DETAILED ACTION
This action is a response to arguments filed on 2/20/26 in which claims 1-20 are pending.
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 § 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) 1-8, 12, 13 and 16-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhu et al. (Pub. No.: 2025/0193891), herein Zhu and Bae et al. (WO 2020/226391 A1), herein Bae.
As to claim 1, Zhu teaches a method of a User Equipment (UE), comprising:
determining an overlap among a first set of Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) resources for Scheduling Request (SR), a second set of PUCCH resources for an indication notifying or requesting transmission of a UE-Initiated (UEI) beam reporting and a third PUCCH resource for a Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) (Zhu [0313] In one embodiment, UE behaviours/procedures for multiplexing HARQ-ACK and/or CSI and/or SR and/or UEI report(s) in a PUCCH are provided expecting one or more of the followings: [0314] resources for transmissions of UCI types, prior to multiplexing or dropping, overlap in a slot [0317] In one example, a UE could be configured to transmit K PUCCHs for respective K SRs in a slot, , with SR transmission occasions that could overlap with a transmission of a PUCCH with HARQ-ACK information from the UE in the slot or with a transmission of a PUCCH with CSI report(s) from the UE in the slot or with a transmission (notifying of transmission) of a PUCCH with UEI report(s) from the UE in the slot); and
transmitting the HARQ and information to a network node, wherein the information indicates a code- point among the first set of PUCCH resources for SR and the second set of PUCCH resources for the indication. (Zhu [0649] The UE then transmits the indicator via the PUCCH resource (750) and transmits the beam report via the PUSCH resource (760). In various embodiments, when the PUCCH resource overlaps with a resource for a PUCCH associated with a SR, the UE multiplexes the SR and the indicator in the PUCCH resource based on a priority of the SR and a priority of the beam report. In various embodiments, when the PUCCH resource overlaps with a resource for a PUSCH carrying HARQ-ACK information bits, the UE appends the indicator to the HARQ-ACK information bits and [0533] Component-6c: one or more (e.g., K) indicators (code-point) each corresponding or associated or specific to a resource in a resource set (e.g., comprising a number K of resources), wherein a resource could correspond to a time-domain resource and/or a frequency-domain resource comprising or corresponding to one or more of: a transmission occasion (TO), a slot, a symbol, a PRB, a PUCCH resource, a PUSCH resource, a PRACH preamble and/or etc.)
and transmitting the UEI beam report after transmitting the information.
transmitting the UEI beam (Zhu Fig. 7 (760))
Zhu does not teach
and size of the information is determined based on a number of PUCCH resources in the first set of PUCCH resources and a number of PUCCH resources in the second set of PUCCH resources;
However Bae does teach
and size of the information is determined based on a number of PUCCH resources in the first set of PUCCH resources and a number of PUCCH resources in the second set of PUCCH resources (Bae [0219] The UE may determine the total number of PRBs of the MUX PUCCH resources based on the payload size);
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Zhu and Bae, because Bae teaches us table 7 PUCCH resources may be determined for each UCI type (eg, A/N, SR, CSI). PUCCH resources used for UCI transmission may be determined based on UCI (payload) size.
