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 .
Response to Amendment
The Amendment to the claims filed on 09/14/2026 complies with the requirements of 37 CFR 1.121(c) and has been entered. Claims 1-4, 6-9, and 12-15 are amended. Claims 5 and 10-11 are cancelled. Previous Claim Objections are withdrawn. The Double Patenting Rejection is withdrawn.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's Arguments/Remarks filed 09/14/2026 (hereinafter Resp.) have been fully considered but they are moot because the Amendment created new ground of rejection that does not rely on references applied in the prior rejection of record for the matters specifically challenged in the argument.
Claim Objections
Amended Claims 1, 7 and 13 objected to because of the following informalities: “the second TCI state is applied before an expiration of a beam application time (BAT) of the UE from transmission of the first PUCCH” should read “the second TCI state is applied before an expiration of a beam application time (BAT) of the UE from transmission of the last symbol of the first PUCCH” – See Spec.:[¶¶760-62] Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112(b)
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.
Amended Claims 1, 7, 13 and their dependent claims 2-4, 6-9, 12, and 14-15, as amended, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Exemplary Amended Claim 1 recites the limitation "expiration of a beam application time (BAT)". There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
MPEP § 2173.05(a) provides that the meaning of every term used in a claim should be apparent from the prior art or from the specification and drawings at the time the application is filed. Claim language may not be "ambiguous, vague, incoherent, opaque, or otherwise unclear in describing and defining the claimed invention." In re Packard, 751 F.3d 1307, 1311 (Fed. Cir. 2014). Applicants need not confine themselves to the terminology used in the prior art, but are required to make clear and precise the terms that are used to define the invention whereby the metes and bounds of the claimed invention can be ascertained. During patent examination, the pending claims must be given the broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification. In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054, 44 USPQ2d 1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997); In re Prater, 415 F.2d 1393, 162 USPQ 541 (CCPA 1969). See MPEP §2173.05(a); see also MPEP § 2111 - § 2111.01.
Here, the term “expiration of a beam application time (BAT)” is not defined in the Specification or known in the art, therefore a person of ordinary skills in the art would know how to measure the metes and bounds of the term. Amended Claims 7 and 13 suffer the same deficiency. For examination purposes, applying the BRI standard, the expiration of BAT would be appreciated as a time when it is too late to apply the beam depending on the case.
Therefore, Amended Claims 1, 7, 13 and their dependent claims 2-4, 6-9, 12, and 14-15, as amended, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §112(b) as being indefinite.
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.
The factual inquiries 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.
Claims 1-4, 6-9, and 12-15, as amended, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §103 as being unpatentable over Matsumura et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2024/0137937 (hereinafter Matsumura), and further in view of 3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #116bis-e, R2-2xxxxxx, Title: "Chair Notes," Source: RAN2 Chair (MediaTek), published January 29, 2022 (hereinafter 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report).
