DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . This action is in response to the communication filed on 10/18/2024. Claims 1-20 are pending.
Examiner Note
The examiner is here to serve, to assist, and to help applicant to the very best of his ability. The Primary Patent Examiner position is a position of serving and it is an honor to externally serve the applicant and attorney and to internally serve junior examiners and supervisors. The goal of the examiner is to work with and assist applicant to move cases along as efficiently as possible.
Applicant is encouraged to call examiner to schedule an interview if applicant has any questions about this action, wants to discuss any possible paths forward, has proposed amendments to the claims to run by the examiner, or for any other issues that applicant would like to discuss.
Examiner can normally be reached at (571) 270-3863 or michael.keller@uspto.gov, Monday-Friday, from about 6 AM - 10 PM EST and if your call is missed examiner will try to return call quickly, thank you.
Priority
This application is effectively filed 10/18/2024. The assignee of record is InterDigital Patent Holdings, Inc. The listed inventor(s) is/are: Arfaoui, Mohamed Amine; Pietraski, Philip; Zhang, Guodong; Koc, Asil.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) (IDS) submitted on 10/18/2024, 7/10/2026 is/are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the IDS(s) is/are being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claims 5 & 15 are objected to because of the following informalities: The claims have a period “.” in the middle which appears to be a typo. Each claim begins with a capital letter and ends with a period. Periods may not be used elsewhere in the claims except for abbreviations. Please see MPEP 608.01(m), Fressola v.Manbeck, 36 USPQ2d 1211 (D.D.C. 1995).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 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, 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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tooher et al. (US 20210176710 A1, published 6/10/2021; hereinafter Too) in view of Valcarce Rial et al. (US 20240196471 A1, published 6/13/2024; hereinafter Val).
For Claim 1, Too teaches a wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) comprising: a processor and memory, the processor and memory configured to (Too Please see Figs. 2 and 3 below, provided here for reference throughout the mappings, thank you:
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receive first configuration information, the first configuration information indicating a discontinuous reception (DRX) pattern (Too ¶ 0104 A WTRU may be configured with a DRX pattern, which may determine an activity state of the WTRU. Too ¶ 0095, 0103 feedback report is used to indicate status of awake and sleep mode);
receive second configuration information, the second configuration information comprising one or more of parameters associated with a DRX feedback report (Too ¶ 0112-0115 receives DRX report that identifies latency of the network), a reporting condition for transmitting the DRX feedback report (Too ¶ 0118 updated report is generated based on the learned transmission instances), and uplink (UL) resource configurations for carrying the DRX feedback report (Too ¶ 0095 PUSCH); and
transmit the DRX feedback report based on the reporting condition (Too ¶ 0118 updated report is generated based on the learned transmission instances), wherein the DRX feedback report comprises one or more of WTRU battery state information or information associated with a calculation of a reward used in a reinforcement learning model at the network to determine the DRX pattern (Too ¶ 0116-0117 updates awake and sleep period are determined based on the learning from past transmission instances and determines how to adjust DRX cycle based on transmission instances).
Too does not explicitly use the term “reward.”
However, Val teaches reward (Val ¶ 0198 a reward function 720 provides an input to the DRX agent 714
Please see screenshot below of Fig. 7 and reward function:
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Val and Too are analogous art because they are both related to DRX.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to use the reward function of Val with the system of Too to fulfill the main energy-efficiency objective of DRX (Val ¶ 0200).
For Claim 2, Too-Val teaches the WTRU of claim 1, wherein the DRX pattern further comprises a DRX cycle duration, one or more time windows designating when the WTRU turns on during a DRX cycle, the duration of each time window, and the start of the next DRX cycle (Too ¶ 0194-0195).
For Claim 3, Too-Val teaches the WTRU of claim 1, wherein the reward is computed by the network, and wherein the information associated with the calculation of the reward comprises one or more of an indication of a power saving preference of the WTRU, a power profile of the WTRU, or an estimated time-to-recharge of the WTRU (Too ¶ 0113-0117).
For Claim 4, Too-Val teaches the WTRU of claim 1, wherein the reward is computed by the network and the WTRU, and wherein the information associated with the calculation of the reward comprises a set of parameters associated with a reward function.
For Claim 5, Too-Val teaches the WTRU of claim 1, wherein the reporting condition for transmitting the DRX feedback report is an event-triggered feedback reporting condition, reporting is triggered based on a comparison of a parameter associated with a reward for a reinforcement learning model at the network to a threshold (Too ¶ 0113-0115).
For Claim 6, Too-Val teaches the WTRU of claim 1, wherein the reporting condition for transmitting is the DRX feedback report is associated with time-based feedback reporting, wherein the time-based feedback reporting indicates periodic, aperiodic, or semi-persistent transmission of the DRX feedback report (Too ¶ 0021-0022).
For Claim 7, Too-Val teaches the WTRU of claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured to: receive a request to transmit dynamic DRX operation capabilities (Too ¶ 0179-0181); and transmit a response message, the response message comprising the WTRU’s dynamic DRX operation capabilities (Too ¶ 0179-0181).
For Claim 8, Too-Val teaches the WTRU of claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured to receive an updated DRX pattern, wherein the updated DRX pattern is different than the DRX pattern indicated by the first configuration information and is based on the DRX feedback report (Too ¶ 0160, 0184-0185).
For Claim 9, Too-Val teaches the WTRU of claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured to transmit the DRX feedback report in a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) acknowledgement/not acknowledgement (ACK/NACK) report (Too ¶ 0100, 0147, table 1).
For Claim 10, Too-Val teaches the WTRU of claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured to transmit the DRX feedback report in the uplink (UL) control information and on the physical UL control channel (PUCCH) or physical UL shared channel (PUSCH) (Too ¶ 0095).
For Claim(s) 11, the claim(s) is/are substantially similar to claim 1 and therefore is/are rejected for the same reasoning set forth above.
For Claim(s) 12, the claim(s) is/are substantially similar to claim 2 and therefore is/are rejected for the same reasoning set forth above.
For Claim(s) 13, the claim(s) is/are substantially similar to claim 3 and therefore is/are rejected for the same reasoning set forth above.
For Claim(s) 14, the claim(s) is/are substantially similar to claim 4 and therefore is/are rejected for the same reasoning set forth above.
For Claim(s) 15, the claim(s) is/are substantially similar to claim 5 and therefore is/are rejected for the same reasoning set forth above.
For Claim(s) 16, the claim(s) is/are substantially similar to claim 6 and therefore is/are rejected for the same reasoning set forth above.
For Claim(s) 17, the claim(s) is/are substantially similar to claim 7 and therefore is/are rejected for the same reasoning set forth above.
For Claim(s) 18, the claim(s) is/are substantially similar to claim 8 and therefore is/are rejected for the same reasoning set forth above.
For Claim(s) 19, the claim(s) is/are substantially similar to claim 9 and therefore is/are rejected for the same reasoning set forth above.
For Claim(s) 20, the claim(s) is/are substantially similar to claim 5 and therefore is/are rejected for the same reasoning set forth above.
Citation of Pertinent Prior Art
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure is listed below, thank you:
i. US 20230007467 A1
Please see PTO-892 for additional listing of relevant prior art made of record but not relied upon, thank you.
Conclusion
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/MICHAEL A KELLER/
Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2418
Prosecution Insights