DETAILED ACTION
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the "right to exclude" granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. See In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); and, In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on a nonstatutory double patenting ground provided the conflicting application or patent is shown to be commonly owned with this application. See 37 CFR 1.130(b).
Effective January 1, 1994, a registered attorney or agent of record may sign a terminal disclaimer. A terminal disclaimer signed by the assignee must fully comply with 37 CFR 3.73(b).
The USPTO internet Web site contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit http://www.uspto.gov/forms/. The filing date of the application will determine what form should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens. An eTerminal Disclaimer that meets all requirements is auto-processed and approved immediately upon submission. For more information about eTerminal Disclaimers, refer to http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/file/efs/guidance/eTD-info-I.jsp.
The pending claims are provisionally rejected under the judicially created doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims of copending Application No. 18/836,715 (hereinafter ‘715). Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because despite slight difference in wording, for example, claim 1 of ‘715 recites essentially all claimed subject matter of claim 1 in the present application. Claim 2 of ‘715 also essentially recited claimed subject matter of claim 2 in the present application.
Claims 1-4, 6-15, 25, 27, 32, 33, and 36-38 of Application 18/836,715 contain(s) every element of the pending claims of the instant application and thus anticipate the claim(s) of the instant application. Claim(s ) of the instant application therefore is/are not patently distinct from the earlier patent claim(s) and as such is/are unpatentable over obvious-type double patenting. A later patent/application claim is not patentably distinct from an earlier claim if the later claim is anticipated by the earlier claim.
“A later patent claim is not patentably distinct from an earlier patent claim if the later claim is obvious over, or anticipated by, the earlier claim. In re Longi, 759 F.2d at 896, 225 USPQ at 651 (affirming a holding of obviousness-type double patenting because the claims at issue were obvious over claims in four prior art patents); In re Berg, 140 F.3d at 1437, 46 USPQ2d at 1233 (Fed. Cir. 1998) (affirming a holding of obviousness type double patenting where a patent application claim to a genus is anticipated by a 35 patent claim to a species within that genus). “ELI LILLY AND COMPANY v BARR LABORATORIES, INC., United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, ON PETITION FOR REHEARING EN BANC (DECIDED: May 30, 2001).
Accordingly, absent a terminal disclaimer, the pending claims are properly rejected under the doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting.” (In re Goodman (CA FC) 29 USPQ2d 2010 (12/3/1993).
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 17-19, 24, 25, 28, and 29 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Choi et al. (US 2020/0295878, “Choi”).
Regarding claim 1, Choi discloses an information transmission method, comprising:
- receiving a transport block (TB) sent by at least one second node, wherein the TB forms a TB set (See Fig.12,
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See Fig.24 and ¶.235, TB-based are all set to 3; See ¶.279, when the user equipment is configured in a transmission mode in which two TBs can be transmitted in one PDSCH, the number of CBG(s) per one TB may be equally set in the two TBs);
- obtaining information about a set of correct TBs according to the TB set (See ¶.14, wherein the transmission scheme is either a transport block (TB)-based transmission or the CBG-based transmission, receives a PDSCH of each cell in the one or more cell(s) based on the scheduling information of the PDCCH, generates a hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgment (HARQ-ACK) bit sequence for the one or more cell(s) based on the identified transmission scheme of each cell in response to receiving the PDSCH of each cell, wherein, within the HARQ-ACK bit sequence, a HARQ-ACK bit sequence for the TB-based transmission and a HARQ-ACK bit sequence for the CBG-based transmission are separately generated, and transmits the generated HARQ-ACK bit sequence; See ¶.102, the HARQ-ACK response includes positive ACK);
- encoding the information about the set of correct TBs to obtain feedback information (See Fig.12 and ¶.10, encoding to generate a HARQ-ACK bit sequence when it is configured that a code block group (CBG)-based transmission is enabled to the user equipment).