Regarding Amended Claim 1, Matsumura teaches in Fig. 6 a user equipment (UE) in a wireless communication system, e.g., as shown in Fig. 4, the UE comprising: at least one transceiver (“The transmitting/receiving section 220 can be constituted with a transmitter/receiver” – See [¶0304]); and at least one processor communicatively coupled to the at least one transceiver (“The control section 210 can be constituted with a controller, a control circuit, or the like” – See [¶0302] and “The control section 210 may control transmission/reception, measurement and so on using the transmitting/receiving section 220, and the trans mitting/receiving antennas 230” – See [¶0303]); and at least one memory, communicatively coupled to the at least one processor, storing instructions executable by the at least one processor individually or in any combination (“FIG. 7 is a diagram to show an example of a hardware structure of the base station and the user terminal according to one embodiment . . . formed as a computer apparatus that includes a processor 1001, a memory 1002, a storage 1003,” – See [¶0324] wherein “the processor 1001 reads programs (program codes), software modules, data, and so on from at least one of the storage 1003 and the communication apparatus 1004, into the memory 1002, and executes various processes according to these” – See [¶0329]) to cause the UE to:
receive, from a base station, information for physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) resources, wherein the information for the PUCCH resources includes information indicating transmission configuration indicator (TCI) states for the PUCCH resources and information on TCI state application times for the PUCCH resources (“[a] parameter (PUCCH configuration information or PUCCH-Config) used for PUCCH transmission may be configured for the UE by higher layer signaling ( e.g., Radio Resource Control (RRC) signaling) . . . for each partial band (e.g., uplink bandwidth part (BWP)) in a carrier (also referred to as a cell or a component carrier (CC))” – See [¶0112] comprising “a list of PUCCH resource set information (e.g., PUCCH-ResourceSet) and a list of PUCCH spatial relation information ( e.g., PUCCH-SpatialRelationinfo)” – See [¶0113] wherein a “PUCCH resource set information may include a list (e.g., resourceList) of PUCCH resource indices (IDs, for example, PUCCH-Resourceid)” – See [¶0114] and “[t]he PUCCH spatial relation information (e.g., an RRC information element "PUCCH-spatialRelationinfo") may indicate a plurality of candidate beams (spatial domain filters) for PUCCH transmission. The PUCCH spatial relation information may indicate a spatial relation between an RS (Reference signal) and the PUCCH” – See [¶0118] whereby “a spatial relation information . . . and UL TCI state are interchangeable” – See [¶0203] because “[a] state that corresponds to the TCI state applied to an uplink signal/channel may be expressed as spatial relation” – See [¶0069]; furthermore, “the UE may control, on the basis of a PUCCH spatial relation activation/deactivation MAC CE, so that one piece of PUCCH spatial relation information is active for one PUCCH resource at a given time” – See [¶0121] i.e., may control the TCI state application time for each PUCCH resource, e.g. “After 3 ms from transmitting a positive acknowledgment (ACK) to a MAC CE to activate given PUCCH spatial relation information, the UE may activate PUCCH relation information designated by the MAC CE” – See [¶0125]; in general, “The TCI application time may be defined by specifications, or may be configured by higher layer signaling . . . may be represented by the number of symbols, may be represented by the number of symbols for each piece of subcarrier spacing, or may be represented by time (e.g., unit of μs)” and “may be the same as the application time, or may be different from the application time” – See [¶0253]),
receive, from the base station, a first downlink control information (DCI) indicating a first TCI state among the TCI states (“The TCI state may be configured (indicated) by higher layer signaling or physical layer signaling, or a combination of these” – See [¶0080] whereby “The physical layer signaling may be, for example, downlink control information (DCI)” – See [¶0083] and “[a] channel for which the TCI state or spatial relation is configured (indicated) may be . . . a downlink control channel (Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH)),” e.g. for a second DCI and/or “an uplink control channel (Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH)),” e.g., for a HARQ-ACK feedback – See [¶0084] whereby “The UE may perform monitoring of a CORESET on the basis of an active TCI state corresponding to the CORESET” – See [¶0095]; see also 3GPP R2-2201253 infra defining a Unified TCI Framework wherein an activated TCI state may apply to both DL TCI state and UL TCI state),
