DETAILED ACTION
This Non-Final Office Action is in response to application number 18/972,000 filed on December 6th, 2024. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed on January 20th, 2025.
Information Disclosure Statements
The information disclosure statements (IDS), submitted on June 23rd, 2025 and June 6th, 2024, are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
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.
Claims 1-4,7-14 and 16-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Abraham et al. (US 20260304250 A1).
Regarding claims 1,11,19, Abraham et al. disclose a method of a user equipment (UE), comprising: performing a lower-layer triggered mobility (LTM) preparation phase for LTM candidate configuration (US 20260304250 A1 Paragraph 0030 discloses “The gNB provides LTM candidate configuration, that is configure LTM candidate cells through one RRC reconfiguration message for a candidate target cell or through one cell group configuration (CellGroupConfig) for each candidate target cell or through any similar RRC structure or Information Element (IE) containing similar fields (for e.g. a new IE LTM-CandidateConfig can be defined as ASN.1 sequence containing CellGroupConfig and some other information elements in the RRCReconfiguration).”); executing an LTM procedure based on a layer-1 (L1) measurement result for one or more candidate cells indicated by the LTM candidate configuration (US 20260304250 A1 Paragraph 0057 and FIG. 1 discloses “The LTM is a procedure in which the gNB or network apparatus receives the L1 measurement report(s) from the UE, and based on the received L1 measurement report(s) from the UE, the gNB changes UE serving cell by a cell switch command signaled via a MAC CE. The cell switch command indicates an LTM candidate configuration that the gNB previously prepared and provided to the UE through the RRC signaling.”); and completing the LTM procedure when a cell switch procedure according to the LTM procedure is completed (US 20260304250 A1 Paragraph 0057 and FIG. 1 discloses “Then the UE switches to the target configuration according to the cell switch command. The LTM procedure can be used to reduce the mobility latency and signaling overhead.”).
Regarding claims 2,12,20, Abraham et al. disclose the method according to claim 1, wherein the performing of the LTM preparation phase comprises: transmitting a measurement report to a base station; receiving, from the base station, a radio resource control (RRC) reconfiguration message including the LTM candidate configuration generated based on the measurement report; and transmitting an RRC reconfiguration complete message to the base station in response to the RRC reconfiguration message (US 20260304250 A1 Paragraph 0057 and FIG. 1 discloses “a sequence diagram that illustrates overall flow of the LTM in the wireless network, accordingly to embodiments as disclosed herein. The LTM is a procedure in which the gNB or network apparatus receives the L1 measurement report(s) from the UE, and based on the received L1 measurement report(s) from the UE, the gNB changes UE serving cell by a cell switch command signaled via a MAC CE. The cell switch command indicates an LTM candidate configuration that the gNB previously prepared and provided to the UE through the RRC signaling. Then the UE switches to the target configuration according to the cell switch command. The LTM procedure can be used to reduce the mobility latency and signaling overhead.”).
Regarding claims 3,13, Abraham et al. disclose the method according to claims 2, wherein the LTM candidate configuration includes at least one of a master cell group (MCG) list or a secondary cell group (SCG) list, the MCG list includes information on one or more candidate MCGs which the UE is able to access, and the SCG list includes information on one or more candidate SCGs which the UE is able to access (US 20260304250 A1 Paragraph 0051 discloses “Upon the indication by the lower layers that an LTM cell switch procedure is triggered, the UE shall: TABLE-US-00004 1> release/clear all current dedicated radio configuration except for the following: 2> if the LTM cell switch is triggered on the Master Cell Group (MCG): -the MCG C-RNTI; -the AS security configurations associated with the master key; 2> else, if the LTM cell switch is triggered on the Secondary Cell Group (SCG): -the SCG C-RNTI;-the AS security configurations associated with the secondary key”; Additionally Paragraph 0113 discloses “In an embodiment, the UE (201) may pause or stop performing the LTM measurements for the MCG while the T316 is running. In an embodiment, the UE (201) may pause or stop performing the LTM measurements for the MCG and SCG while the T316 is running.”).
Regarding claims 4,14, Abraham et al. disclose the method according to claim 2, wherein the RRC reconfiguration message further includes L1 measurement configuration, wherein the L1 measurement configuration includes information on one or more beam measurement instances that are to be measured.
Regarding claim 7,16, Abraham et al. disclose the method according to claim 1, wherein the executing of the LTM procedure comprises: transmitting an L1 measurement report to a base station (US 20260304250 A1 Paragraph 0075 discloses “At step 4, the UE performs L1 measurements on the configured LTM candidate target cell(s), and transmits lower-layer measurement reports to the gNB.”); in response to execution of the LTM procedure being determined based on the L1 measurement report, receiving a cell switch command from the base station (US 20260304250 A1 Paragraph 0076 discloses “At step 5, the source gNB decides to execute the LTM cell switch to a target cell, and transmits the MAC-CE triggering the LTM cell switch.”); and performing a detach procedure for a source cell and a procedure of applying configuration for a target cell, wherein the L1 measurement report includes a measurement result for the one or more candidate cells indicated by the LTM candidate configuration (US 20260304250 A1 Paragraph 0077 discloses “At step 6, the UE switches to the configuration of the LTM candidate target cell by performing L1/MAC/RLC/PCDCP/SDAP/RRC operation etc.”).
Regarding claims 8,17, Abraham et al. disclose the method according to claim 7, wherein the L1 measurement report includes at least one of a cell identifier (ID), beam information of a cell corresponding to the cell ID, or a triggering condition of the L1 measurement report (US 20260304250 A1 Paragraph 0075 discloses “At step 4, the UE performs L1 measurements on the configured LTM candidate target cell(s), and transmits lower-layer measurement reports to the gNB.”).