- wherein the feedback information is used to represent a reception condition of the TB sent by the at least one second node (See ¶.104, the HARQ-ACK response includes positive ACK), and
- the encoding processing comprises performing compression coding on the information about the set of correct TBs (See ¶.184, when CBG-based HARQ-ACKs for multiple TBs are multiplexed, a compressed CBG-based HARQ-ACK may be used to reduce the payload length; See Fig.38 and ¶.288, a HARQ-ACK compression; See ¶.185, converts the U to a binary value to obtain the compressed CBG-based HARQ-ACKs for the entire TBs; See further ¶.102 and ¶.309 for bundling); and
- sending the feedback information to the at least one second node (See Fig.12, UE sends ‘1 or 2 bit(s) HARQ-ACK’ to base station).
Regarding claim 2, Choi discloses “the TB is indicated by a TB identifier, and the TB identifier comprises at least one of: a user equipment (UE) identifier, an index value of a UE identifier, or a signature index (See Fig.11 and ¶.131, referring to the embodiment of FIG. 11(a), one TB can be divided into 8 CBs. The 8 CBs can be grouped into 4 CBGs again. The mapping relationship (or CBG configuration) of the CB and the CBG may be set statically between the base station and the user equipment or semi-statically with the RRC configuration information. According to another embodiment, the mapping relationship may be established through dynamic signaling. When the user equipment receives the PDCCH transmitted by the base station, the user equipment may directly or indirectly identify the CB and CBG mapping relationship (or CBG configuration) through explicit information and/or implicit information. One CBG may include only one CB or may include all CBs constituting one TB. For reference, the techniques proposed in the embodiments of the present invention may be applied regardless of CB and CBG configuration; See ¶.137, the base station may identify whether the user equipment has successfully received the CBG(s) transmitted to the user equipment through the CBG-based HARQ-ACK feedback of the user equipment; See ¶.311, if the n-th bit of the N-bit CBGTI is 1 (where it is assumed that the value 1 represents transmission), the user equipment may identify that the n-th CBG is transmitted. When there are two transmitted TB s, the user equipment may identify which CBG is transmitted among each TB through the N-bit CBGTI in the same manner as the method of performing spatial bundling on the HARQ-ACK).”
Regarding claim 6, Choi discloses “the encoding the information about the set of correct TBs to obtain feedback information comprises: obtaining a TB error pattern according to the information about the set of correct TBs; and performing mapping processing on the TB error pattern to obtain the feedback information (See ¶.188 and Table #8, error pattern; See ¶.187, a CBG-based HARQ-ACK state indicating a reception error of adjacent CBGs may be determined in a higher order than a CBG-based HARQ-ACK state indicating a reception error of non-adjacent CBGs. P states among the entire CBG-based HARQ-ACK states may be selected based on the prearranged order; See ¶.240, Here, the last two bits [y.sub.0.sup.(2), y.sub.0.sup.(3)] of the TB-based HARQ-ACK bit sequence are dummy bits with useless information for preventing an error in HARQ-ACK bit sequence interpretation between the base station and the user equipment; See ¶.134-135 and ¶.140, mapping process on the TB error).”
Regarding claim 8, Choi discloses “the information about the set of correct TBs comprises a set of identifiers of correct TBs, and an ordered set of TB identifiers; and the obtaining a TB error pattern according to the information about the set of correct TBs comprises: determining whether each element in the ordered set of TB identifiers belongs to the set of identifiers of correct TBs; and forming the TB error pattern according to the determination result (See cited paragraphs in claim 6).”
Regarding claim 10, Choi discloses “performing channel coding on the feedback information to obtain a first coding sequence (See Fig.25,
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; See ¶.14, generates a hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgment (HARQ-ACK) bit sequence for the one or more cell(s) based on the identified transmission scheme of each cell in response to receiving the PDSCH of each cell, wherein, within the HARQ-ACK bit sequence, a HARQ-ACK bit sequence for the TB-based transmission and a HARQ-ACK bit sequence for the CBG-based transmission are separately generated, and transmits the generated HARQ-ACK bit sequence).”
Regarding claim 12, Choi discloses “wherein the information about the set of correct TBs comprises at least one of: a maximum quantity of correct TBs, an ordered set of TB identifiers, a quantity of elements in the ordered set of TB identifiers, a set of identifiers of correct TBs, a quantity of correct TBs, an intermediate codeword, a TB error pattern, or an ordered set of offset values (See ¶.169, the length of the CBG-based HARQ-ACK payload transmitted through the resource B may be configured based on any one of the number of transmitted CBGs, the maximum number of CBGs configured by RRC signal, or the number of CBGs that can be included in the corresponding TB; See ¶.180 and ¶.183, offset value; See further ¶.190, ¶.204, and ¶.206).”