receive, from the base station, a second DCI indicating a second TCI state among the TCI states (“[a] value of the TCI field in the DCI may indicate one of the TCI states activated by the MAC CE” – See [¶0100] e.g., “[w]hen the TCI presence information set to "enabled" for a CORESET . . . configured for the UE, the UE may assume that the TCI field exists in DCI . . . for a PDCCH transmitted on the CORESET” – See [¶0101] with the TCI-PresentlnDCI RRC parameter “indicating whether the TCI field is present or absent in the DCI” – See [¶0099], i.e., the second DCI may indicate a second TCI state, different from the first TCI state; see also 3GPP TS 38.331 v16.7.0 (2021-12), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Radio Resource Control (RRC) protocol specification (Release 17)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.331) specifying at page 399-402, the Information Element (IE) ControlResourceSet “used to configure a time/frequency control resource set (CORESET) in which to search for downlink control information (see TS 38.213 [13], clause 10.1)” comprising the field tci-PresentInDCI indicating if TCI field is present or absent in a DCI format 1_1 whereby DCI format 1_1 is defined in 3GPP TS 38.212 V17.0.0 (2021-12), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Multiplexing and channel coding (Release 17)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.212) at page 106 as “Scheduling of one or multiple PDSCH in one cell, and/or triggering one shot HARQ-ACK codebook feedback”)
transmit, to the base station, a first PUCCH including acknowledgement information for
the second DCI, based on the first TCI state (“The UE may determine one PUCCH resource (index) in the above-described PUCCH resource set (e.g., a cell-specific or UE-dedicated PUCCH resource set to be determined) on the basis of at least one of a value of a given
field ( e.g., a PUCCH resource indicator field) in [the first] downlink control information (DCI)” – See [¶0117] and “transmitting a positive acknowledgment (ACK) to [the second DCI] to activate given [second] PUCCH spatial relation information” – See [¶0125]; see also 3GPP TS 38.213 V17.0.0 (2021-12), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for control (Release 17)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.213, referenced by 3GPP TS 38.331 supra, specifying in §9.2.3 UE procedure for reporting HARQ-ACK, stating, at page 99-100, that “a UE is assumed to generate HARQ-ACK information regardless of whether or not the PDSCH reception provides a transport block for a HARQ process with disabled HARQ-ACK information” in “the last UL slot for PUCCH transmission that overlaps . . . with the DL slot
n
D
for the PDCCH reception in case of a DCI format that triggers a HARQ-ACK information report and does not schedule a PDSCH reception” whereby the DCI is the second DCI and the activated UL TCI is the PUCCH TCI in the first DCI), and
transmit, to the base station, a second PUCCH, based on the second TCI state, wherein the second TCI state is different from the first TCI state (“If a UE . . . detects a first DCI format indicating a first resource for a PUCCH transmission with corresponding HARQ-ACK information in a slot and also detects at a later time a second DCI format indicating a second resource for a PUCCH transmission with corresponding HARQ-ACK information in the slot, the UE does not expect to multiplex HARQ-ACK information corresponding to the second DCI format in a PUCCH resource in the slot if the PDCCH reception that includes the second DCI format is not earlier than
N
3
∙
2048
+
144
∙
κ
∙
2
-
μ
∙
T
c
from the beginning of a first symbol of the first resource for PUCCH transmission in the slot where,
κ
and
T
c
are defined in clause 4.1 of [4, TS 38.211] and
μ
corresponds to the smallest SCS configuration among the SCS configurations of the PDCCHs providing the DCI formats and the SCS configuration of the PUCCH” – See id. at page 102, i.e., the UE will send a second PUCCH scheduled in a resource and with a TCI determined based on the second DCI possibly acknowledging a PDSCH scheduled by this DCI),
wherein the second TCI state is applied before an expiration of a beam application time
(BAT) of the UE from transmission of the first PUCCH based on the information on the TCI state application times (this limitation is obvious because the first PUCCH acknowledges the second DCI hence the PUCCH resource is later than the reception time of the DCI carrying information on the second TCI, specifically, as provided by 3GPP TS 38.214 V17.0.0 (2021-12), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for data (Release 17)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.214) at page 100, “the last UL slot for PUCCH transmission that overlaps . . . with the DL slot
