DETAILED ACTION
The instant application having Application No. 18/913144 filed on 10/11/2024 is presented for examination by the examiner.
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 for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection.
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 claims at issue 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); 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) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on a nonstatutory double patenting ground provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with this application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
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Claims 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-15 of U.S. Patent No. 12/149318 B2 in view of Yasukawa et al. (US 2017/0347394 A1). Claims 1-15 of U.S. Patent No. 12/149318 B2 disclose the limitations recited in claims 1-20 of the instant application except for the limitations “send an indication to a second WTRU, the indication indicating the number of NACK feedbacks or no feedbacks” as in claims 1 and 11.
Instant Application
US Patent 12/149318 B2
Claim 1
A first wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) comprising:
a processor configured to
monitor one or more sidelink (SL) channels to determine radio link quality;
determine a number of negative-acknowledgement (NACK) feedbacks or no feedbacks based on monitoring the one or more sidelink channels
send an indication to a second WTRU, the indication indicating the number of NACK feedbacks or no feedbacks
Claim 1
A first wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) that performs wireless communication comprising:
a processor; and a memory coupled with the processor, the memory comprising executable instructions stored thereon that when executed by the processor cause the processor to effectuate operations comprising:
communicating with a second WTRU;
reporting a link quality indication that is below a quality threshold; wherein each block of the multiple blocks comprises physical sidelink shared channel (PSSCH)
counting a number of received negative-acknowledgement (NACK) feedbacks or no feedbacks from the second WTRU;
based on the number of received NACK feedbacks or no feedbacks exceeding a first threshold, sending a beam failure indication; and
based on the beam failure indication and the link quality indication that is below the quality threshold, transmitting a beam sweeping burst, wherein the beam sweeping burst is a composite of multiple blocks
Claims 2-20
Claims 2-15
However, Yasukawa discloses “send an indication to a second WTRU, the indication indicating the number of NACK feedbacks or no feedbacks” as [(par. 0118), Furthermore, in the feedback signal to be reported from the receiving UE to the transmitting UE, the number of the MAC PDUs to be fed back, and/or the number of the ACKs/NACKs may be included to be reported. As a result, the transmitting UE (the UE receiving the feedback) can recognize the number of the MAC PDUs, and/or the number of the ACKs/NACKs to be received as the feedback, so that errors in receiving the feedback can be avoided.]
Tsai et al. (US Patent 12/149318 B2) and Yasukawa et al. (US 2017/0347394 A1) are analogous art because they are the same field of endeavor of network communication. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Yasukawa’s teaching into Hahn’s teaching. The motivation for making the above modification would be to avoid errors in receiving the feedback. (Yasukawa, par. 0146)
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 1 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. In this case, the limitation “send/sending an indication to a second WTRU, the indication indicating the number of NACK feedbacks or no feedbacks” (filed on 10/11/2024) as in claim 1 and 11 have received no support from the corresponding disclosure from the Applicant’s specification of the current application and also the specification of the parent application (case# 17/776105).
Claims 2-10, 12-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph for at least the reason stated above. Claims 2-10, 12-20 depend on claims 1 and 11 respectively; however, they do not add any feature or subject matter that would solve any of the deficiencies of claims 1 and 11.
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 1-3, 9-10, 11-13, 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hahn (US 2021/0068189 A1) in view of Yasukawa et al. (US 2017/0347394 A1).
As per claim 1, Hahn discloses “A first wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) comprising: a processor configured to:” [(par. 0146), the first terminal may determine whether an RLF occurs based on the number of HARQ NACKs (e.g., information indicating that the DTX situation has occurred in the second terminal) received from the second terminal.] “monitor one or more sidelink (SL) channels to determine radio link quality;” [(par. 0146), the first terminal may determine whether an RLF occurs based on the number of HARQ NACKs (e.g., information indicating that the DTX situation has occurred in the second terminal) received from the second terminal.] “determine a number of negative-acknowledgement (NACK) feedbacks or no feedbacks based on monitoring the one or more sidelink channels;” [(par. 0146), the first terminal may determine whether an RLF occurs based on the number of HARQ NACKs (e.g., information indicating that the DTX situation has occurred in the second terminal) received from the second terminal.]
Hahn does not explicitly disclose “send an indication to a second WTRU, the indication indicating the number of NACK feedbacks or no feedbacks.”
However, Yasukawa discloses “send an indication to a second WTRU, the indication indicating the number of NACK feedbacks or no feedbacks” as [(par. 0118), Furthermore, in the feedback signal to be reported from the receiving UE to the transmitting UE, the number of the MAC PDUs to be fed back, and/or the number of the ACKs/NACKs may be included to be reported. As a result, the transmitting UE (the UE receiving the feedback) can recognize the number of the MAC PDUs, and/or the number of the ACKs/NACKs to be received as the feedback, so that errors in receiving the feedback can be avoided.]
