DETAILED ACTION
Claim(s) 1-20 are presented for examination.
Claim(s) 1 and 6-12 are amended.
Claim(s) 13-20 are new.
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 .
Priority
As required by M.P.E.P.201.14(c), acknowledgement is made to applicant’s claim for priority based on application(s) PCT/CN2019/085181 submitted on April 30th, 2019.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) (IDS’) submitted on November 22nd, 2024; January 9th, 2025; January 14th, 2025; November 3rd, 2025 and February 3rd, 2026 follow the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Specification
Applicant’s amendment to the specification of the disclosure filed September 25th, 2024 is considered.
The abstract of the disclosure is objected to because it contains a legal phraseology “comprises …” in line 7. The form and legal phraseology often used in patent claims, such as "means" and "said, "should be avoided. Correction is required. See MPEP § 608.01(b).
Claim Objections
Claim(s) 1-20 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1 recites a machine claim, “A wireless station …”, and the list of devices (i.e. a processor) in the preamble. The body of the claim recites the action steps: “allocate ..., puncturing … etc.” performed by the wireless station.
For clarity and placing the claim into a proper machine claim, it is suggested to replace “A wireless station” with “A wireless station comprising:” so that the aforementioned list of devices, are comprised by the wireless station, which are performing these actions/steps (see MPEP 2106.03, section I1 ; MPEP 2173.05(p), section II2).
Claim 1 further recites “and/or” in line 8. For clarity and consistency, it is suggested to use words (i.e., and, or, etc.) without the slash “/”.
Claim 13 recites a similar limitation.
Claim(s) 2-12 and 14-20 are also being objected for being dependent on an objected base claim as set forth above.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 U.S.C. § 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1-4, 6-8, 12-16 and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over SON et al. (US 2018/0302858 A1) hereinafter “Son” in view of Yang et al. (US 2016/0302200 A1) hereinafter “Yang”.
Regarding Claims 1 and 13,
Son discloses a wireless station for resource allocation [see fig. 3, pg. 4, ¶71 lines 1-6, a station “100”], the wireless station comprising a processor configured to [see fig. 3, pg. 4, ¶71 lines 1-6, a station “100” including a processor “110” implemented to]:
allocate a non-contiguous multiple resource unit (MRU) [see fig. 30, pgs. 19-20, ¶214 lines 1-8, in a signaling method of non-contiguous channel allocation, whether or not an arbitrary resource unit “504” is assigned to a user is signaled via a user field “424” of the HE-SIG-B];
wherein the non-contiguous MRU is defined in a bandwidth of a channel [see fig. 30, pgs. 19-20, ¶214 lines 1-8, an OFDMA-based DL MU PPDU includes resource units up to nine within a 20 MHz bandwidth, each of which consists of 26 subcarriers];
wherein the channel comprises a plurality of resource units (RUs) [see fig. 30, pgs. 19-20, ¶214 lines 8-15, in this case, data is transmitted through only eight resource units among the nine RUs, and data is not transmitted through one resource unit]; and
wherein the non-contiguous MRU is defined based on non-punctured RUs after puncturing one or more of the RUs of the channel [see fig. 30, pg. 20, ¶218 lines 15-25, the bandwidth field of the HE-SIG-A indexes puncturing of the S20 channel, and puncturing of at least one of two channels of the S40 channel, respectively].
Although Son discloses the non-contiguous MRU is defined based on non-punctured RUs after puncturing one or more of the RUs of the channel, Son does not explicitly teach the non-contiguous MRU is defined by “aggregating two or more non-adjacent RUs of the channel”.
Yang discloses a method for resource allocation [see fig. 9, pg. 10, ¶127 lines 1-8, a method used to allocate and bond contiguous or non-contiguous resource allocations to one or more wireless devices], the method [see fig. 9, pg. 10, ¶127 lines 1-8, the method] comprising:
allocating [see fig. 9: Step “910”, pg. 10, ¶128 lines 1-10, allocating, or receiving allocation of], by a wireless station [see fig. 9: Step “910”, pg. 10, ¶128 lines 1-10, by a wireless device], a non-contiguous multiple resource unit (MRU) [see fig. 9: Step “910”, pg. 10, ¶128 lines 1-10, at least a portion of a first sub-band of a channel and at least a portion of a second sub-band of the channel for concurrent use by the communication device];
wherein the non-contiguous MRU is defined in a bandwidth of a channel [see pg. 11, ¶131 lines 1-9, for non-contiguous channel bonding (meaning there is a null/nulls in the whole transmission bandwidth), different tone plans are used for different sub-bands];
wherein the channel comprises a plurality of resource units (RUs) [see pg. 11, ¶132 lines 1-6, multiple RUs assigned to the same user are either contiguous or non-contiguous within an otherwise contiguous sub-band]; and
wherein the non-contiguous MRU is defined based on non-punctured RUs after puncturing one or more of the RUs of the channel and/or is defined by aggregating two or more non-adjacent RUs of the channel [see pg. 11, ¶137 lines 1-16, the method includes creating a guard band by puncturing one or more data tones next to a null sub-band of the channel such that sub-band boundaries can be respected. In various embodiments, the null sub-band is not adjacent to a set of direct current (DC) tones for the channel, the method further includes puncturing an entire 26-tone allocation unit].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide the non-contiguous MRU is defined by “aggregating two or more non-adjacent RUs of the channel” as taught by Yang in the system of Son for improving communication efficiency in wireless networks [see Yang, pg. 1, ¶5 lines 1-9].