n
D
for the PDCCH reception in case of a DCI format that triggers a HARQ-ACK information report and does not schedule a PDSCH reception,” (emphasis added) i.e., the second DCI, therefore the second TCI state must be applied at “the TCI application time” as defined in Matsumura supra from the last UL slot for the first PUCCH but before the scheduled second PUCCH resource/slot/symbol which obviously marks the expiration of BAT/TCI application time because if the beam is not switched by that time it would be too late to send the PUCCH on the beam indicated by the second DCI; see also id., § 5.1.5, at page 42, providing: “When the UE would transmit the last symbol of a PUCCH with HARQ-ACK information corresponding to the DCI carrying the TCI-State indication and without DL assignment, . . . and if the indicated TCI-State is different from the previously indicated one, the indicated [TCI-State] with [tci-StateId_r17] should be applied starting from the first slot that is at least BeamAppTime_r17 symbols after the last symbol of the PUCCH. The first slot and the BeamAppTime_r17 symbols are both determined on the carrier with the smallest SCS among the carrier(s) applying the beam indication. The UE can assume one indicated [TCI-State] with [tci-StateId_r17] for DL and UL, for DL only, or for UL only at a time,” i.e., a Unified TCI Framework is assumed wherein the DCI may comprise a codepoint indicating an UL only or a joint DL/UL beam/TCI state) and
wherein the BAT is configured for the UE based on a capability of the UE (the Beam application time is a “TCI application time [that] may be defined by specifications, or may be configured by higher layer signaling” – See [¶0253], e.g., § 6.3.3., 3GPP TS 38.331 specifying UE capability1 information elements including, at page 695-696 , the IE FeatureSetDownlink that “indicates a set of features that the UE supports on the carriers corresponding to one band entry in a band combination” including the parameter timeDurationForQCL in number of OFDM symbols and, at page 719-722, the IE MIMO-ParametersPerBand “used to convey MIMO related parameters specific for a certain band” comprising beamSwitchTiming in number of symbols; see also 3GPP TS 38.306 V16.7.0 (2021-12), Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; User Equipment (UE) radio access capabilities (Release 16)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.306) specifying at page 32 beamSwitchTiming for an exemplary DCI scheduled CSI-RS report transmission as “the minimum number of OFDM symbols between the DCI triggering of aperiodic CSI-RS and aperiodic CSI-RS transmission. The number of OFDM symbols is measured from the end of the last symbol containing the indication to the start of the first symbol of CSI-RS. The UE includes this field for each supported sub-carrier spacing” and at page 71 timeDurationForQCL as “minimum number of OFDM symbols required by the UE to perform PDCCH reception and applying spatial QCL information received in DCI for PDSCH processing as described in TS 38.214 [12] clause 5.1.5. The number of OFDM symbols is measured from the end of the last symbol of the PDCCH reception to the start of the first symbol of the PDSCH reception” ).
Although Matsumura teaches “The TCI application time may be defined by specifications, or may be configured by higher layer signaling” – See [¶0253] and TCI state application is a beam application time, Matsumura does not specifically two aspects explained above: (1) a joint DL/UL TCI state indication in the DCI (i.e., Unified TCI Framework) and (2) a standards defined beam application time (BAT).
Section 8.17, 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report references 3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #116bis electronic, R2-2201253, Title: “Discussion on the unified TCI framework,” Source: CATT, published January 2022 (hereinafter 3GPP R2-2201253), providing, in § 2.1, at page 2, that “there are two modes of the R17 unified TCI framework, i.e., one is joint beam indication mode with joint TCI state for both UL and DL; another is separate beam indication, which is separate DL and/or UL TCI state.” as shown in the Table, adding the “joint DL/UL TCI state” whereby “for joint beam indication mode, there is one TCI state ID for each codepoint” while “for separate beam indication mode, there may be two TCI state IDs for each codepoint” whereby the codepoint corresponds to the TCI field in the DCI, and “the UE should be informed of the mode to be used for each TCI state codepoint, so that UE can determine whether the indicated TCI states apply to DL only, UL only, or for both DL and UL. In principle, either the MAC CE or RRC can be used to configure or indicate the mode (i.e., joint or separate beam indication) to UE.”
