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.
Claims 1-4 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.
Claims 1-4 are vague and indefinite because the use of terms “can”, “assume”, and “in a case”.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by He et al (2022/0312391).
Regarding claims 1 and 4, He discloses a method and a terminal (see UE in figure 9) comprising: a communication unit configured to perform an uplink or downlink communication by using a frequency band in which aggregation is performed by carrier aggregation (see carrier aggregation (CA) in paragraph 0020); and a control unit configured to assume that, in a case where scheduling is performed in the aggregation-performed frequency band according to a unit including a plurality of component carriers, a maximum number of PDCCH candidates that can be monitored per slot in an active downlink BWP or of non-overlapped CCEs is determined based on sub-carrier spacings included in the plurality of component carriers (see the PDCCH monitoring capabilities may be enhanced to improve the scheduling flexibility for URLLC services. More specially, the maximum number of blind decoding attempts (or simply, blind decoding (BD)) and non-overlapped CCEs are specified per span, which results in a different number of BDs and non-overlapped CCEs over a slot for different span configurations. CCEs for PDCCH candidates are non-overlapped if they correspond to different CORESET indexes, or different first symbols for the reception of the respective PDCCH candidates in paragraphs 0019-0025; subcarrier spacing in paragraphs 0029, 0031-0032. See also paragraphs 0016, 0034-0037, 0039-0044).
Regarding claim 2, He discloses wherein the control unit assumes that a maximum number of PDCCH candidates that can be monitored per slot in an active downlink BWP or of non-overlapped CCEs is determined based on whether or not the sub-carrier spacings included in the plurality of component carriers are equal to each other (see an active downlink (DL) bandwidth part (BWP) in paragraph 0016. See also paragraphs 0019-0022, 0034-0037).
Regarding claim 3, claim 3 claims a base station (see figure 10) that is in communication with the terminal claimed in claim 1. Claim 3 is, therefore, subject to the same rejection.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to BRIAN D NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)272-3084. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00 - 4:30.
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/BRIAN D NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2475
