12/5/DETAILED ACTION
Status of Application: Claims 1-25 are present for examination at this time.
Claims 1-3, 4-6, 8-13, 15-18, and 20-25 are rejected.
Claims 4, 7, 14, and 19 are objected to.
Please refer to Forms 892 of record in this application and/or submitted Ides to resolve any possible discrepancies in the listed reference numbers, titles, and/or author or inventor names.
Applicant is reminded that claim mapping is provided as a courtesy to the applicant, but applicant should consider a reference as a whole, as the entire reference gives context to mapped sections.
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 .
Priority
Applicant’s claim for foreign/domestic priority under 35 U.S.C. 119/120 is acknowledged.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) submitted on 4/24/2025, 12/23/2025. 1/20/2026, 2/25/2026, 4/16/2026, 4/22/2026, and 8/3/2026 has/have been considered by the Examiner and made of record in the application file.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4, 7, 14, and 19 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.
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 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. All obviousness rationales stated below are rationales that would have been obvious prior to the earliest effective filing date of the application.
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.
Claims 1, 5-6, 10-13, 15-18, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over “Adaptive Simultaneous Multilink Operational Framework” by Nagarajan et al., US2023/0247696 A1 (“Nagarajan”) over “Fast Basic Service Set Transition For Multi-Link Operation” by Ho US2022/0022033A1 (“Ho”).
With respect to Claims 1 and 18, while Nagarajan discloses a method of seamless roaming (and related non-AP MLD) in a seamless mobile domain of a wireless network, the method comprising:
receiving from an access point multi-link device (AP MLD) in the wireless network information of one or more candidate target AP MLDs to seamlessly roam to (Nagarajan at ¶¶33, 38 where the MLD STA receives information about nearby AP MLDs to roam to)
… selecting a target AP MLD from the one or more candidate AP MLDs based on the information; and roaming to the target AP MLD.
Nagarajan does not explicitly state that which is known in the art as taught by Ho. Ho discloses …the information including a seamless roaming domain (SMD) element that identifies a respective seamless roaming domain of the one or more candidate target AP MLDs (Ho at ¶6 where the information provided incused MAC-SAP addresses to uniquely identifies the non-AP MLD in a wireless local area network (WLAN), and a second address that is a MAC address of the first target AP, receiving from the first target AP,”, the addresses are a form of domain information) ;
Reasons to Combine/Modify:
Ho and Nagarajan are analogous to the claimed invention as they are from the same field of endeavor: facilitating roaming across AP MLDs by Non-AP MLDs. Nagarajan states at ¶38 that when STR-ML and eMSLR are used with roaming for a non-AP MLD within and AP MLD system it must be simultaneous and not individual in order to work effectively against interference.
Per Ho at ¶31 this improves the system to allow for faster transitions between AP-MLDs “Particular aspects more specifically relate to facilitating fast basic service set (BSS) transitions by wireless communication devices, such as by non-AP MLDs, that support MLO. For example, some aspects provide support for non-AP MLD roaming between AP MLDs, from an AP MLD to a non-MLO AP, or from a non-MLO AP to an AP MLD. In some aspects, a non-AP MLD may be configured to use the medium access control (MAC) service access point (MAC-SAP) address of the AP MLD during a fast BSS transition (also referred to herein as an “FT” or simply a fast transition) when re-associating or communicating with an AP MLD or with a legacy AP. In such aspects, the MAC-SAP address may be used by all STAs of the non-AP MLD for fast BSS transitions.”
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date herein, who would want to make the system of Nagarajan work gaster for quicker reassociations to combine Nagarajan with Ho.
With respect to Claims 5 and 20, Nagarajan in view of Ho discloses the method of claim 1 (and related non-AP MLD), wherein the SMD element comprises an SMD identifier of the SMD which is an MAC address, the information of the target AP MLD including the SMD identifier (Ho at ¶6 where the information provided incused MAC-SAP addresses to uniquely identifies the non-AP MLD in a wireless local area network (WLAN), and a second address that is a MAC address of the first target AP, receiving from the first target AP) .
With respect to Claim 6, Nagarajan in view of Ho and further in view of Ho discloses the method of claim 5, wherein the SMD identifier is used for identifying the SMD and a non-AP MLD associates with a serving AP MLD of the SMD based on the SMD identifier (Ho at ¶6 where the information provided incused MAC-SAP addresses to uniquely identifies the non-AP MLD in a wireless local area network (WLAN), and a second address that is a MAC address of the first target AP, receiving from the first target AP,”, the addresses are a form of domain information)
With respect to Claim 10, Nagarajan in view of Ho discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising sending a roaming request to a single selected candidate target AP MLD to do roaming preparation (Ho at ¶¶31, 58 where the Fast Transition Roam is initiated with a handshake that authenticates the STA for the roaming).
With respect to Claim 11, Nagarajan in view of Ho discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising receiving a basic service set (BSS) transition message (BTM) request having a neighbor report element with service requirements of the one or more candidate target AP MLDs and sending a BTM response to indicate the candidate target AP MLDs that meet defined service requirements (Nagarajan at ¶¶49, 58 where the system selects an AP MLD based on analysis of measured values against user requirements).