As to claim 16, Zhu teaches a User Equipment (UE), comprising: a memory; and a processor operatively coupled with the memory, wherein the processor is configured to execute a program code to: determine an overlap among a first set of Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) resources for a Scheduling Request (SR), a second set of PUCCH resources for an indication notifying or requesting transmission of a UE-Initiated (UEI) beam reporting and a third PUCCH resource for a Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) (Zhu [0313] In one embodiment, UE behaviours/procedures for multiplexing HARQ-ACK and/or CSI and/or SR and/or UEI report(s) in a PUCCH are provided expecting one or more of the followings: [0314] resources for transmissions of UCI types, prior to multiplexing or dropping, overlap in a slot [0317] In one example, a UE could be configured to transmit K PUCCHs for respective K SRs in a slot, , with SR transmission occasions that could overlap with a transmission of a PUCCH with HARQ-ACK information from the UE in the slot or with a transmission of a PUCCH with CSI report(s) from the UE in the slot or with a transmission of a PUCCH with UEI report(s) from the UE in the slot); and transmit the HARQ and information to a network node, wherein the information indicates one code-point among the first set of PUCCH resources for SR and the second set of PUCCH resources for the indication (Zhu [0649] The UE then transmits the indicator via the PUCCH resource (750) and transmits the beam report via the PUSCH resource (760). In various embodiments, when the PUCCH resource overlaps with a resource for a PUCCH associated with a SR, the UE multiplexes the SR and the indicator in the PUCCH resource based on a priority of the SR and a priority of the beam report. In various embodiments, when the PUCCH resource overlaps with a resource for a PUSCH carrying HARQ-ACK information bits, the UE appends the indicator to the HARQ-ACK information bits and [0533] Component-6c: one or more (e.g., K) indicators (code-point) each corresponding or associated or specific to a resource in a resource set (e.g., comprising a number K of resources), wherein a resource could correspond to a time-domain resource and/or a frequency-domain resource comprising or corresponding to one or more of: a transmission occasion (TO), a slot, a symbol, a PRB, a PUCCH resource, a PUSCH resource, a PRACH preamble and/or etc.)
and transmitting the UEI beam report after transmitting the information.
transmitting the UEI beam (Zhu Fig. 7 (760))
Zhu does not teach
and size of the information is determined based on a number of PUCCH resources in the first set of PUCCH resources and a number of PUCCH resources in the second set of PUCCH resources;
However Bae does teach
and size of the information is determined based on a number of PUCCH resources in the first set of PUCCH resources and a number of PUCCH resources in the second set of PUCCH resources (Bae [0219] The UE may determine the total number of PRBs of the MUX PUCCH resources based on the payload size);
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Zhu and Bae for the same reasons stated in claim 1.
As to claim 2, the combination of Zhu and Bae teach the method of claim 1, wherein:
the overlap corresponds to overlap in one slot and in one serving cell,
the overlap corresponds to overlap in one slot (Zhu [0317] In one example, a UE could be configured to transmit K PUCCHs for respective K SRs in a slot, , with SR transmission occasions that could overlap with a transmission of a PUCCH with HARQ-ACK information from the UE in the slot or with a transmission of a PUCCH with CSI report(s) from the UE in the slot or with a transmission of a PUCCH with UEI report(s) from the UE in the slot),
the overlap corresponds to overlap in at least one symbol, and/or
the first set of PUCCH resources, the second set of PUCCH resources, and
the third PUCCH resource are on a Primary Cell (PCell) or a PUCCH-Secondary Cell (SCell) (Zhu [0317] In one example, a UE could be configured to transmit K PUCCHs for respective K SRs in a slot, as determined by a set of schedulingRequestResourceId, a schedulingRequestResourceId associated with schedulingRequestID-BFR-SCell, a schedulingRequestResourceId associated with schedulingRequestID-BFR, a schedulingRequestResourceId associated with schedulingRequestID-BFR2 if the UE provides twoLRRcapability, and a schedulingRequestResourceId associated with schedulingRequestID-LBT-SCell, and [0333] A UE could be configured by maxCodeRate a code rate for multiplexing HARQ-ACK, SR, UEI report(s), and/or CSI report(s) in a PUCCH transmission)
Claim 17 is rejected for the same reasons stated in claim 2.
As to claim 3, the combination of Zhu and Bae teach the method of claim 1, wherein: the third PUCCH resource corresponds to PUCCH format 2, PUCCH format 3, or PUCCH format 4, the first set of PUCCH resources for SR corresponds to PUCCH format 0 or PUCCH format 1,the second set of PUCCH resources for the indication corresponds to PUCCH format 0 or PUCCH format 1, and/or the HARQ and the information are transmitted on the third PUCCH resource (Zhu [0333] A UE could be configured by maxCodeRate a code rate for multiplexing HARQ-ACK, SR, UEI report(s), and/or CSI report(s) in a PUCCH transmission using PUCCH format 2, PUCCH format 3, or PUCCH format 4)
Claim 18 is rejected for the same reasons stated in claim 3.
