DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Status of Claims
2. This communication is responsive to Application No. 18/871,943 filed on December 05, 2024. Claims 10, 17-22, 24-25 and 30-33 have been cancelled. Claims 3-4, 7, 16 and 28 have been amended. Accordingly claims 1-9, 11-16, 23 and 26-29 are subject to examination.
Information Disclosure Statement (IDS)
3. The IDSs submitted on 05/22/25 and 07/16/26 have been entered and considered by the Examiner.
Claim Objections/Suggestions
4. Following claims are objected to because of the following informalities:
in claim 1, “information, comprising” (line 1) should be replaced with “information, the method comprising”; similar objection applies to claim 13;
in claim 7, “a TCI field” (line 2) should be replaced with “a transmission configuration indicator (TCI) field”; similar objection applies to claims 8, 12 and 16;
in claim 16, “in DCI” (line 3) should be replaced with “in downlink control information (DCI)”; and
in claim 23, “terminal, comprising” (line 1) should be replaced with “terminal, the device comprising”.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
5. 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.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
6. Claims 1-9, 11-16, 23 and 26-29 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the Applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites “a predefined rule or an indication from a network side device” (lines 6-7). This limitation has at least two different interpretations: (i) “a predefined rule [set by the terminal] or an indication from a network side device” or (ii) “a predefined rule from a network side device or an indication from a network side device”. Hence, renders claim 1 and its dependent claims indefinite. Similar rejection applies to claim 23.
Claim 11 recites limitations “the target parameter” (line 8) and “the target value” (line 10); note that “target parameters” is recited in lines 7-8 and “target values” is recited in line 6. There is insufficient antecedent basis for these limitations in the claim.
Claim 13 recites a limitation “the terminal” (line 6). There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. Hence, renders claim 13 and its dependent claims indefinite.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
7. 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 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 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office Action:
A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived 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:
I. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
II. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
III. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
IV. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
8. Claims 1-9, 12-16, 23 and 26-29 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gao (US 2020/0252192 A1) and in view of Zhang (US 2021/0250152 A1).
Regarding claims 1, 13, 23 & 28, Gao teaches a method for determining beam information (Paragraph 7: the present disclosure provide a reference signal configuring method and device & Paragraph 75: a base station selects an ideal reference signal indicator from transmitting beam information), comprising: obtaining, by a terminal, a plurality of quasi co-location (QCL) parameter configurations of a reference signal, wherein the QCL parameter configurations are used to configure a plurality of QCL parameters of the reference signal (Claim 39: receiving, by a first communication node, a Radio Resource Control signaling message from a second communication node, the RRC signaling message including a set of configurations indicating at least a quasi co-location (QCL) relationship between a reference signal and a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) port, wherein the set comprises M configurations, M being an integer greater than or equal to 1, Claim 42: wherein each of the set of configurations comprises N indicator elements, N being an integer greater than or equal to 1, and wherein each indicator element comprises a reference signal resource indicator & Figure 1: Step 102 “Configure a first-type parameter set of a first-type reference signal indicator, where the first-type parameter set includes N indicator elements, and N is an integer greater than or equal to 1”); and determining, by the terminal, at least one target QCL parameter from the plurality of QCL parameters of the reference signal based on a predefined rule or an indication from a network side device (Claim 39: activating, by the first communication node, a subset of the set of configurations by receiving a Media Access Control (MAC) control element (CE) signaling message from the second communication node; and receiving, by the first communication node, a Downlink Control Information (DCI) signaling message from the second communication node specifying a configuration corresponding to the activated subset of the set of configurations); wherein the predefined rule or the indication from the network side device is determined based on an association relationship between the QCL parameters of the reference signal and transmission information, and the transmission information comprises at least one of a transmission time unit, a scheduled transmission, a transmission channel or a transmission signal (Paragraph 118: the base station indicates an activated quasi-co-location indicator (PQI) parameter set for data channel demodulation through the DCI signaling). Although Gao teaches transmission information, Gao does not explicitly disclose pieces of transmission information. In a related field of endeavor, Zhang discloses pieces of transmission information (Paragraph 39: a terminal receives the first signaling sent by a base station, where the state value of the first field is configured in the first signaling, to indicate a target spatial relation parameter in a plurality of spatial relation parameters, so that the terminal receives the first channel by using the target spatial relation parameter, to cope with an issue of indicating QCL information of data in a scenario in which one piece of data is scheduled by each of a plurality of pieces of DCI signaling). It would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to utilize Gao’s transmission information to include pieces of transmission information as in Zhang. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to do so to cope with an issue of determining a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) transmit beam by a terminal device in different transmission modes, Paragraph 15.