Hahn (US 2021/0068189 A1) and Yasukawa et al. (US 2017/0347394 A1) are analogous art because they are the same field of endeavor of network communication. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Yasukawa’s teaching into Hahn’s teaching. The motivation for making the above modification would be to avoid errors in receiving the feedback. (Yasukawa, par. 0146)
As per claim 2, Hahn in view of Yasukawa discloses “The WTRU of claim 1,” as [see rejection of claim 1.]
Yasukawa discloses “wherein the indication is sent based on a reserved resource” as [(par. 0118), Furthermore, in the feedback signal to be reported from the receiving UE to the transmitting UE, the number of the MAC PDUs to be fed back, and/or the number of the ACKs/NACKs may be included to be reported. As a result, the transmitting UE (the UE receiving the feedback) can recognize the number of the MAC PDUs, and/or the number of the ACKs/NACKs to be received as the feedback, so that errors in receiving the feedback can be avoided.]
Hahn (US 2021/0068189 A1) and Yasukawa et al. (US 2017/0347394 A1) are analogous art because they are the same field of endeavor of network communication. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Yasukawa’s teaching into Hahn’s teaching. The motivation for making the above modification would be to avoid errors in receiving the feedback. (Yasukawa, par. 0146)
As per claim 3, Hahn in view of Yasukawa discloses “The WTRU of claim 1,” as [see rejection of claim 1.]
Hahn discloses “wherein the processor is further configured to decode control information to determine the number of NACK feedbacks or no feedbacks.” [(par. 0146), The first terminal may compare the number of HARQ NACKs (e.g., consecutive HARQ NACKs) received from the second terminal with the number of RLF-HARQ responses included in the sidelink configuration information.]
As per claim 9, Hahn in view of Yasukawa discloses “The WTRU of claim 1,” as [see rejection of claim 1.]
Hahn discloses “wherein the processor being configured to monitor the one or more SL channels comprises the processor being configured to monitor one or more SL-channel state information (CSI)-reference signals (RSs).” As [(par. 0086), The sidelink signal may be a synchronization signal and a reference signal used for sidelink communication. The reference signal may be a channel state information-reference signal (CSI-RS).]
As per claim 10, Hahn in view of Yasukawa discloses “The WTRU of claim 1,” as [see rejection of claim 1.]
Hahn discloses “wherein the number of NACK feedbacks are consecutive NACK feedbacks, or wherein the number of no feedbacks are consecutive no feedbacks” as [(par. 0146), the first terminal may determine whether an RLF occurs based on the number of HARQ NACKs (e.g., information indicating that the DTX situation has occurred in the second terminal) received from the second terminal.]
As per claims 11-13, 19-20, as [see rejections of claims 1-3, 9-10.]
Claims 4-6, 14-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hahn (US 2021/0068189 A1) in view of Yasukawa et al. (US 2017/0347394 A1) in view of Hwang et al. (US 2020/0169340 A1).
As per claim 4, Hahn in view of Yasukawa discloses “The WTRU of claim 1,” as [see rejection of claim 1.]
Hahn in view of Yasukawa does not explicitly disclose “wherein the processor is further configured to receive a beam sweeping burst”.
However, Hwang discloses “wherein the processor is further configured to receive a beam sweeping burst” as [(par. 0137), In NR, beam sweeping is performed for an SS. Referring to FIG. 5, an SS bust is transmitted according to predetermined periodicity. Here, a base station may transmit each SS block in the SS bust by performing beam sweeping according to time. Therefore, a UE receives the SS block by performing beam sweeping and performs cell detection and measurement.]
Hahn (US 2021/0068189 A1) and Hwang et al. (US 2020/0169340 A1) are analogous art because they are the same field of endeavor of network communication. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Hwang’s teaching into Hahn’s teaching. The motivation for making the above modification would be to enable a UE to accurately perform measurement in a next-generation mobile communication system. (Hwang, par. 0011)
As per claim 5, Hahn in view of Yasukawa in view of Hwang discloses “The WTRU of claim 4,” as [see rejection of claim 4.]
Hwang discloses “wherein the processor is further configured to decode the beam sweeping burst” as [(par. 0137), In NR, beam sweeping is performed for an SS. Referring to FIG. 5, an SS bust is transmitted according to predetermined periodicity. Here, a base station may transmit each SS block in the SS bust by performing beam sweeping according to time. Therefore, a UE receives the SS block by performing beam sweeping and performs cell detection and measurement.]
Hahn (US 2021/0068189 A1) and Hwang et al. (US 2020/0169340 A1) are analogous art because they are the same field of endeavor of network communication. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Hwang’s teaching into Hahn’s teaching. The motivation for making the above modification would be to enable a UE to accurately perform measurement in a next-generation mobile communication system. (Hwang, par. 0011)
As per claim 6, Hahn in view of Yasukawa in view of Hwang discloses “The WTRU of claim 5,” as [see rejection of claim 5.]