Section 8.17, 3GPP RAN2 116bis-e Report further references corresponding updates to 3GPP TS 38.331 in 3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #116bis-e, R2-2202000, Title: “Running RRC CR for FeMIMO Rel-17,” Source: Ericsson, published January 2022, (hereinafter 3GPP R2-2202000) adding to the IE ControlResourceSet a new field followUnifiedTCIstate-r17 to indicate “Rel-17 DL TCI/joint state is enabled for this CORESET” and further updating the IE TCI-State to introduce DLorJoint-TCIState-r17 and a separate UL-TCIState-r17 corresponding to the codepoints referenced supra. In addition, 3GPP R2-2202000 defines, at page 966, a new parameter beamAppTime that “Indicates the first slot to apply the unified TCI indicated by DCI Ref 38.21x. The first slot is at least Y symbols indicated by beamAppTime parameter after the last symbol of the acknowledgment of the joint or separate DL/UL beam indication. The beamAppTime configured by the gNB based on UE capability, which is also reported in units of symbols.(See 38.214 Clause 5.1.5),” i.e., a BAT that is measured in symbols from the first PUCCH acknowledging the second DCI indicating the second TCI state.
Thus, Matsumura and § 8.17, 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report, each discloses an acknowledgment of a DCI (e.g., scheduling a PDSCH and a UL/DL TCI state) sent in a PUCCH. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have understood that the Unified TCI Framework and the beam application time (BAT) defined in §8.17, 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report documents can be applied to the Spatial Relation for PUCCH and the TCI state application time defined in Matsumura because both serve the purpose of setting the UL beam for PUCCH transmissions. Furthermore, a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been able to carry out the improvement through techniques known in the art. Finally, the improvement achieves the predictable result of aligning the Spatial Relation for PUCCH and the beam application time in Matsumura with the new RRC parameters defined in NR Rel-17, as taught in 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report.
Therefore, Amended Claim 1 is obvious over Matsumura in view of 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report.
Regarding Amended Claim 2, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Matsumura further teaches the UE of claim 1, wherein the information for the PUCCH resources is received via at least one of a radio resource control (RRC), a medium access control (MAC) control element (CE), or DCI (“a parameter (PUCCH configuration information or PUCCH-Config) used for PUCCH transmission may be configured for the UE by higher layer signaling ( e.g., Radio Resource Control (RRC) signaling)” – See [¶0112] and the “UE may determine one PUCCH resource (index) in the above-described PUCCH resource set (e.g., a cell-specific or UE-dedicated PUCCH resource set to be determined) on the basis of at least one of a value of a given field ( e.g., a PUCCH resource indicator field) in downlink control information (DCI) (e.g., DCI format 1_0 or 1_1 used for scheduling of a PDSCH)” – See [¶0117]; a “MAC CE may be referred to as a TCI state activation/deactivation MAC CE for a UE-specific PDSCH (TCI States Activation/Deactivation for UE-specific PDSCH MAC CE) and “[a]value of the TCI field in the DCI may indicate one of the TCI states activated by the MAC CE” – See [¶0100] and the timeDurationForQCL parameter2 “may be configured for the UE by using higher layer signaling from the base station” – See [¶0108]).
Therefore, Amended Claim 2 is obvious over Matsumura in view of 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report.
Regarding Amended Claim 3, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Matsumura further teaches the UE of claim 1, wherein the information on the TCI state application times indicates a TCI state application time before the BAT or
a TCI state application time after the BAT (e.g., if “the UE notifies occurrence of beam failure by using an uplink control channel (PUCCH) at a first step (or step 1)” and “information related to a new candidate beam by using a MAC control information (e.g., a MAC CE or a MAC PDU including the MAC CE) at a second step” – See [¶0191] “the UE may, after a lapse of the application time from reception of a response to the step 2 MAC CE, apply the new beam indicated by the step 2 MAC CE to specific UL transmission associated with the SCell in which beam failure has been detected” – See [¶0240] (emphasis added); see also 3GPP TS 38.214, § 5.1.5, at page 42, requiring at least BAT symbols before changing to a new TCI state as cited in Regarding Amended Claim 1 supra).
Therefore, Amended Claim 3 is obvious over Matsumura in view of 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report.
