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 .
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, 9 and 15 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.
Claims 3, 9 and 15 recite the limitation "a reference SL format" in line 2. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
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.
Claims 1, 7 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over CHEN et al PG PUB 2025/0220642 in view of Jose et al PG PUB 2020/0154480.
Re Claims 1, 7 and 13, CHEN et al teaches a UE (at least one memory and processor) for performing (detecting) a LBTs on a preconfigured sidelink resource pool (a set of resource blocks) [0085 0089] wherein the LBT is performed based on a reference SL format [0119]; the UE performs counting (a counter) of the successful LBT attempts (success for one of the at least one LBT) on the preconfigured sidelink resource pool (the set of RBs) and determining whether the LBT success rate is greater than or equal to a threshold (a predefined threshold), if so, allocating the sidelink resources for SL transmission.
CHEN et al fails to explicitly teach to “cancel the consistent LBT failure”. However, Jose et al teaches in figure 13, step 1350, the UE determining whether a consistent LBT failure event has reached threshold value [0074].
By combining the teachings, when the LBT success rate, in CHEN et al, is greater than the threshold and the consistent LBT failure, in Jose et al, event has not reached the threshold, one skilled in the art would have been motivated to have cancelled the consistent LBT failure to initiate recovery of the SL transmission. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled in the art to have combined the teachings.
Claims 2-4, 8-10 and 14-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over CHEN et al PG PUB 2025/0220642 in view of Jose et al PG PUB 2020/0154480 as applied to Claim 1 above and further in view of LIN PG PUB 2025/0220691.
Re Claims 2, 8 and 14, CHEN et al in view of Jose et al fails to explicitly teach “the reference SL format is comprised of a predefined CAPS. However, LIN teaches for Type 1 LBT channel access, depending on the CAPC level (a predefined) of a type of data packets, a range of the required LBT sensing time length is determined [0023]. By combining the teachings, the “reference SL format” can be configured to determine the exact LBT sensing time length to be adaptive to the to the different type of data packets. One skilled in the art would have been motivated to have determined the reference SL format based on the predefined CAPC to maintain QoS of the type of data packets. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled to have combined the teachings.
Re Claims 3, 4, 9, 10, 15 and 16, LIN teaches the contention window size (a time window) is set to the minimum value for every CAPC or fixed based on the ACK feedback [0055].
Claims 19 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jose et al PG PUB 2020/0154480 in view of PARK et al PG PUB 2026/0032719.
Re Claims 19 and 20, Jose et al teaches in figure 5, a UE (at least one memory and processor) detecting a LBT failure on a set of RBs and based on counter threshold being reached, declares a consistent LBT failure [0044]. Jose et al fails to explicitly teach “notifying at least one peer UE….the consistent LBT failure;”. However, PARK et al teaches in figure 17, triggering a UE to transmit sidelink inter-UE Coordination Information if LBT success indication has been received [0315] wherein the IUC can indicated whether the LBT failure event has been canceled or declared. By combining the teachings, the IUC can be incorporated in the Jose et al to indicate the status of the LBT. One skilled in the art would have been motivated to have configured the IUC into the teaching of Jose et al to control flow. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled to have combined the teachings.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-6, 11-12 and 17-18 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Re Claims 5, 11 and 18, prior art fails to teach the time window begins a predefined time offset after having declared consistent LBT failure as claimed.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANDREW LEE whose telephone number is (571)272-3130. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:30AM-5PM ET.
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/ANDREW LEE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2475
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