Regarding claims 9,18, Abraham et al. disclose the method according to claim 7, wherein the cell switch command includes at least one of information indicating a type of a cell group (CG) which the UE is to access or an index for the CG which the UE is to access, and the type of the CG indicates MCG or SCG (US 20260304250 A1 Paragraph 0030 discloses “The gNB provides LTM candidate configuration, that is configure LTM candidate cells through one RRC reconfiguration message for a candidate target cell or through one cell group configuration (CellGroupConfig) for each candidate target cell or through any similar RRC structure or Information Element (IE) containing similar fields (for e.g. a new IE LTM-CandidateConfig can be defined as ASN.1 sequence containing CellGroupConfig and some other information elements in the RRCReconfiguration).” CellGroupConfig configures cell group types MCG SCG).
Regarding claim 10, Abrham et al. disclose the method according to claim 1, further comprising: before executing the LTM procedure, performing an early synchronization procedure for the one or more candidate cells indicated by the LTM candidate configuration, wherein the early synchronization procedure includes at least one of a downlink (DL) synchronization procedure or an uplink (UL) synchronization procedure (US 20260304250 A1 Paragraph 0058 discloses “In an embodiment, when configured by the network, it is possible to activate Transmission Configuration Indicator (TCI) states of one or multiple cells that are different from the current serving cell. For instance, the TCI states of the LTM candidate cells can be activated in advance before any of those cells become the serving cell. This allows the UE to be Downlink (DL) synchronized with those cells, thereby facilitating a faster cell switch to one of those cells when cell switch is triggered.”).
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 may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim 5,15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Abraham et al. (US 20260304250 A1) further in view of Liang et al. (WO2024070566 A1 Translation).
Regarding claim 5,15, Abraham et al. disclose the method according to claim 4.
Abraham et al. fail to explicitly disclose wherein the one or more beam measurement instances indicated by the L1 measurement configuration are one or more beam measurement instances having a high priority among all beam measurement instances for all candidate beams.
However, in analogous art Liang et al. teaches wherein the one or more beam measurement instances indicated by the L1 measurement configuration are one or more beam measurement instances having a high priority among all beam measurement instances for all candidate beams (WO2024070566 A1 Page 5-6 Paragraphs Last,1,2 respectively disclose “In a second aspect the present disclosure provides a method for a user equipment, UE, the method including: receiving, from an access network node, candidate cell information that indicates candidate cells for inter-cell mobility; performing periodic layer 1, L1, measurements for inter-cell mobility based on the candidate cell information; and transmitting a measurement report, corresponding to the periodic L1 measurements, to the access network node; wherein the candidate cell information includes an indication that L1measurements for inter-cell mobility are to be performed for a subset of the candidate cells. The candidate cell information may include an indication of a number of candidate cells for which the performing periodic L1 measurements may be performed simultaneously by the UE. The candidate cell information may include a measurement priority for each of the candidate cells; and the method may include selecting a subset of the candidate cells based on the measurement priority and performing the periodic L1 measurements for the subset of the candidate cells.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Abraham et al. to incorporate the teachings of Liang et al., wherein the one or more beam measurement instances indicated by the L1 measurement configuration are one or more beam measurement instances having a high priority among all beam measurement instances for all candidate beams, in order to minimize the number beam indexes reported on.
Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Abraham et al. (US 20260304250 A1) in view of Liang et al. (WO2024070566 A1 Translation) further in view of Xiong et al. (WO 2025050410 A1 Translation).
Regarding claim 6, Abrham et al. and Liang et al. disclose the method according to claim 5 wherein the one or more beam measurement instances having the high priority (WO2024070566 A1 Page 5-6 Paragraphs Last,1,2)
Abraham et al. and Liang et al. fail to explicitly disclose include at least one of a beam measurement instance for an MCG primary cell (PCell), a beam measurement instance for an SCG primary secondary cell (PSCell), or a beam measurement instance for a beam affecting at a cell boundary.
However, in an analogous art Xiong et al. teaches include at least one of a beam measurement instance for an MCG primary cell (PCell), a beam measurement instance for an SCG primary secondary cell (PSCell), or a beam measurement instance for a beam affecting at a cell boundary (Page 42 Paragraph 2-3 disclose “It should be noted that the L1 measurement of the non-service cell is associated with the configuration of the service MCG and/or service PCell. It can be understood that the L1 measurement configuration of the L1 measurement of the non-service cell can refer to the L1 measurement configuration of the service MCG and/or service PCell. The L1 measurement of the non-serving cell is associated with the configuration of the serving SCG and/or serving PSCell. It can be understood that the L1 measurement configuration of the L1 measurement of the non-serving cell can refer to the L1 measurement configuration of the serving SCG and/or serving PSCell.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Abraham et al. and Liang et al. to incorporate the teachings of Xiong et al., include at least one of a beam measurement instance for an MCG primary cell (PCell), a beam measurement instance for an SCG primary secondary cell (PSCell), or a beam measurement instance for a beam affecting at a cell boundary, in order to minimize the number beam indexes reported and to facilitate LTM switching.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Samuel Dilan Rutnam whose telephone number is 703-756-1374. The examiner can normally be reached between 8:30am-5:00pm Mon-Fri.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Sujoy Kundu can be reached on 571-272-8586.
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR.
Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free).
/Samuel Dilan Rutnam/
Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2471
/MOHAMMAD S ADHAMI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2471
Prosecution Insights