Regarding Amended Claim 4, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Matsumura further teaches the UE of claim 1, wherein the instructions further cause the UE to:
identify at least one TCI state corresponding to the at least one PUCCH resource among the TCI states (“when the UE has . . . dedicated PUCCH resource configuration information (UE-dedicated uplink control channel configuration or dedicated PUCCH resource configuration) (after RRC set up), the UE may determine the PUCCH resource set in accordance with the number of UCI information bits” – See [¶0116], i.e., identify the PUCCH resource based on the UCI needs; furthermore, “the UE may control, on the basis of a PUCCH spatial relation activation/deactivation MAC CE, so that one piece of PUCCH spatial relation information is active for one PUCCH resource at a given time” – See [¶0121] whereby a person of ordinary skill sin the art would appreciate that a DCI with a TCI codepoint may be used for activating the resource, e.g., the first DCI or the second DCI); and
identify at least one TCI state application time to be individually applied to the at least one TCI state, based on the information on the TCI state application times (“The TCI application time may be the same as the application time, or may be different from the application time” – See [¶0253] i.e., the individually applied TCI state application time may be different from the BAT defined in 3GPP R2-2202000 supra).
Therefore, Amended Claim 4 is obvious over Matsumura in view of 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report.
Regarding Amended Claim 6, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Matsumura further teaches the UE of claim 1, wherein the second TCI state is applied after a threshold period from reception of the second DCI, and before the expiration of the BAT (“The time offset between reception of DL DCI and reception of a PDSCH corresponding to the DCI may be referred to as scheduling offset” – See [¶0106], and the PUCCH resource indicated by the second DCI for ACK-feedback is–at the earliest–after the PDSCH, therefore the time before the BAT includes the scheduling offset; see also 3GPP TS 38.331 specifying, at page 532, the fields of the PUCCH-Config Information Element referenced in Mastumura:[¶0112], including the dl-DataToUL-ACK field, indicating timing from a given PDSCH to the DL ACK; 3GPP 38.214, at page 42, specifying that “the time offset between the reception of the DL DCI and the corresponding PDSCH is equal to or greater than timeDurationForQCL” whereby the timeDurationForQCL is a UE capability as explained din Regarding Amended Claim 1 supra).
Therefore, Amended Claim 6 is obvious over Matsumura in view of 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report.
Regarding Amended Claim 7, Matsumura teaches in Figs. 5 and 7 a base station in a wireless communication system, the base station comprising: at least one transceiver; and at least one processor communicatively coupled to the at least one transceiver ((“The base station 10 includes a control section 110, a transmitting/receiving section 120, transmitting/receiving antennas 130 and a transmission line interface 140” – See [¶0283] whereby “The control section 110 may generate data, control information, a sequence and so on to transmit as a signal, and forward the generated items to the transmitting/receiving section 120” – See [¶0286]), at least one memory, communicatively coupled to the at least one processor (the base station may “be formed as a computer apparatus that includes a processor 1001, a memory 1002, a storage 1003” – See [¶0324]), storing instructions executable by the at least one processor individually or in any combination (“the processor 1001 reads programs (program codes), software modules, data, and so on from at least one of the storage 1003 and the communication apparatus 1004, into the memory 1002, and executes various processes according to these” – See [¶0329]) to cause the base station to: the same actions as claimed in Amended Claim 1, using the same language, only here from the base station end. Because Amended Claim 1 is obvious over Matsumura in view of 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report, Amended Claim 7 is also obvious over Matsumura in view of 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report.
Regarding Amended Claims 8-9 and 12, dependent from Amended Claim 7, each claim recites the same limitations on the configuration information as recited in Amended Claims 2-3 and 6, respectively, using the same language. Because Amended Claims 2-3 and 6-7 are obvious over Matsumura in view of 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report, Amended Claims 8-9 and 12 are obvious over Matsumura in view of 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report.
Regarding Amended Claims 13-15, Matsumura further teaches a method performed by a user equipment (UE) in a wireless communication system (“the radio communication method according to each embodiment of the present disclosure described” – See [¶0257]), the method comprising: the steps performed by the UE of Amended Claims 1-3, recited with the same language. Because Amended Claims 1-3 are obvious over Matsumura in view of 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report, Amended Claims 13-15 are obvious over Matsumura in view of 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report.