As to claim 4, the combination of Zhu and Bae teach the method of claim 1, wherein: the information is indicated via [log2(K1 + K2 + 1)1 bits, wherein K1 corresponds to a number of PUCCH resources in the first set of PUCCH resources and K2 corresponds to a number of PUCCH resources in the second set of PUCCH resources, the code-point with zero corresponds to that the SR is not to be transmitted via a PUCCH resource in the first set of PUCCH resources and the indication is not to be transmitted via a PUCCH resource in the second set of PUCCH resources, an ascending order of the code-point indicated by the information corresponds to a PUCCH resource for SR with ascending order of resource Identification (ID) or index followed by a PUCCH resource for the indication with ascending order of resource ID or index, a resource ID or index for SR corresponds to schedulingRequestResourceId, and/or
a resource ID or index for the indication corresponds to a PUCCH resource ID or index associated with the indication (Zhu [0362] If a UE has HARQ-ACK, SR, UEI report(s) and sub-band CSI reports to transmit and the UE determines a PUCCH resource with PUCCH format 3 or PUCCH format 4, where [0363] the UE determines the PUCCH resource using the PUCCH resource indicator field and Fig. 7 (750))
Claim 19 is rejected for the same reasons stated in claim 4.
As to claim 5, the combination of Zhu and Bae teach the method of claim 1, wherein each PUCCH resource in the second set of PUCCH resources is used to transmit the indication (Zhu [0533] Component-6c: one or more (e.g., K) indicators (code-point) each corresponding or associated or specific to a resource in a resource set (e.g., comprising a number K of resources),
Claim 20 is rejected for the same reasons stated in claim 5.
As to claim 6, the combination of Zhu and Bae teach the method of claim 1, wherein the UE receives one or more Channel State Information (CSI) report configurations with UEI beam reporting, wherein each of the one or more CSI report configurations is configured with an event and one PUCCH resource for the indication (Zhu [0076] Although UE-initiated reporting and/or beam switching and/or beam activation/deactivation can be beneficial, efficient designs are needed to ensure that the latency is reduced and, at the same time, error events can be minimized. Therefore, there is a need for efficient designs for UE-initiated reporting and/or beam switching and/or beam activation/deactivation for a content that can offer good trade-off between latency and reliability, in particular, when the UE-initiated beam management framework can include multiple report types (or report quantities), or/and multiple event types when a report types can be associated with an event (e.g. for beam report, the event can be beam failure, and for CSI, the event can be user throughput degradation or increasing retransmission rate). This disclosure provides example embodiments on the mentioned UE-initiated beam management framework herein including CSI/beam reporting, beam switching and beam activation/sub-selection. Furthermore, this disclosure also provides various design options for determining modulation and coding schemes (MCSs) for the L1 signaling mediums (including physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) and physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH)) that carries the UE-initiated report(s))
As to claim 7, the combination of Zhu and Bae teach the method of claim 1, wherein if the UE determines to transmit both the SR and the indication, or if there is a pending SR to be transmitted via one PUCCH resource in the first set of PUCCH resources and a pending indication for UEI beam reporting to be transmitted via one PUCCH resource in the second set of PUCCH resources:
the UE determines the information based on a priority that the indication is higher than the SR, wherein the SR is associated with at least one logical channel (Zhu [0574] In PHY prioritization/multiplexing handling, in one example, a UEI report or a first UEI report or a second UEI report or a PN message/trigger transmitted/sent via the first PUCCH channel could be of a higher priority than a SR and/or a LRR)
the information indicates a code-point associated with the one PUCCH resource for the indication, and/or
the information indicates a code-point associated with a positive indication for UEI beam reporting.
