Detailed Action
1. A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 01/23/2026 has been entered.
2. In this Office Action, claims 1-20 are currently pending in this Office Action.
Response to Arguments
3. In Remarks, filed on 01/16/2026, applicant mainly argues for the amended claim limitations “an indication of the set of sidelink resources, and at least one of an indication of non-preferred resources including the set of sidelink resources or an indication of preferred resources excluding the set of sidelink resources”.
However, the amended claim limitations could be reasonably interpreted as an indication for non-preferred resource or preferred resource in accordance with MPEP 2111. The amended claim limitations are considered obvious by the rationales found in the newly cited prior art as explained in the claim rejection section set forth below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
4. 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 of this title, 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.
5. The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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.
6. Claims 1-6 and 8-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Han et al. Pub. No.: US 2024/0008077 A1 in view of Ozturk et al. Pub. No.: US 2022/0201760 A1 and Hwang et al. Pub. No.: US 2023/0056574 A1.
Claim 1
Han discloses a first terminal device (terminal device 120-1 in fig. 1-2) comprising: at least one processor (terminal device in fig. 1-2 for processor 410 in fig. 4); and
at least one memory (memory 420 in fig. 4) storing instructions (prog 430 in fig. 4) that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the first terminal device (processor in fig. 4 would be executing program in memory of fig. 4 for terminal in fig. 1 to perform the steps depicted in fig. 2) at least to:
determine that a consistent listen-before-talk, LBT, failure on a set of sidelink resources is detected (steps 220-240 in fig. 2); and
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transmit, to at least one of a second terminal device or a network device, information related to the consistent LBT failure (par. 0057, if the sidelink consistent LBT failure is detected by the terminal device 120-1, the terminal device can transmit a report associated with the sidelink consistent LBT failure to the network device, the number of failure or BWP could be information related).
Although Han does not explicitly show: “transmit, to at least one of a second terminal device or a network device, information related to the consistent LBT failure , wherein the information comprises an indication of the set of sidelink resources, and at least one of an indication of non-preferred resources including the set of sidelink resources or an indication of preferred resources excluding the set of sidelink resources”, the claim limitations are considered obvious by the following rationales.
Firstly, to address the obviousness of the claim limitation “transmit, to at least one of a second terminal device or a network device, information related to the consistent LBT failure”, it’s to note that claim does not specifically define what the information related to the consistent LBT failure. See MPEP 2111. However, to advance the prosecution, the limitation Han does not disclose will be addressed. In particular, Ozturk teaches UE for transmitting LBT failure report to a second UE and base station (515a-b in fig. 5 and 620 in fig. 6).
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Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify sidelink communication and terminal device of Han by providing listen-before-talk LBT failure reporting for sidelink channels as taught in Ozturk. Such a modification would have provided a user equipment UE to report LBT failure so that spectral efficiency could be increased for mobile broadband access as suggested in par. 0004 in Ozturk.
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Secondly, to consider the obviousness of the amended claim limitation “wherein the information comprises an indication of the set of sidelink resources, and at least one of an indication of non-preferred resources including the set of sidelink resources or an indication of preferred resources excluding the set of sidelink resources”, recall that Han discloses generating LBT failure indication and determine a consistent LBT failure (fig. 2) and Ozturk teaches a UE for reporting L BT failure report to UE2 and base station (fig. 5). In particular, Hwang teaches a user equipment for transmitting additional resource information that indicates preferred resource or non-preferred resource (par. 0377-0378 and S1330-S1340 in fig. 13; see fig. 5-6 for transmitting SCI from UE to other UE and par. 0141-0160).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify sidelink communication and terminal device of Han in view of Ozturk by providing Inter-UE coordination as taught in Hwang to obtain the claimed invention as specified in the claim. Such a modification would have provided a user equipment UE to perform a signaling operation based on Inter-UE coordination mechanism so that channel congestion and interference could be excessively, significantly decreased in overall sidelink communication as suggested in par. 0009 in Hwang.
