Response to Amendment
1. This office action is responsive to communication(s) filed on 3/6/2026.
2. Claims 1-18 and 24-27 are presented for examination.
Claims 19-23 are withdrawn from further consideration. See a previous Office action dated 1/23/2026.
3. Applicant's arguments with respect to the newly added limitations have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejections as follows:
Claim Rejections - 35 U.S.C. § 103
4. The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
5. Claims 1-4 and 24-25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Oh US Pub. No. 20230326511 (previous cited) in view of Wang et al. UP Pub. No. 20210158853.
As per claims 1-2 and 24-25, Fig. 1 and 3 of Oh are directed to an apparatus comprising: a memory device (200) comprising: at least one bank (bank 310, Fig. 3, par. 73) comprising multiple rows (Fig. 4) of memory cells, each row of the multiple rows configured to store an activation count within a subset of the memory cells (abstract); circuitry (Fig. 3) configured to perform an array counter update procedure to update the activation count corresponding to an activated row within the at least one bank (par. 72); and control circuitry (210), configured to: receive an external precharge command (by CMD) from a memory controller; and initiate precharging (IPRE, form 210) of the activated row after a time interval (tACU and tCCD_L_WR, Fig. 23, par. 228) has elapsed since the reception of the external precharge command, the time interval being sufficient to enable the array counter update procedure (read-update-write, par, 228, Fig. 23) to complete prior to initiating the precharging (IPRE, Fig. 23) the activated row.
Oh fails to disclose receive an external precharge command from a memory controller; cause the circuitry to perform the array counter update procedure responsive to reception of the external precharge command. However, Fig. 3 and paragraphs 9 and 34 of Wang disclose receive an external precharge command (PRE, S42, par. 34) from a memory controller (113, par. 17); cause the circuitry to perform the array counter update procedure responsive to reception of the external precharge command. It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time invention was made to modify Oh’s memory device which utilizes the extern precharge command before the array counter update as taught by Wang in order to precharge the memory bank as required (par. 34). Also see Fig. 5A or 5C of Wand for precharging all banks before the ACT issues.
As per claim 3, Fig. 23 of Oh discloses wherein the control circuitry is configured to determine that the time interval has elapsed based on a clock signal (CK_t).
As per claim 4, a paragraph of Oh discloses wherein the control circuitry is configured to determine that the time interval has elapsed based on a delay that is independent of a clock signal.
Allowable Subject matter
6. Claims 5-18 and 26-27 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.
7. The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: See a previous Office action.
Response to Arguments
8. Applicant's arguments with respect to the newly added limitations have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejections as set forth in the rejection above.
For the above reasons, it is believed that the rejections should be sustained. Feature of an invention not found in the claims can be given no patentable weight in distinguishing the claimed invention over the prior art.
9. Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a). See MPEP ' 706.07(a). Applicants are reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for response to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the date of this action. In the event a first response 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 extension fee pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event will the statutory period for response expire later than SIX MONTHS from the date of this final action.
10. When responding to the office action, Applicants are advised to provide the examiner with the line numbers and page numbers in the application and/or references cited to assist the examiner to locate the appropriate paragraphs.
11. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to HOAI V HO whose telephone number is (571)272-1777. The examiner can normally be reached 7:00 AM -- 5:30 PM from Thursday and Friday of the first week of a bi-week and Tuesday and Wednesday of the second week.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Amir Zarabian can be reached on (571) 272-1852. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is (571)-273-8300.
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/HOAI V HO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2827
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