As to claim 8, the combination of Zhu and Bae teach the method of claim 1, wherein if the UE determines to transmit the SR and not transmit the indication, or if there is a pending SR to be transmitted via one PUCCH resource in the first set of PUCCH resources, and there is no pending indication for UEI beam reporting to be transmitted via one PUCCH resource in the second set of PUCCH resources: the information indicates a code-point associated with the one PUCCH resource for the SR, and/or the information indicates a code-point associated with a positive SR (Zhu [0272] A UE could first determine a number of UEI report bits O.sub.UEI and a corresponding set of PUCCH resources according to those specified herein in the present disclosure. If O.sub.UEI=0, the UE may not transmit a PUCCH that only includes UEI report bits and [0291] If a UE would transmit multiple PUCCHs in a slot that include HARQ-ACK information, and/or SR, and/or CSI reports and/or UEI report(s), and any PUCCH with HARQ-ACK information in the slot that satisfies the timing conditions as provided in system specification(s) and does not overlap with any other PUCCH or PUSCH in the slot that does not satisfy the timing conditions as those provided in system specifications, the UE could multiplex the HARQ-ACK information, and/or SR, and/or CSI reports, and/or UEI report(s) as specified herein in the present disclosure, and determine corresponding PUCCH(s) for transmission in the slot according to the following pseudo-code)
As to claim 12, the combination of Zhu and Bae teach the method of claim 1, wherein the UEI beam reporting is associated with an event corresponding to any of:
a first event comprising quality of a current beam is worse than a certain threshold (Zhu [0076] multiple event types when a report types can be associated with an event (e.g. for beam report, the event can be beam failure)
a second event comprising quality of at least one new beam becomes a threshold value better than quality of the current beam,
a third event comprising quality of at least one new beam becomes a threshold value better than quality of another beam derived from an activated Transmission Configuration Indicator (TCI) state with a worst quality, or
a fourth event comprises quality of at least one new beam becomes a threshold value better than quality of another beam derived from the activated TCI state with a best quality.
As to claim 13, the combination of Zhu and Bae teach the method of claim 1, wherein: the indication corresponds to a Pre-Notification (PN) for UEI beam reporting Mode-B or the indication corresponds to a request for UEI beam reporting Mode-A, the indication is not configured via an SR configuration, and/or the indication is not associated with the SR configuration (Zhu [0078] In the present disclosure, a UE detects (or determines) a need for transmitting a UE-initiated/UE-triggered report (or initiation/triggering) of a (report-)type (A), (B), or (C), where [0079] (A) includes an initiator/trigger/pre-notification message [0080] (B) includes a report/content (comprising one or multiple report quantities) [0081] (C) includes both a trigger/pre-notification message and a (corresponding) report/content)
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 9-11 and 14-15 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.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 2/20/26 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. With respect to claim 1, the applicant argues the combination of Zhu and Bae fail to teach the limitations stated in claim 1. The examiner respectfully disagrees. The applicant states with regards to Bae, the focus of Bae is to determine the size of the container of content while applicant’s pending independent claims determine the size of the content (applicant remarks page 2 second paragraph). In using Bae the examiner is using the broadest reasonable interpretation of “size of information” in the broadest sense the examiner is interpreting this as the idea of being able to determine the size of the information (or content) using the number of PUCCH resources. The examiner affirms Bae teaches us the size of the container is informed by the size of the content, in essence in choosing the container size we must know the size of the content. More specifically, Bae teaches us (102) A PUCCH resource may be determined according to a UCI type (e.g., A/N, SR, or CSI). A PUCCH resource used for UCI transmission may be determined based on a UCI (payload) size. For example, the BS may configure a plurality of PUCCH resource sets for the UE, and the UE may select a specific PUCCH resource set corresponding to a specific range according to the range of the UCI (payload) size (e.g., numbers of UCI bits) (column 21 lines 18-20). For these reasons the examiner maintains the rejection.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to AYANAH S GEORGE whose telephone number is (571)272-8880. The examiner can normally be reached 7:00 AM - 5:00 PM.
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, Hassan Phillips can be reached at 572-272-3940. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
AYANAH S. GEORGE
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2467
/AYANAH S GEORGE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2467