Regarding Claims 2 and 14,
The combined system of Son and Yang discloses the wireless station according to claim 1.
Son further discloses wherein the RUs are sub-channels [see pg. 7, ¶95 lines 1-4, in the non-legacy wireless LAN system, subcarriers of a specific number, for example, 26, 52, or 106 tones are used as a resource unit (RU) for a subchannel-based access in a channel of 20 MHz band].
Regarding Claims 3 and 15,
The combined system of Son and Yang discloses the wireless station according to claim 2.
Son further discloses wherein the channel comprises one, two, three or four 80 MHz segments, and each 80MHz segment comprises four 20 MHz sub-channels [see pg. 10, ¶129 lines 1-11, the bandwidth field of the HE MU PPDU consists of 3 bits and indicates one of 20 MHz, 40 MHz, 80 MHz, 160 MHz (including 80+80 MHz), and predetermined non-contiguous bands].
Regarding Claims 4 and 16,
The combined system of Son and Yang discloses the wireless station according to claim 1.
Son further discloses wherein the RUs each comprise a plurality of contiguous frequency tones [see pg. 12, ¶143 lines 1-17, the specific resource unit includes a resource unit (RU) having a bandwidth of a multiple of 20 MHz channels, i.e., 242-tone RU, 484-tone RU, 996-tone RU, and the like].
Regarding Claims 6 and 18,
The combined system of Son and Yang discloses the wireless station according to claim 1. Son further discloses wherein: the non-contiguous MRU comprises one 26-tone RU and one 52-tone RU [see pg. 2, ¶21 lines 1-3, the specific resource unit is at least one of a 26-tone resource unit, a 52-tone resource unit, and a 106-tone resource unit].
Regarding Claims 7 and 19,
The combined system of Son and Yang discloses the wireless station according to claim 1. Son further discloses wherein the non-contiguous MRU comprises at least two contiguous and/or non-contiguous parts [see pg. 18, ¶200 lines 1-3, the non-contiguous channel allocation information is indicated via the RA field of the HE-SIG-B].
Regarding Claim 8,
The combined system of Son and Yang discloses the wireless station according claim 1. Son further discloses wherein the wireless station is further configured to:
receive a packet from a wireless network device utilizing the MRU [see pg. 18, ¶197 lines 16-22, a receiver (e.g., a STA) receives the wireless packet and obtains the non-contiguous channel allocation information from the received packet].
Regarding Claims 12 and 20,
The combined system of Son and Yang discloses the wireless station according to claim 1. Son further discloses wherein the wireless station is a non-access point (non-AP) station of a wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) network [see fig. 3, pg. 4, ¶71 lines 1-6, a wireless station “100” for transmitting and receiving a wireless signal such as a wireless LAN packet].
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim(s) 5, 9-11 and 17 is/are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
United States Patent Application Publication: Porat et al. (US 2019/0327746 A1); see fig. 3, pgs. 2-3, ¶32-¶34.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RUSHIL P SAMPAT whose telephone number is (469) 295-9141. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri (8 AM - 5 PM).
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ian Moore can be reached on (571) 272-3085. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/RUSHIL P. SAMPAT/Primary Examiner- TC 2400, Art Unit 2469
1 A machine is a "concrete thing, consisting of parts, or of certain devices and combination of devices." Digitech, 758 F.3d at 1348-49, 111 USPQ2d at 1719 (quoting Burr v. Duryee, 68 U.S. 531, 570, 17 L. Ed. 650, 657 (1863)). This category "includes every mechanical device or combination of mechanical powers and devices to perform some function and produce a certain effect or result." Nuijten, 500 F.3d at 1355, 84 USPQ2d at 1501 (quoting Corning v. Burden, 56 U.S. 252, 267, 14 L. Ed. 683, 690 (1854)).
2 IPXL Holdings v. Amazon.com, Inc., 430 F.3d 1377, 1384, 77 USPQ2d 1140, 1145 (Fed. Cir. 2005)
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