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 .
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 19 is objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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.
Claim(s) 16-18, 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102 as being anticipated by You US 20250253928
16. A method performed by a network-controlled repeater (NCR) including an NCR mobile termination (NCR-MT) and an NCR forwarding (NCR-Fwd) in a wireless communication system, the method comprising:
receiving, from a base station, side control information including information on a beam index and information on a time resource for communication on an NCR-Fwd access link (You: fig. 16 [0251] receives a control message, from a base station via the NCR-MT, informing a beam index indicating an access link beam of the NCR-Fwd and time resource (S161), Here, the control messages can also be referred to by other names, such as side control information, RRC messages, etc.); and
communicating with a user equipment (UE) using a beam in a slot, based on the beam index and the time resource, wherein the slot is associated with a beam with a same index (You: fig. 16 [0252-0264] The NCR performs a forwarding operation via the NCR-Fwd based on the control message, wherein in the access link, the NCR-Fwd performs the transmit or receive operation in the time resource indicated by the control message (i.e., the time resource related to the beam indication) and does not perform the transmit or receive operation in any time resource other than the time resource indicated by the control message (S162)),
wherein data is forwarded between the base station and the UE via an NCR-Fwd backhaul link and the NCR-Fwd access link (You: fig. 14 [0186, 0263] NCR-Fwd may be defined as a functional entity that amplifies and transfers UL/DL RF signals between a base station and a UE through a backhaul link and an access link).
17. The method of claim 16, The method of wherein the time resource and the beam index corresponding to the time resource are indicated by downlink control information (DCI) (You: [0254] DCI).
20. The method claim 16, The method of wherein, in case that a plurality of beam indexes for time resources are identified, the beam index corresponds to a most recent physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) monitoring occasion detected by the NCR (You: [0123, 0241-0247] PDCCH monitoring periodicity and a PDCCH monitoring offset).
Claim(s) 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102 as being anticipated by You US 20250253928 in view of Zewail US 20220369316
18. The method claim 16, The method of wherein the information on the time resource includes at least one of a slot offset from a reference slot to the slot, a symbol offset from a first symbol in the slot, a reference subcarrier spacing (SCS), or a length of symbols in the slot, and wherein a first SCS of a first slot which received downlink control information (DCI) is equivalent to a second SCS provided by the reference SCS (Zewail: fig. 5, unit 510 [0354-0355] the active BWP SCS value may be u (e.g., u>=3), and the reference SCS value may be u.sub.SFI (e.g., u>=u.sub.SFI)).
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 You’s invention in order to determines a number of consecutive slots in the active BWP associated with the same SFI based on the active BWP SCS value and the reference SCS value, as taught by Zewail.
Regarding claims 21-35, the independent claim and each dependent claim are related to the same limitation set for hereinabove in claims 16-20, where the difference used is a “method & apparatus” with a processor and a memory (You: Referring to FIG. 21, includes a processor 2310, a memory 2330) 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