Claim 2
Han, in view of Ozturk and Hwang, discloses the first terminal device of claim 1, wherein the first terminal device is caused to transmit the information to the second terminal device (Han, fig. 2; fig. 5-6 of Ozturk) by:
based on determining that the first terminal device is out of coverage (Han, detecting energy level with a threshold in par. 0039) of the network device, transmit the information to the second terminal device (Ozturk, UE for measuring RSSI or RSRP in par. 0055 that would indicate if second UE is out range or if the first UE is out of network coverage; since claim does not specifically define what are involved in out of coverage of the network device such as signal strength, no connection, ranging, distance measurement or GPS, it’ll be routing skill in the art that UE 305-1 in fig. 5 of Ozturk could still transmit the information to the second UE 305-2 in the same way as LBT failure report in fig. 5 of Ozturk; see MPEP 2143, KSR Exemplary Rationale C; see out of coverage evidence in par. 0048 & 0053 Ganesan et al. Pub. No.: US 2022/0225290 A1).
Claim 3
Han, in view of Ozturk and Hwang, discloses the first terminal device of claim 1, wherein the first terminal device is caused to transmit the information to the network device by:
based on determining that the first terminal device is in coverage of the network device, transmit the information to the network device (Han, as depicted in fig. 1-2 and par. 0057-0058, the terminal device 120-1 will report to the network device; Ozturk, receiving sidelink bearer assignment or the synchronization signal is one way to determine UE is still in the coverage of the mobile network as explained in par. 0039 and see fig. 5 for receiving sidelink configuration; accordingly, one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected the claim to perform equally well with the combined prior art).
Claim 4
Han, in view of Ozturk and Hwang, discloses the first terminal device of claim 1, wherein the information comprises at least one of the following:
an indication that the consistent LBT failure is detected on the set of sidelink resources (Han, sidelink LBT failure indication is counted per resource pool or per BWP in par. 0157 and see par. 0058-0061 for report 1 in mode 1 for selecting resource in indication); or
an indication of a duration of the consistent LBT failure (Ozturk, 620 in fig. 6 and par. 0046, failures of an LBT procedure within an amount of time; Han, par. 0106; Ozturk, 710 in fig.7; it’s to note that claim recites Markush Form for alternative limitations and thus, the combined prior art reads on the claim, see MPEP 2117 Markush Claim).
Claim 5
Han, in view of Ozturk and Hwang, discloses the first terminal device of claim 1, wherein the first terminal device is further caused to:
receive, from the second terminal device (fig. 5 of Ozturk), at least one sidelink transmission on at least one sidelink resource determined based on the information (Ozturk, two UEs in fig. 5; Hwang, fig. 13; and thus, the combined prior art reads on the claim limitation).
Claim 6
Han, in view of Ozturk and Hwang, discloses the first terminal device of claim 5, wherein the at least one sidelink resource is mapped to at least one physical sidelink feedback channel, PSFCH (Ozturk, PSFCH in par. 0053; Yi, PSFCH in par. 0044), resource different from the set of sidelink resources (Yi, retransmission resource in par. 0090, Sidelink feedback resource in 0109), and the first terminal device is further caused to:
transmit a hybrid automatic repeat request, HARQ, feedback to the second terminal device for the at least one sidelink transmission (Ozturk, HARQ feedback in par. 0053; Hwang, fig. 13 and HARQ feed in par. 0124, 0139, -0080; accordingly, the combined prior art renders the claim obvious).
Claim 8
Han, in view of Ozturk and Hwang, discloses the first terminal device of claim 1, wherein the set of sidelink resources (Han, sidelink bandwidth part SL-BWP in par. 0047 & 0057) comprise at least one of the following:
at least one resource block, RB, set (Ozturk, see fig. 3 and resource block RB in par. 0054 & 0056-0057);
at least one resource pool (Han, fig. 3A-B for resource pool); or
at least one bandwidth part (Han, SL-BWP in par. 0051; therefore, the combined prior art meets the claim condition; see MPEP 2117 Markush claims).
