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 § 112
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.
Claim 27 is 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 applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
The limitation citing “wherein the first WiFi compliant signals.” does not appear to express a complete description and is incomplete.
Appropriate correction or clarification is required.
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, 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.
Claim(s) 1-16, 19-25, and 27 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Elshafie et al. (US 2022/0352751) (hereinafter referred to as ‘Elshafie’) in view of Sampath et al. (US 2010/0008244) (hereinafter referred to as ‘Sampath’).
Elshafie teaches
Regarding claim 1,
a first wireless communications device (energy provisioning device 702), comprising:
a transceiver configured to be coupled to a set of antennas;
a controller coupled to the transceiver;
wherein the transceiver is configured to transmit a first signal to a second wireless communications device (energy harvesting device 704);
wherein the transceiver is configured to receive a second signal from the second wireless communications device;
wherein the second wireless communications device harvests power from the first signal to enable generation of the second signal; and
regarding claim 3, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the second device is only powered by the first signal (see Figure 7);
regarding claim 4, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the second device is a backscatter tag;
regarding claim 5, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the second device is configured to harvest power from an energizer waveform in the first signal (see paragraph 0050);
regarding claim 6, the first device of claim 1:
wherein part of the preamble of the first signal can be decoded and understood by the devices that is IEEE 802.11 standard compliant (see paragraph 0062);
regarding claim 7, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the second signal is a backscattered version of the first signal;
regarding claim 8, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the second signal has a same carrier frequency as the first signal (see paragraph 0051);
regarding claim 9, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the second signal includes modulated data obtained from the second device (see paragraph 0050)
regarding claim 10, the first device of claim 9:
wherein the modulated data is encoded using at least one of: On/Off keying (OOK), amplitude shift keying (ASK), frequency shift keying (FSK), or phase shift keying (PSK);
regarding claim 11, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the first device is a WiFi reader device that is configured to both provide power to the second device and receive data from the second device in response;
regarding claim 12, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the first signal has an OFDM preamble (see paragraph 0027);
regarding claim 13, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the second portion of the first signal have an ON energy state; and
wherein the second device is configured to harvest power from an energizer waveform in the first signal;
regarding claim 14, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the second portion of the first signal is a single-carrier waveform;
regarding claim 15, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the second portion of the first signal is an OFDM waveform.
Regarding claim 16, the first device of claim 1:
wherein energizing symbols transmitted in the first signal alternate with backscatter data received in the second signal;
regarding claim 19, the first device of claim 1:
wherein a set of center resource units (RUs) in the first signal are unpopulated by the energizer waveform;
regarding claim 20, the first device of claim 1:
wherein one-side of resource units (RUs) in the first signal are unpopulated by the energizer waveform;
regarding claim 21, the first device of claim 1:
wherein a distributed set of resource units (RUs) in the first signal are unpopulated by the energizer waveform;
regarding claim 22, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the second device is configured to uniquely encode data transmitted in the second signal.
Regarding claim 23, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the first device is configured to be coupled to a set of antennas that spatially steer the first signal transmission to the second device and null to the receive antenna;
the first device of claim 1:
wherein the first signal includes a WiFi compliant preamble; and
wherein the second device is configured to harvest power from an energizer waveform in the PPDU;
regarding claim 25, the first device of claim 21:
wherein the PPDU includes a preamble, a set of energizer symbols, and a control payload;
regarding claim 27,
a first wireless communications device, comprising:
a transceiver configured to be coupled to a set of antennas;
a controller coupled to the transceiver;
wherein the transceiver is configured to receive a first signal from a second wireless communications device;
wherein the transceiver is configured to transmit a second signal to the second wireless communications device;
wherein the first wireless communications device harvests power from the first signal to enable generation of the second signal.
Elshafie lacks the teaching of the first signal is backward compatible with WiFi compliant devices.
Sampath teaches the first signal is backward compatible with WiFi compliant devices (see paragraph 0054); and
first WiFi compliant signals.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have readily recognized that providing the providing the Elshafie invention with the teaching of Sampath would have been beneficial for ensuring that the first and second devices can continue to be utilized for current and future instances thereby preventing the need for having to always acquire new devices. Therefore it would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to modify the teaching of Elshafie with the aforementioned teaching of Sampath.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 17, 18, and 26 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the prior art of record fails to teach or fairly suggest either alone or in combination thereof:
regarding claim 17, the first device of claim 1:
wherein the first signals are OFDM waveforms;
wherein each OFDM waveform includes a set of resource units (RUs);
wherein a subset of RUs in the first signal are unpopulated; and
wherein the second device is configured to shift the signal to the unpopulated RUs and modulate data in the second signal;
regarding claim 26, the first device of claim 21:
wherein the PPDU includes reference symbols; and
wherein the first device is configured to use the reference symbol to estimate the leakage signal and remove the leakage energizer waveform from the second signal received from the second device.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JAMARA ALZAIDA FRANKLIN whose telephone number is (571)272-2389. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday, 8:00am-4:30pm
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February 04, 2026
/JAMARA A FRANKLIN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2876