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 § 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) 1-7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Aldana US 20160249165 in view of Yoon US 20200137676
1. An electronic device, comprising: a communication circuit; memory storing at least one instruction; and at least one processor operatively connected with the communication circuit and the memory (Aldana: fig. 15), wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute the at least one instruction to cause the electronic device to:
identify whether a condition for sharing ranging information in a distance-based service is satisfied (Aldana: [0072, 0029] mobile device 100 may be capable of computing a position fix based, at least in part, on signals acquired from local transmitters (e.g., WLAN access points positioned at known locations). For example, mobile devices may obtain a position fix by measuring ranges to three or more indoor terrestrial wireless access points which are positioned at known locations. Such ranges may be measured, for example, by obtaining a MAC ID address from signals received from such access points and obtaining range measurements to the access points by measuring one or more characteristics of signals received from such access points such as, for example, received signal strength (RSSI) or RTT…);
transmit, via the communication circuit, a ranging request message requesting to share the ranging information, based on identifying that the condition for sharing the ranging information is satisfied (Aldana: fig. 3, unit 302 [0024, 0035-0038] a first STA may transmit a fine timing measurement request message to a second STA to initiate a process for an exchange of messages or frames enabling the first STA to obtain an RTT or TOF measurement…); and
receive, from a first external electronic device, via the communication circuit, a ranging response message comprising the ranging information in response to the ranging request message satisfied (Aldana: fig. 3 [0038] In a particular implementation, FTM range report message 302 may be transmitted according to IEEE std. 8.4.2.20.19. Mobile device STA1 may then have one or more message exchanges 308 (e.g., FTM request messages and FTM messages) with access point AP1, access point AP2 and access point AP3 to obtain measurements such as, for example RTT or TOA, just to provide a couple of examples. Mobile device STA1 may then transmit an FTM range report message 308 including, for example, parameters indicative of ranges to access points AP1, AP2 or AP3, or any combination thereof (e.g., measured ranges, RTT measurements, TOA measurements or other measurements indicative of range) as set forth in IEEE std. 802.11 section 8.4.2.21.18).
Aldana merely discloses the term “processor”
Yoon teaches the term processor (Yoon: [0505-0506] processor)
Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include the above recited limitation into Aldana’s invention in order to perform a request for measuring a second transmission-reception (TX-RX) round while continuously performing the DS-TWR ranging operation, as taught by Yoon.
2. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute the at least one instruction to cause the electronic device to: identify that the condition for sharing the ranging information is satisfied based on a ranging operation between the electronic device and a second external electronic device failing (Yoon: [0242-0243] successful but the distance measurement fails).
3. The electronic device of claim 2, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute the at least one instruction to cause the electronic device to: identify that the condition for sharing the ranging information is satisfied based on a first ranging response message not being received from the second external electronic device in response to a first ranging request message transmitted to the second external electronic device (Yoon: [0242-0257] fail in both an exchange of Next Ranging Duration 1553 and distance measurement).
4. The electronic device of claim 2, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to execute the at least one instruction to cause the electronic device to: identify that the condition for sharing the ranging information is satisfied, based on failing to obtain an opportunity to transmit the first ranging request message in a ranging period in which it is possible to transmit the first ranging request message to the second external electronic device, or based on failing to obtain an opportunity to receive the first ranging response message in a monitoring period in which it is possible to receive the first ranging response message from the second external electronic device in response to the first ranging request message transmitted to the second external electronic device (Yoon: fig. 14-15 [0242-0257] fail in both an exchange of Next Ranging Duration and distance measurement).
5. The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the ranging request message comprises at least one of an address indicating that it is a broadcast message, or an identifier (ID) indicating that it is the ranging request message requesting to share the ranging information (Aldana: [0029, 0030, 0078] MAC ID address).
6. The electronic device of claim 2, wherein the ranging response message comprises at least one of an address indicating that it is a broadcast message, an identifier (ID) indicating that it is a response message to the first ranging request message, or ranging information between the first external electronic device and the second external electronic device (Aldana: [0029, 0030, 0078] MAC ID address).
7. The electronic device of claim 6, wherein the ranging information between the first external electronic device and the second external electronic device comprises at least one of estimated time of flight (ToF) between the first external electronic device and the second external electronic device, information indicating a ranging role of each of the first external electronic device and the second external electronic device, information indicating a ranging slot in which a ranging operation between the first external electronic device and the second external electronic device is to be performed, or an ID of each of a second ranging request message and a second ranging response message exchanged between the first external electronic device and the second external electronic device (Aldana: [0024-0025, 0029, 0036-0037] ToF).
Claim(s) 8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Aldana US 20160249165 in view of Yoon US 20200137676 further in view of Harvey US 20210352434
8. The electronic device of claim 2, wherein a first service role of the electronic device comprises a tag which initiates the distance-based service, and a first ranging role of the electronic device comprises a requester which initiates a ranging operation and a questioner which requests to share the ranging information, wherein a second service role of the first external electronic device comprises the tag, and a second ranging role of the first external electronic device comprises the requester and an answerer which shares the ranging information, and wherein a third service role of the second external electronic device comprises a node which responds to the tag, and a third ranging role of the second external electronic device comprises the requester and a responder which responds to the requester (Harvey: [0030-0031, 0036, 0068-0069]).
Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include the above recited limitation into Aldana’s invention in order to provide for a process for discovering nearby wireless devices (e.g., wearable tags or badges), pairing with discovered wireless devices, and periodically performing a device-to-device ranging operation with each of the paired wireless devices, as taught by Harvey.
Regarding claims 9-20, the independent claim and each dependent claim are related to the same limitation set for hereinabove in claims 1-8, where the difference used is a “apparatus” with a processor and a memory 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.
Remark:
The examiner stresses that the claims are too broad and require detail or specialization of the steps as recited in the claims. Alone and as claimed, the limitations are too open.
Examiner has cited particular portions of the references as applied to each claim limitation for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings of the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested from the applicant in preparing responses, to fully consider the references in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the Examiner.
In addition, an interview could expedite the prosecution.
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
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