In sum, Claims 1-4, 6-9, and 12-15, as amended, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §103 as obvious over Matsumura in view of 3GPP RAN2 116e-bis Report.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Guo, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2023/0328755 discloses teaches applying an indicated TCI state to uplink transmission, starting from a pre-defined time point;
Matsumura et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2023/0128435 disclosing method and terminal whereby the UE receives a downlink shared channel scheduled by downlink control information, and a control section that determines, on the basis of at least one of a TCI state (Transmission Configuration Indication state) applied to the downlink shared channel and information notified by the downlink control information, a spatial relation or TCI state applied to an uplink channel corresponding to the downlink control information;
Yuan et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2025/0119914 disclosing a user equipment (UE) may receive a configuration for a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) resource for a transmission that uses multiple beams in a common time domain resource;
Kang et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2021/0084640 discloses a UE transmitting, to the base station, the uplink control channel via a single beam or a plurality of beams, in which the number of beams may be determined based on at least one of measurement information by a downlink reference signal received by the base station or a type of uplink control information;
Zhang et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0303054 discloses apparatuses, systems, and methods for a user equipment device (UE) to perform PUCCH repetition based on signaling from at least one base station;
Liu, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2024/0236708 discloses an uplink channel transmission method at a terminal device whereby two adjacent repetitive transmissions of same data in an uplink channel on a first transmission resource and a second transmission resource respectively;
Go et al., EPO Patent Application Publication No. EP 4262102 disclosing beam application time and a user equipment (UE) for receiving downlink control information (DCI) related to one or more TCI states of a plurality of TCI states, and determining a specific TCI state among the one or more TCI states based on the DCI;
3GPP TS 38.306 V16.7.0 (2021-12), Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; User Equipment (UE) radio access capabilities (Release 16)”
3GPP TS 38.212 V17.0.0 (2021-12), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Multiplexing and channel coding (Release 17)”;
3GPP TS 38.213 V17.0.0 (2021-12), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for control (Release 17)”;
3GPP TS 38.214 V17.0.0 (2021-12), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for data (Release 17)”;
3GPP TS 38.331 v16.7.0 (2021-12), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Radio Resource Control (RRC) protocol specification (Release 17)”;
3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #116bis-e, R2-2xxxxxx, Title: "Chair Notes," Source: RAN2 Chair (MediaTek), published January 29, 2022;
3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #116 Electronic, R2-2200316, Title: “Unified TCI Framework Operation from RAN2 Perspectives,” Source: MediaTek, published November 2021;
3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #116 Electronic, R2-2200015, Title: “Report of [Post116-e][086][feMIMO] RRC (Ericsson),” Source: Ericsson, published November 2021;
3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #116bis-e, R2-2202000, Title: “Running RRC CR for FeMIMO Rel-17,” Source: Ericsson, published January 2022;
3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #116bis electronic, R2-2201253, Title: “Discussion on the unified TCI framework,” Source: CATT, published January 2022.
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
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/L.G.G./Examiner, Art Unit 2478
/JOSEPH E AVELLINO/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2478
1 The Specification does not define BAT but puts it in equation with other RRC parameters defined in 3GPP technical specifications as UE capabilities – See [¶732] (“perform updating to the indicated TCI state even before the BAT considering the unified TCI scheme if only a certain threshold time ( e.g., a time for which a DCI decoding and beam application time, such as "timeDurationforQCL", has been considered) is satisfied”; see also [¶762](“the BAT may be a time from a last symbol of the PUCCH to a symbol after a certain period of time”)
2 See, e.g., §5.1.5, 3GPP TS 38.214 providing, at page 42, UE behavior depending on tci-PresentInDCI and timeDurationForQCL; see also § 5.2.1.5.1a, providing at page 76, in Table 5.2.1.5.1a-1, beam switching timing delay d in number of symbols, depending on subcarrier spacing (SCS) of the cell/carrier/BWP, when the RRC parameter enableBeamSwitchTiming is enabled for that serving cell, including other timing parameters such as with minimumSchedulingOffsetK0 for any DL BWP or minimumSchedulingOffsetK2 for any UL BWP.