Claim 9
Han teaches a network device (network device 110 in fig. 1-4) comprising:
at least one processor (processor 410 in fig. 4 in par. 0115-0016); and
at least one memory (memory 420 in fig. 4) storing instructions (prog 430 in fig. 4) that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the network device (network device in fig. 1-4 would perform by executing the program in memory with the processor) at least to:
receive, from a first terminal device (terminal device 120-1 in fig. 1-4), first information related to a consistent listen-before-talk, LBT, failure, which is detected by the first terminal device on a set of sidelink resources (240-260 in fig. 2) ).
Although Han does not explicitly show: “transmit, to a second terminal device, second information determined based on the first information; and wherein the information comprises an indication of the set of sidelink resources, and at least one of an indication of non-preferred resources including the set of sidelink resources or an indication of preferred resources excluding the set of sidelink resources”, the claim limitations are considered obvious by the following rationale.
Firstly, to address the obviousness of the claim limitation “transmit, to a second terminal device, second information determined based on the first information”, initially, it’s to note that claim does not specifically define what the first information is. See MPEP 2111. Indeed, as depicted in fig. 1, the network device in Han could communicate to either the terminal device or both (fig. 1). However, the network device Han does not explicitly show to sending the information to the second terminal device after receiving the LBT failure report from the first terminal device. In particular, Ozturk teaches base station for transmitter a new sidelink configuration after receiving LBT failure report (520a in fig. 5) and the features associated with unicast link or a groupcast link (see par. 0061, 0071 0096-0097, it means that at 520a in fig. 5, if a groupcast link, UE 2 could listen or hear the a new sidelink configuration too).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify sidelink communication and terminal device of Han by providing listen-before-talk LBT failure reporting for sidelink channels as taught in Ozturk. Such a modification would have provided a user equipment UE to report LBT failure so that spectral efficiency could be increased for mobile broadband access as suggested in par. 0004 in Ozturk.
Secondly, to consider the obviousness of the amended claim limitation “wherein the information comprises an indication of the set of sidelink resources, and at least one of an indication of non-preferred resources including the set of sidelink resources or an indication of preferred resources excluding the set of sidelink resources”, recall that Han discloses generating LBT failure indication and determine a consistent LBT failure (fig. 2) and Ozturk teaches a UE for reporting L BT failure report to UE2 and base station (fig. 5). In particular, Hwang teaches a user equipment for transmitting additional resource information that indicates preferred resource or non-preferred resource (par. 0377-0378 and S1330-S1340 in fig. 13; see fig. 5-6 for transmitting SCI from UE to other UE and par. 0141-0160).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify sidelink communication and terminal device of Han in view of Ozturk by providing Inter-UE coordination as taught in Hwang to obtain the claimed invention as specified in the claim. Such a modification would have provided a user equipment UE to perform a signaling operation based on Inter-UE coordination mechanism so that channel congestion and interference could be excessively, significantly decreased in overall sidelink communication as suggested in par. 0009 in Hwang.
Claim 10
Han, in view of Ozturk and Hwang, discloses the network device of claim 9, wherein the first information comprises at least one of the following:
an indication that the consistent LBT failure is detected on the set of sidelink resources (Han, sidelink LBT failure indication is counted per resource pool or per BWP in par. 0157 and see par. 0058-0061 for report 1 in mode 1 for selecting resource in indication); or
an indication of a duration of the consistent LBT failure (Ozturk, 620 in fig. 6 and par. 0046, failures of an LBT procedure within an amount of time; Han, par. 0106; Ozturk, 710 in fig.7; it’s to note that claim recites Markush Form for alternative limitations and thus, the combined prior art reads on the claim, see MPEP 2117 Markush Claim).
