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 .
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.
Response to Amendment
This action is responsive to a preliminary amendment filed 07 October 2024. Claims 16-25 are pending in the application.
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. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); 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); 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) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The filing of a terminal disclaimer by itself is not a complete reply to a nonstatutory double patenting (NSDP) rejection. A complete reply requires that the terminal disclaimer be accompanied by a reply requesting reconsideration of the prior Office action. Even where the NSDP rejection is provisional the reply must be complete. See MPEP § 804, subsection I.B.1. For a reply to a non-final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.111(a). For a reply to final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.113(c). A request for reconsideration while not provided for in 37 CFR 1.113(c) may be filed after final for consideration. See MPEP §§ 706.07(e) and 714.13.
The USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/patent/patents-forms. The actual filing date of the application in which the form is filed determines what form (e.g., PTO/SB/25, PTO/SB/26, PTO/AIA /25, or PTO/AIA /26) 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 www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/applying-online/eterminal-disclaimer.
Claims 16 and 21 are rejected under the judicially created doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1 and 5 of U.S. Patent No. 12,114,349. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the application’s claims merely broaden the scope of the patented claims. The application’s claims are nearly identical in every other aspect to the patented claims. It is the Examiner’s position that broadening the patented claims would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art in view of the patented claims. It is important to note that the instant application is a continuation of the application which yielded patent (U.S. Patent No. 12,114,439) used herein as the basis for the obviousness-type double patenting rejection. The applicant is attempting to broaden the parent applications claims by eliminating some of the claim elements in the continuation at issue here. If allowed, the application at bar would unjustly extend Applicant patent protection beyond the statutory period, at the same time, granting broader protection to the applicant.
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)(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.
Claim(s) 16-25 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Vermani et al. (US 2014/0307650 A1).
Regarding claim 16, Vermani appears to disclose a wireless communication terminal, the terminal comprising: a transceiver (Fig. 11, 214, [0090] “the wireless device 202 may comprise…one of the STAs 106 ”; [0094] “The wireless device 202 may also include a housing 208 that may include a transmitter 210 and a receiver 212 to allow transmission and reception of data between the wireless device 202 and a remote location. The transmitter 210 and receiver 212 may be combined into a transceiver 214”); and a processor, wherein the processor is configured to (Fig. 11, 204, [0090] “the wireless device 202 may comprise…one of the STAs 106 ”; [0091]-[0093] “The processor 204 typically performs logical and arithmetic operations based on program instructions stored within the memory 206. The instructions in the memory 206 may be executable to implement the methods described herein”):
receive a preamble of a wireless frame from an access point (AP) (Fig. 5, [0087]-[0088] “the DL 108 communications which are HE packets 130 may contain information sufficient to inform HE STAs 160a, 106c, 106d which devices may receive information in the HE packet 130, as discussed above”),
wherein the preamble includes a specific signal field including a specific index among a plurality of indexes (Fig. 5, HE-SIG1; Fig. 6, [0073] “One example SIG field scheme for subband allocation is illustrated in FIG. 6” comprising “10 bits of information to allocate sub-band tones to each of four users.”; examiner sees this as one example index of a plurality of possible indexes with bits set to different values than depicted in Fig. 6, See [0073]-[0076]),
wherein the specific index indicates to a pre-configured resource unit set including at least one resource unit and indicates a pre-configured number of at least one terminal for the pre-configured resource unit set ([0052] disclosing “By using multiple access communications, the AP may be able to multiplex OFDM symbols to, for example, four devices at once over an 80 MHz bandwidth, where each device utilizes 20 MHz bandwidth.” In this example, the 80 MHz bandwidth is seen as corresponding to “a preconfigured resource unit set” and 20 MHz is seen as “at least one resource unit”; Fig. 1, [0062] disclosing different size channel bandwidths that can correspond to the at least one resource unit; [0073] and [0075]-[0076] The HE SIG field of Fig. 6 is an example of the claimed index value disclosed as used to allocate portions of a 40 MHz signal to a plurality of users with a 5 MHz granularity, in this example, user-3 is allocated zero sub-bands and user-4 is allocated 2 sub-bands Thus, this allocation may correspond to a 40 MHz signal, in which 15 MHz is used for both user-1 and user-2, while user-4 receives 10 MHz, and user-3 does not receive any sub-bands. In this example, the 40 MHz signal is seen as corresponding to “a preconfigured resource unit set” and 10 MHz allocated to user 4 is seen as “at least one resource unit”.), and
wherein sizes of two or more resource units among plurality of resource units included in a specific resource unit set indicated by any one of the plurality of indexes are different from each other ([0075]-[0076]] in this example 15Mhz is a resource unit for user-1 and 10 MHz is a resource unit for user-4), and
receive a data of the wireless frame based on the pre-configured resource unit set including the at least one resource unit and the pre-configured number of the at least one terminal indicated by the specific index ([0074] “The group-id (G_ID) concept from 802.11ac may be used in order to identify the STAs which will receive data in an OFDMA packet.”; [0076] disclosing “user-1 is allocated 15 MHz of spectrum. Similarly, user-2 also receives 3 sub-bands, while user-3 receives zero sub-bands, and user-4 receives 2 sub-bands”; [0077] “The training fields and data which is sent after the HE-SIG symbols is delivered by the AP according to the allocated tones to each STA.”).
Regarding claim 17, Vermani appears to disclose the wireless communication terminal of claim 16,
wherein each of the plurality of indexes corresponds to each of pre-configured resource unit sets including one or more resource units and a pre-configured number of one or more terminals for each of the pre-configured resource unit sets (Fig. 6, [0073]-[0076]).
Regarding claim 18, Vermani appears to disclose the wireless communication terminal of claim 17,
wherein each of one or more terminals is allocated to the one or more resource units indicated by one index of the plurality of indexes (Fig. 6, [0073]-[0076], one of ordinary skill in the art when viewing this disclosure would at once envisage a configuration of the index of Fig. 6 in which all four users can be allocated subbands, for example, user-1 three subbands equal to 15 MHz, user-2 three subbands equal to 15 MHz, user-3 one subband equal to 5 MHz and user-4 one subband equal to 5 MHz).
Regarding claim 19, Vermani appears to disclose the wireless communication terminal of claim 16,
wherein the pre-configured resource unit set is related to a size of each of the at least one resource units and an arrangement of the at least one resource units (Fig. 6, [0073]-[0076] the resource unit set is comprised on the resource units).
Regarding claim 20, Vermani appears to disclose the wireless communication terminal of claim 16,
wherein the preamble is received in units of a 20MHz channel (Fig. 1, [0062] disclosing use of 20 MHz channels and other sizes and combinations).
Regarding clams 21-25, the claims are directed towards the wireless communication method of the wireless communication terminal of claims 16-20; accordingly, claims 21-15 are rejected on the grounds presented above for claims 16-20.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Choi et al. (US 2016/0072654 A1) discloses features of High Efficiency Wireless Local Area Network packet structures related to the claims; Lee et al. (US 2017/0214561 A1) discloses techniques for High Efficiency Wireless Local Area Network resource allocation signaling related to the claims of the instant application. Tandra et al. (US 2015/0163028 A1) further discloses an index as claimed in Fig. 6 Per-User Tone allocation, [0065].
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Joseph A Bednash whose telephone number is (571)270-7500. The examiner can normally be reached 7 AM - 4:30 PM M-F.
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 Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Huy Vu can be reached at (571)272-3155. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JOSEPH A BEDNASH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2461
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