Hwang discloses “wherein the processor is further configured to determine a beam for link recovery based on successfully decoding the beam sweeping burst” as [(par. 0137), In NR, beam sweeping is performed for an SS. Referring to FIG. 5, an SS bust is transmitted according to predetermined periodicity. Here, a base station may transmit each SS block in the SS bust by performing beam sweeping according to time. Therefore, a UE receives the SS block by performing beam sweeping and performs cell detection and measurement.]
Hahn (US 2021/0068189 A1) and Hwang et al. (US 2020/0169340 A1) are analogous art because they are the same field of endeavor of network communication. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Hwang’s teaching into Hahn’s teaching. The motivation for making the above modification would be to enable a UE to accurately perform measurement in a next-generation mobile communication system. (Hwang, par. 0011)
As per claims 14-16, as [see rejections of claims 4-6.]
Claims 7-8, 17-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hahn (US 2021/0068189 A1) in view of Yasukawa et al. (US 2017/0347394 A1) in view of Luo et al. (US 2020/0413393 A1).
As per claim 7, Hahn in view of Yasukawa discloses “The WTRU of claim 1,” as [see rejection of claim 1.]
Hahn in view of Yasukawa does not explicitly disclose “wherein the processor is further configured to determine a block error rate to determine the radio link quality”.
However, Luo discloses “wherein the processor is further configured to determine a block error rate to determine the radio link quality” as [(par. 0090), the beam failure event may be a determination by the UE 115-e of a signal strength metric not satisfying a threshold. The signal strength metric may be, for example, a reference signal received power measurement, a reference signal received quality measurement, a signal to noise ratio, a signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR), a hypothetical physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) block error rate (BLER), or the like, or any combination thereof.]
Hahn (US 2021/0068189 A1) and Luo et al. (US 2020/0413393 A1) are analogous art because they are the same field of endeavor of network communication. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Luo’s teaching into Hahn’s teaching. The motivation for making the above modification would be to improve triggering resource allocation configuration switching for sidelink communications. (Luo, par. 0006)
As per claim 8, Hahn in view of Yasukawa in view of Luo discloses “The WTRU of claim 1,” as [see rejection of claim 1.]
Luo discloses “wherein the processor is further configured to report a beam failure indication based on the determined block error rate” as [(par. 0090), the beam failure event may be a determination by the UE 115-e of a signal strength metric not satisfying a threshold. The signal strength metric may be, for example, a reference signal received power measurement, a reference signal received quality measurement, a signal to noise ratio, a signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR), a hypothetical physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) block error rate (BLER), or the like, or any combination thereof.]
Hahn (US 2021/0068189 A1) and Luo et al. (US 2020/0413393 A1) are analogous art because they are the same field of endeavor of network communication. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Luo’s teaching into Hahn’s teaching. The motivation for making the above modification would be to improve triggering resource allocation configuration switching for sidelink communications. (Luo, par. 0006)
As per claims 17-18, as [see rejections of claims 7-8.]
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US Patent Publications:
Tseng et al. (US 2021/0136856 A1) [“(par. 0089), In some conditions, the HARQ DTX indication means that the Tx UE does not receive any response (e.g., neither HARQ ACK/NACK message for each sidelink packet (re)transmission from the Tx UE) from the associated Rx UE. In addition, the Tx UE (e.g., the MAC entity) may receive as many as N consecutive HARQ DTX indications from the lower layer (e.g., the PHY layer). In addition, the MAC entity may transmit one indicator (e.g., an SL-RLF indicator) to the RRC entity when the value of N reaches up to (or above) a pre-defined upper bound of consecutive HARQ DTX receptions to the same destination (e.g., a threshold of the maximum number of consecutive SL-HARQ DTX to the Rx UE for SL-RLF decision). After receiving the SL-RLF indicator from the MAC entity, the RRC entity may determine SL-RLF (associated with the Rx UE) event happens. Then, the (Tx) UE may transmit the SL-RLF report to its serving cell and/or other procedures disclosed in the presented application. It is noted that, to one destination ID (e.g., the destination ID of the Rx UE)]
NPL
Apple, “Summary of [104#56][NR/V2X] AS Level Link Management for Unicast”, R2-1901900, 25th February – 1st March 2019. (From Applicant’s IDS) [(p. 19), Q8: After SL RLF is declared at receiver UE, is it beneficial for transmitter UE to be aware of the link status? One motivation is the transmitter UE might stop data transmission to avoid data loss. If the answer is Yes, then how does the transmitter UE get to know it? a) Based on information collected on SL, i.e., receiver UE does not feedback or consecutively feedback NACK(s) to the data; b) Via the assistance from gNB, which could transfer the SL RLF indication from receiver UE to transmitter UE.]
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MANG HANG YEUNG whose telephone number is (571)270-7319. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 8:00 am to 5:00 pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Rebecca Song can be reached on (571) 270-3667. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MANG HANG YEUNG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2417
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