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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 11/15/24 has been considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1 recites limitations of “… BLER … RNTI … UE … DLSCH PDU … RV …” which recites various acronyms without indicating the meaning to said acronyms that could provide confusion as to what said various acronyms actually mean.
The examiner requests the applicant to amend the claims to clearly recite as to the meaning of each indicated acronym in order to prevent confusion.
Appropriate correction is required.
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 1 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.
Claim 1 recites the limitation “… the time of receipt of the first DLSCH PDU … wherein k is defined as above in the present disclosure and is based on the subcarrier spacing.” which indicates antecedence to a previous claim limitations as indicated by the recited “the” of the underlined portions of the claims above.
However, none of the preceding limitations indicate limitations that would provide antecedence for the underlined portions of the claims and as such there is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim which renders the claims indefinite as it is unclear as to the nature of antecedence of the underlined portions of the claim.
In addition, the claims reciting “wherein k is defined as above in the present disclosure” further renders the claims indefinite as the applicant’s claimed “present disclosure” appears to be directed towards the applicant’s specification and as such renders the claims indefinite as it is unclear as to the limits of the scope of the claimed invention since the guidelines set forth in the MPEP clearly distinguishes between the claimed invention and the applicant’s specification as is evident by MPEP 2111 that recites “The court explained that "reading a claim in light of the specification, to thereby interpret limitations explicitly recited in the claim, is a quite different thing from ‘reading limitations of the specification into a claim,’ to thereby narrow the scope of the claim by implicitly adding disclosed limitations which have no express basis in the claim." The court found that applicant was advocating the latter, i.e., the impermissible importation of subject matter from the specification into the claim.” and MPEP 2145, Section Vl that recites “Although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993).”
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 1 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph and the claim objections towards the minor informalities as set forth in this Office action.
Claim 2 is allowed.
The following are details of the closest prior arts of record found:
CHENG et al. (US Patent Publication 2018/0152941) discloses a system wherein a first wireless device may periodically or aperiodically transmit a plurality of timing advance (TA) commands, each carrying a TA value, to the first communications unit 310 and The first communications unit 310 has to receive the TA command to maintain uplink timing synchronization with the first wireless device. Upon receiving the TA command, the first communications unit 310 can derive the right time to transmit a uplink signal according to the TA value and When the TA command period is determined, the processor may determine the arrival time of a forthcoming TA command according to the estimated period and wherein a function F(.) to estimate the possibility of successfully receiving the forthcoming TA command may be predefined. For example, the factors to build up the function F(.) may comprise: a block error rate of the downlink channel of the first network device and the processor may determine the value of K according to the average HARQ re-transmission count of the downlink channel of the first network device, the maximum HARQ re-transmission count of the downlink channel of the first network device, an expectation value of x/((1−x)̂2), where x is the block error rate of the downlink channel of the first network device, the possibility to successfully receive the forthcoming TA command which can be higher than the predetermined threshold after receiving K TA commands, or others.
Tseng (US Patent Publication 2013/0272235) discloses a system wherein Timing advance updates are signalled by the eNB to the UE in MAC PDUs addressed via C-RNTI and The UE shall: when a Timing Advance Command MAC control element is received: apply the Timing Advance Command.
BAI et al. (US Patent Publication 2022/0150892) discloses a system comprising obtaining the configuration information of the first configuration of the physical downlink shared channel; determining Redundancy Versions (RVs) corresponding to Transmission Occasions (TOs) in the second configuration of the physical downlink shared channel according to the configuration information, wherein, RVs corresponding to TOs overlapped in time domain in the first configuration and in the second configuration are the same; receiving the physical downlink shared channel according to the RVs and wherein RV = {0 2 3 1} is taken as an example.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
The reasons for allowance are clear on the record. And after a thorough search and examination, Claims 2 is found to be allowable because the closest prior art found of CHENG et al. (US Patent Publication 2018/0152941) and Tseng (US Patent Publication 2013/0272235) and BAI et al. (US Patent Publication 2022/0150892) fails to disclose, teach or suggest either alone or render obvious in a combined teachings of the prior art, the uniquely distinct features of “the TAC not equal to 31; tracking a time of receipt of a first downlink shared channel (DLSCH) protocol data unit (PDU) with redundancy version (RV) 0 at the user equipment (UE); adding k slots; and continuing tracking timing advance (TA) samples of the radio network temporary identifier (RNTI) x, where k is based on the subcarrier spacing.” in the specific order, structure and combination of limitations together as a whole as recited, inter alia, by independent claim 2 of the claimed invention.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MICHAEL Y MAPA whose telephone number is (571)270-5540. The examiner can normally be reached Monday thru Thursday: 10 AM - 8 PM EST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Anthony Addy can be reached at (571) 272 - 7795. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MICHAEL Y MAPA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2645
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