With respect to Claims 12 and 23 Nagarajan in view of Ho discloses the method of claim 1 (and related non-AP MLD), wherein the one or more candidate target AP MLDs are identified by AP MLD identifiers in an AP MLD ID space not used by another AP MLD in a same AP device as a reporting AP MLD or by links of the reporting AP MLD in the AP device which is not one of the candidate target AP MLDs (Ho at ¶6 where the information provided incused MAC-SAP addresses to uniquely identifies the non-AP MLD in a wireless local area network (WLAN), and a second address that is a MAC address of the first target AP, receiving from the first target AP,”, the addresses are a form of domain information) ;
With respect to Claim 13, Nagarajan in view of Ho discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising transmitting a BTM query by a non-AP MLD having an indication that a query is for candidate target AP MLDs in a same SMD as a recipient AP MLD (Ho at ¶6 where the query includes a request to establish a shared key, i.e., a request to be in the same network domain.)
With respect to Claims 15 and 24, Nagarajan in view of Ho discloses the method of claim 1 (and related non-AP MLD, further comprising establishing a resource reservation with the target AP MLD by a resource reservation element which comprises an identification of the target AP MLD in an action details field of the resource reservation element (Ho at ¶6 where the query includes a request to establish a shared key, i.e., a request to be in the same network domain.).
With respect to Claims 16 and 25, Nagarajan in view of Ho discloses the method of claim 1 (and related non-AP MLD), wherein a Link Reconfiguration Request and Response are used to establish links with the target AP MLD (Ho at ¶12 where the station reassociates with the AP MLD which is a reconfiguration and response to establish a link. Also see Ho at ¶73.).
With respect to Claim 17, Nagarajan in view of Ho discloses the method of claim 16, wherein the Link Reconfiguration Request and Response are used as a roaming preparing request and roaming preparing response (Ho at ¶12 where the station reassociates with the AP MLD which is a reconfiguration and response to establish a link. Also see Ho at ¶73. The Fast Transition is part of the roaming procedure.)
Claims 2-3, 8-9, and 21-22are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over “Adaptive Simultaneous Multilink Operational Framework” by Nagarajan et al., US2023/0247696 A1 (“Nagarajan”) over “Fast Basic Service Set Transition For Multi-Link Operation” by Ho US2022/0022033A1 (“Ho”) and further in view of “Method And Device For Transmitting Multi-link Information, And Storage Medium” by Wu et al, US2023/0403638.
With respect to Claim 2, while Nagarajan in view of Ho discloses the method of claim 1, neither Nagarajan nor Ho explicitly states that which is known in the art as taught by Wu.Wu discloses wherein the information of the one or more candidate target AP MLDs is carried in a reduced neighbor report (RNR) element transmitted in a beacon or probe response frame (Wu at ¶¶69 and 85 where a beacon frame is used to identify AP MLDs. The terminal then compares those identities against the identity of its current AP MLD).
Reasons to Combine Modify: Nagarajan, Ho, and Wu are analogous to the claimed invention in that they are from the same field of endeavor as the claimed invention, discovery of and roaming on AP MLDs. Therefore, Using a Neighbor Reduced Message allows for the use of less bandwidth on the channel and less information to process at the terminal, by reducing the message to critical information, which results in a faster process than a full neighborhood list, and in the smaller size of a beacon frame. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to combine Wu with Nagarajan in view of Ho for the reasons above.
With respect to Claim 3, Nagarajan in view of Ho and further in view of Ho and further in view of Wu discloses the method of claim 2, wherein the RNR element defines a target beacon transmission time (TBTT) Information Type 0 to signal that the RNR element indicates the one or more candidate target AP MLDs (Wu at ¶¶69 and 85 where a beacon frame is used to identify AP MLDs. The terminal then compares those identities against the identity of its current AP MLD).
Reasons to Combine Modify: Nagarajan, Ho, and Wu are analogous to the claimed invention in that they are from the same field of endeavor as the claimed invention, discovery of and roaming on AP MLDs. Therefore, using a Neighbor Reduced Message allows for the use of less bandwidth on the channel and less information to process at the terminal, by reducing the message to critical information, which results in a faster process than a full neighborhood list, and in the smaller size of a beacon frame. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to combine Wu with Nagarajan in view of Ho for the reasons above.
With respect to Claims 8 and 21, Nagarajan in view of Ho and further in view of Wu discloses the method of claim 1 (and related non-AP MLD, wherein a Neighbor Report element carries the SMD element to identify an SMD to which a candidate target AP MLD belongs (Wu at ¶¶7, 42 where the system sends over BSS ID parameters for neighboring cells. When Wu modifies Nagarajan in view of Ho, this information in the Report element for the neighbor would be MAC information among the BSS ID parameters).
With respect to Claims 9, and 22, Nagarajan in view of Ho and further in view of Wu discloses the method of claim 1 (and related non-AP MLD, wherein a Neighbor Report element carries an indication whether the candidate target AP MLD in the Neighbor Report element and a reporting AP MLD belongs to a same SMD (Wu at ¶¶69 and 85 where a beacon frame is used to identify AP MLDs. The terminal then compares those identities against the identity of its current AP MLD).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOSHUA L SCHWARTZ whose telephone number is (571)270-7494. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 10a-6p.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, Applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor Yuwen “Kevin” Pan at 571-272-7855. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/JOSHUA L SCHWARTZ/Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2649
Prosecution Insights