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 .
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 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.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-15 filed on August 29, 2024 are pending.
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d) and certified copy of paper required by 37 CFR 1.55 is received.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on October 17, 2024 and April 23, 2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner and an initialed and dated copy of the Applicant’s IDS form 1449 is attached to the instant Office Action.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 11-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because claims 11-15 recite a computer program, wherein the computer program product comprises computer program code, and in response to the computer program code being executed by a processor of a computer. Computer program that do not have a physical or tangible form, such as information (often referred to as "data per se") or a computer program per se (often referred to as "software per se") when claimed as a product without any structural recitations that are not directed to the statutory categories, see MPEP 2106.03.
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) 1-15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Myung et al.(US 11,177,830 B2, hereinafter "Myung") in view of Yu (US 2019/0280719 A1, hereinafter "Yu").
Regarding claim 1, Myung discloses a network coding method, comprising:
obtaining a data packet group in to-be-sent data packets, wherein the to-be-sent data packets comprise a plurality of data packet groups, and each data packet group of the plurality of data packet groups comprises a plurality of data packets (Myung, Col. 13 line 8-9 Partitioning the block size (Z) to be supported into a plurality of block size groups (or sets) ; Col. 15 line 10-14 the input bits may be segmented to have a length equal to or less than a preconfigured value if the number of input bits is larger than the preconfigured value);
processing the data packet group based on a generator matrix of cyclic shift network coding, thereby generating encoded data packets, wherein an element comprised in the generator matrix is a corresponding element in a binary vector field (Myung, Col. 7 line 34-37 it generates a codeword having a length of eight, a code generated through H1 denotes an LDPC code, and each column corresponds to eight encoded bits; Col. 13 line 2-7 since an exponent matrix or LDPC sequence corresponds to the circular shift value of bits corresponding to the block size (Z), the exponent matrix may be variously named, such as a shift matrix, a shift value matrix, a shift sequence, a shift value sequence); and
sending the encoded data packets to a receiving end (Myung, Col. 15 line 8-9
may transmit a result of encoding to a reception device).
Myung discloses binary vector field but does not explicitly disclose converted from a multi-element field.
Yu from the same field of endeavor discloses generating encoded data packets, wherein an element comprised in the generator matrix is a corresponding element in a binary vector field converted from a multi-element field (Yu, [0065-71] When the base matrix Hb is expanded, the element “0” in the base matrix Hb is permutated by using a unit matrix, the element “−1” is permutated by using an all-zero matrix, and cyclic permutation is performed, based on the unit matrix, on an element that is not “0” or “−1”. For example, a 2nd element in row 2 is 2, and it is assumed that the actual expansion factor z is equal to 3. In this case, a corresponding permutation matrix may be obtained by cyclically shifting the unit matrix rightward or leftward twice).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified LDPC coding disclosed by Myung and convert LDPC coding disclosed by Yu with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve encoding performance and reliable transmission (Yu, abstract).
Regarding claim 2, Myung discloses wherein the generator matrix is generated by expanding a low density parity check (LDPC) code basis matrix (Myung, Col. 34 line 21-24 a quasi-cyclic LDPC code having a block of size of Z, the parity-check matrix is actually and easily extendable to a case in which 8*Z variable nodes and Z check nodes are formed).
Regarding claim 3, Myung does not explicitly disclose receiving a retransmission sequence number from the receiving end; and
sending a first encoded data packet corresponding to the retransmission sequence number to the receiving end.
Yu from the same field of endeavor discloses receiving a retransmission sequence number from the receiving end (Yu, [0059] a sequence generated after the information bit sequence Sb is encoded by using the LDPC matrix. SM represents a modulated symbol sequence, and SR is a re-modulated symbol sequence to be retransmitted); and
sending a first encoded data packet corresponding to the retransmission sequence number to the receiving end (Yu, [0143] the transmit end performs retransmission, until decoding performed by the receive end succeeds or a quantity of retransmission times reaches a preset threshold).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified data segmenting disclosed by Myung and retransmission coding disclosed by Yu with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve encoding performance and reliable transmission (Yu, abstract).
Regarding claim 5, Myung discloses sending a plurality of encoded data packets corresponding to the plurality of data packet groups to the receiving end in response to processing by the generator matrix each of the plurality of data packet groups (Myung, Col. 15 line 1-9 The transmission device 400 may determine necessary parameters (for example, an input bit length, a modulation and code rate (ModCod), a parameter for zero padding (or shortening), the code rate, information word, or codeword length of the LDPC code, a parameter for interleaving, a parameter for repetition, puncturing, etc., a modulation scheme, and the like), may encode input bits based on the determined parameters, and may transmit a result of encoding to a reception device 500).
Regarding claims 6-15, these claims recite "a network coding apparatus" and "a computer program product" that disclose similar steps as recited by the method of claims 1-5, thus are rejected with the same rationale applied against claims 1-5 as presented above.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LUNA WEISSBERGER whose telephone number is (571)272-3315. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00am-5:30pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jeffrey Rutkowski can be reached at (571)270-1215. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/LUNA WEISSBERGER/Examiner, Art Unit 2415
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