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 § 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)(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.
(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) 1-4, 15, 18-19, 26, and 29-30 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) as being anticipated by Applicant’s submission of prior art, Herath et al., US Patent Application Publication Number 2021/0194734 (hereinafter Herath).
Regarding claims 1, 18, 29, and 30, Herath discloses a method of operating a user equipment (UE), comprising: receiving a sounding reference signal for positioning (SRS-P) configuration [paragraph 0264]; receiving, while the UE is in a radio resource control (RRC) Inactive state or an RRC Idle state, a first downlink control information (DCI) comprising an SRS-P early indication (SEI) field [paragraphs 0262-0264], wherein the SEI field is associated with a first sub-group of UEs that comprises the UE and at least one additional UE [paragraph 0235], and wherein the SEI field is configured to trigger each UE in the first sub- group of UEs either to transmit or not transmit one or more respective SRS-Ps on a set of SRS-P occasions (SRS-Os) [paragraphs 0271-0272]; and selectively transmitting the one or more SRS-Ps on the set of SRS-Os in accordance with the SRS-P configuration based on the SEI field [paragraphs 0271-0272].
Regarding claim 2, Herath discloses wherein the SEI field is configured to trigger each UE in the first sub-group of UEs to transmit the one or more respective SRS-Ps on the set of SRS-Os in accordance with the respective SRS-P configuration, and wherein the selectively transmitting comprises transmitting the one or more respective SRS-Ps on the set of SRS-Os in accordance with the SRS-P configuration based on the SEI field [paragraphs 0271-0272].
Regarding claim 3, Herath discloses wherein the SEI field is configured to trigger each UE in the first sub-group of UEs not to transmit the one or more respective SRS-Ps on the set of SRS-Os in accordance with the respective SRS-P configuration, and wherein the selectively transmitting comprises not transmitting the one or more respective SRS-Ps on the set of SRS-Os in accordance with the respective SRS-P configuration [paragraphs 0271-0272].
Regarding claim 4, Herath discloses wherein the first DCI is scrambled with group common (GC) information [paragraph 0287].
Regarding claims 15 and 26, Herath discloses wherein a mapping of the UE and the at least one UE additional UE to the first sub-group of UEs is based on: UE identifier (ID), or a number of SRS-P frames in an SRS-P cycle, or a number of SRS-Os per SRS-P frame, or an index of a respective SRS-O within a respective SRS-P frame, or any combination thereof [paragraphs 0235, 0239].
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-14, 16-17, 20-25, and 27-28 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.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Huang et al., US Patent Application Publication Number 2025/0379702, disclose a UE configured to perform positioning reference signal measurements in RRC_Inactive state with a reduced number of samples.
Thomas et al., WO 2022/003606, disclose configuring energy efficient positioning measurements.
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/EAW/
October 13, 2026
/ERIKA A WASHINGTON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2644