Regarding claim 13, Choi discloses “the maximum quantity of correct TBs is pre-configured by using a higher layer parameter (See ¶.169, the length of the CBG-based HARQ-ACK payload transmitted through the resource B may be configured based on any one of the number of transmitted CBGs, the maximum number of CBGs configured by RRC signal, or the number of CBGs that can be included in the corresponding TB; See further ¶.190, ¶.204, and ¶.206).”
Regarding claim 17, it is a method claim performed by a second node corresponding to the method claim 1 and is therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of the claim.
Regarding claim 18, it is a claim corresponding to the claim 2 and is therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of the claim.
Regarding claim 19, Choi discloses “decoding a feedback signal corresponding to the feedback information to obtain a decoding result; and determining, according to the decoding result, the reception condition of the TB sent by the second node: in response to a failure of the decoding, determining that acknowledgment of the TB sent by the second node is negative acknowledgment NACK; or in response to a success of the decoding, determining whether a TB identifier in the decoding result belongs to a set of identifiers of correct TBs (See ¶.104 NACK/ACK for TBs; See ¶.134, if a TB-CRC error occurs for the TB, the user equipment generates a NACK for HARQ-ACK of the corresponding TB. The user equipment transmits the TB-based HARQ-ACK(s) generated as described above to the base station. The base station retransmits the TB for which the NACK is responded among the TB-based HARQ-ACK(s) received from the user equipment).”
Regarding claim 24, it is a base station claim corresponding to the method claim 1, except the limitations “a memory and a processor (See 200 Fig.43, a process and a memory within a BS)” and is therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of the claim.
Regarding claim 25, it is a user equipment claim corresponding to the method claim 1, except the limitations “a memory and a processor (See 100 Fig.43, a processor and a memory within a UE)” and is therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of the claim.
Regarding claim 28, it is a base station claim corresponding to the method claim 17, except the limitation “a memory and a processor (See 200 Fig.43, a process and a memory within a BS)” and is therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of the claim.
Regarding claim 29, it is a user equipment claim corresponding to the method claim 17, except the limitations “a memory and a processor (See 100 Fig.43, a processor and a memory within a UE)” and is therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of the claim.
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 of this title, 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.
Claims 3 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Choi in view of Marinier et al. (US 2021/0297225, “Marinier”).
Regarding claim 3, Choi does not explicitly disclose what Marinier discloses “the set of correct TBs is an empty set; and the encoding the information about the set of correct TBs to obtain feedback information comprises: determining that the feedback information is an empty sequence; wherein a feedback signal comprising the feedback information is a zero power signal (Marinier, See ¶.222, Table #6, empty set for HARQ A/N feedback; See ¶.253-254, zero power for reporting feedback).”
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to apply the method of “the set of correct TBs is an empty set; and the encoding the information about the set of correct TBs to obtain feedback information comprises: determining that the feedback information is an empty sequence; wherein a feedback signal comprising the feedback information is a zero power signal” as taught by Marinier into the system of Choi, so that it provides a way of reporting the feedback by using the empty set for at least one codepoint (Marinier, See ¶.222).
Regarding claim 11, Choi does not explicitly disclose what Marinier discloses “wherein the compression coding comprises at least one of the following source coding algorithms: arithmetic coding, Huffman coding, or Shannon-Fano coding (Marinier, See source coding scheme or Huffmann encoding).” Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to apply the method of “at least one of the following source coding algorithms: arithmetic coding, Huffman coding, or Shannon-Fano coding” as taught by Marinier into the system of Choi, so that it provides a way of applying a channel coding scheme to the codebook (Marinier, See ¶.177).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4, 5, 7, and 9 are 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.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jung H Park whose telephone number is 571-272-8565. The examiner can normally be reached M-F: 7:00 AM-3:00 PM.
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/JUNG H PARK/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2411
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