Regarding claim 2, the combination of Gao and Zhang teaches the method according to claim 1. In addition, Gao discloses wherein the determining, by the terminal, the at least one target QCL parameter from the plurality of QCL parameters of the reference signal based on the predefined rule comprises: determining, by the terminal, the at least one target QCL parameter corresponding to at least one piece of target transmission information from the plurality of QCL parameters of the reference signal based on a correspondence between the QCL parameters of the reference signal and the transmission information; wherein the target transmission information comprises transmission information associated with a first transmission, the first transmission comprises a transmission between the terminal and the network side device and/or a first node, and the first node is configured to perform transmission with the terminal and/or the network side device (Claim 39: activating, by the first communication node, a subset of the set of configurations by receiving a Media Access Control (MAC) control element (CE) signaling message from the second communication node; and receiving, by the first communication node, a Downlink Control Information (DCI) signaling message from the second communication node specifying a configuration corresponding to the activated subset of the set of configurations & Paragraph 118: the base station indicates an activated quasi-co-location indicator (PQI) parameter set for data channel demodulation through the DCI signaling). However, as stated in claim 1, Gao does not disclose pieces of transmission information. Zhang, on the other hand, discloses pieces of transmission information (Paragraph 39: a terminal receives the first signaling sent by a base station, where the state value of the first field is configured in the first signaling, to indicate a target spatial relation parameter in a plurality of spatial relation parameters, so that the terminal receives the first channel by using the target spatial relation parameter, to cope with an issue of indicating QCL information of data in a scenario in which one piece of data is scheduled by each of a plurality of pieces of DCI signaling).
Regarding claim 3, Gao further discloses wherein the transmission time unit of the transmission information is determined based on a resource transmission pattern or a slot format configured by a network side (Paragraph 64: time units are orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols, slots or subframes).
Regarding claim 4, the combination of Gao and Zhang teaches the method according to claim 1. In addition, Zhang discloses wherein each QCL parameter of the reference signal corresponds to one piece of resource index information in a beam measurement report (Paragraph 120: receive beam information of channels that meet a QCL relationship, so that the UE infers, based on the reference signal resource index, receive beam information for receiving the physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) or the PDSCH).
Regarding claims 5, 14, 26 & 29, the combination of Gao and Zhang teaches the method according to claim 1. In addition, Gao discloses wherein the determining, by the terminal, the at least one target QCL parameter from the plurality of QCL parameters of the reference signal based on the indication from the network side device comprises: determining, by the terminal, the at least one target QCL parameter from the plurality of QCL parameters of the reference signal based on QCL parameter indication information from the network side device, wherein the QCL parameter indication information comprises one or more QCL parameter indexes of one QCL parameter type, or comprises QCL parameter indexes respectively corresponding to at least two QCL parameter types, and each QCL parameter index corresponds to one QCL parameter (Claim 39: activating, by the first communication node, a subset of the set of configurations by receiving a Media Access Control (MAC) control element (CE) signaling message from the second communication node; and receiving, by the first communication node, a Downlink Control Information (DCI) signaling message from the second communication node specifying a configuration corresponding to the activated subset of the set of configurations & Paragraph 101: the DCI signaling selects a subset from the third-type set to perform QCL assumption indication for the DMRS port of the PDSCH).
Regarding claims 6, 15 & 27, the combination of Gao and Zhang teaches the method according to claim 5. In addition, Zhang discloses wherein the QCL parameter indication information is used to indicate QCL parameter information of at least one transmission configuration indicator (TCI) state of a codepoint (Table 20: “TCI state”).
Regarding claims 7 & 16, the combination of Gao and Zhang teaches the method according to claim 5. In addition, Gao discloses obtaining, by the terminal, the QCL parameter indication information through a TCI field or a QCL indication information field in downlink control information (DCI) (Claim 39: activating, by the first communication node, a subset of the set of configurations by receiving a Media Access Control (MAC) control element (CE) signaling message from the second communication node; and receiving, by the first communication node, a Downlink Control Information (DCI) signaling message from the second communication node specifying a configuration corresponding to the activated subset of the set of configurations & Paragraph 101: the DCI signaling selects a subset from the third-type set to perform QCL assumption indication for the DMRS port of the PDSCH).
Regarding claim 8, the combination of Gao and Zhang teaches the method according to claim 5. In addition, Zhang discloses obtaining, by the terminal, TCI indication information through a TCI field, wherein the TCI indication information is used to indicate a TCI state configured for the terminal and at least one QCL parameter index corresponding to the TCI state (Table 20: “TCI state” & Tables 21-23: “Value of TCI field”).
Regarding claim 9, Zhang further discloses wherein the resource index information satisfies at least one of: different pieces of resource index information corresponds to different QCL parameters of the reference signal; different pieces of resource index information corresponds to different transmission links of the reference signal; or, different pieces of resource index information corresponds to different time units (Paragraph 120: each reported CSI-RS resource index corresponds to one transmit/receive beam pair).
Regarding claim 12, Zhang also discloses wherein the indication from the network side device is further used to indicate one of: a plurality of groups of TCI states, wherein each group of TCI states corresponds to one transmission time unit or one hop of link; or, a first group of TCI states and an adjustment codebook corresponding to the first group of TCI states, wherein the adjustment codebook is used to determine a second group of TCI states based on the first group of TCI states (Table 20: “TCI state” & Tables 21-23: “Value of TCI field”).
Allowable Subject Matter
9. Claim 11 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, and upon overcoming 112 rejections as set forth in section 6.
Conclusion
10. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to Applicant's disclosure. Hakola (US 2023/0276283 A1) teaches in Figure 3 and Paragraph 41: a layer 1 reference signal received power (L1-RSRP) or layer 1 signal to interference plus noise ratio (L1-SINR).
11. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the Examiner should be directed to SHAWKAT M. ALI whose telephone number is (571) 270-1639. The Examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Thursday 8:30AM-3:30PM ET.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, Applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO AIR at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the Examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the Examiner’s Supervisor, SAM K. AHN can be reached on (571) 272-3044. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/SHAWKAT M ALI/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2633
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