Claim 11
Han, in view of Ozturk and Hwang, discloses the network device of claim 10, wherein the set of sidelink resources (Han, sidelink bandwidth part SL-BWP in par. 0047 & 0057) comprise at least one of the following:
at least one resource block, RB, set (Ozturk, see fig. 3 and resource block RB in par. 0054 & 0056-0057);
at least one resource pool (Han, fig. 3A-B for resource pool); or
at least one bandwidth part (Han, SL-BWP in par. 0051; therefore, the combined prior art meets the claim condition; see MPEP 2117 Markush claims).
Claim 12
Han, in view of Ozturk and Hwang, discloses the network device of claim 10, wherein the first information is received from the first terminal device in the event that the first terminal device is in coverage (Han, detecting energy level with a threshold in par. 0039) of the network device (Han, as depicted in fig. 1-2 and par. 0057-0058, the terminal device 120-1 will report to the network device; Ozturk, receiving sidelink bearer assignment or the synchronization signal is one way to determine UE is still in the coverage of the mobile network as explained in par. 0039 and see fig. 5 for receiving sidelink configuration; accordingly, one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected the claim to perform equally well with the combined prior art).
Claim 13
Han, in view of Ozturk and Hwang, discloses the network device of claim 10, wherein the network device is caused to transmit the second information to the second terminal device by:
based on determining that the second terminal device is in coverage of the network device (Han, as depicted in fig. 1-2 and par. 0057-0058, the terminal device 120-1 will report to the network device; Ozturk, receiving sidelink bearer assignment or the synchronization signal is one way to determine UE is still in the coverage of the mobile network as explained in par. 0039 and see fig. 5 for receiving sidelink configuration; accordingly, one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected the claim to perform equally well with the combined prior art), transmit the second information to the second terminal device (Han, as depicted in fig. 1, the network device may communicate with the second terminal; Ozturk, consider 520a in fig. 5 is groupcast link; accordingly, one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected the claim to perform equally well with the combined prior art).
Claim 14
Han, in view of Ozturk and Hwang, discloses the network device of claim 10, wherein the second information comprises at least one of the following:
an indication that the consistent LBT failure is detected on the set of sidelink resources (Han, sidelink LBT failure indication is counted per resource pool or per BWP in par. 0157 and see par. 0058-0061 for report 1 in mode 1 for selecting resource in indication);
an indication of a duration of the consistent LBT failure (Ozturk, 620 in fig. 6 and par. 0046, failures of an LBT procedure within an amount of time); or
an indication of the set of sidelink resources (Han, par. 0106; Ozturk, 710 in fig.7; it’s to note that claim recites Markush Form for alternative limitations and thus, the combined prior art reads on the claim, see MPEP 2117 Markush Claim).
Claim 15
Han, in view of Ozturk and Hwang, discloses the network device of claim 10, wherein the second information comprises an indication of at least one sidelink resource allocated for at least one sidelink transmission (Ozturk, fig. 5; fig. 2-9 of Yi) to be transmitted from the second terminal device to the first terminal device (Ozturk, two UEs in fig. 5; Hwang, fig. 13; and thus, the combined prior art reads on the claim limitation).
the first terminal device of claim 1, wherein the first terminal device is further caused to:
receive, from the second terminal device (fig. 5 of Ozturk), at least one sidelink transmission on at least one sidelink resource determined based on the information
Claim 16-20
Claims 16-20 are method claims corresponding to device claims 1-4 and 8. All of the limitations in claims 16-20 are found reciting the same scopes of the respective limitations of claims 1-4 and 8. Accordingly, claims 16-20 are considered obvious by the same rationales applied in the rejection of claims 1-4 and 8 respectively set forth above.
Allowable Subject Matter
7. Claim 7 is 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.
Contact Information
8. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SAN HTUN whose telephone number is (571)270-3190. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Thursday 7 AM - 5 PM.
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/SAN HTUN/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2643