used to control when the UE 10 uses the CG-SDT resources and when the UE uses the RA-SDT resource, to transmit a response in MT-SDT. For example, the timer being starting when receiving the MT-SDT triggering message (e.g., paging message), the UE 10 may use: CG-SDT resources for transmitting a response to the gNB 20 if a CG occasion occurs before the timer expires, RA-SDT resources for transmitting a response to the gNB 20 if a CG occasion does not occur before the timer expires)
Claim 44 is rejected for the same reasons stated in claim 40.
Claim(s) 46 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gonzalez and Zhang et al. (CN 109150444B) (translated), herein Zhang,
As to claim 46, Gonzalez teaches the method of claim 45,
Gonzalez does not teach
further comprising: sending, to the network device, a second message including the first threshold interval.
However Zhang does teach
further comprising: sending, to the network device, a second message including the first threshold interval (Zhang Claim 1 The transmitting end device is a terminal device, and the method further includes: sending feedback or a suggested setting threshold)
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Gonzalez and Zhang, because Zhang teaches claim 1 The transmitting end device is a network device, and the setting threshold of the vacant resource unit is confirmed by the network device according to the threshold value fed back or suggested by the terminal device, and the confirmed threshold is indicated to the the terminal equipment;
Conclusion
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AYANAH S. GEORGE
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2467
/AYANAH S GEORGE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2467
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