US 10965425

Following a review of public records and the patent documentation for U.S. Patent No. 10,965,425, here is a summary of its key details and an analysis of its independent claims.

Patent Information:

• Title: Control information for multi-user transmissions in WLAN systems
• Current Assignee: Atlas Global Technologies LLC
• Inventors: Yujin Noh, Daewon Lee, Sungho Moon, Young Hoon Kwon
• Filing Date: June 21, 2019
• Issue Date: March 30, 2021
• Abstract: In wireless communications for multi-users, an access point may generate a first frame for allocating resources to a plurality of stations. The first frame may contain an indication as to whether a station(s) is allocated at least one of a set of resource units (RUs) of a plurality of RUs, such as a center 26-tone RU. The set of resource units may be based on a channel bandwidth of the wireless communications. The indication may be contained in a common block field of signal fields, such as a common block field of high efficiency (HE) signal content channel(s) of an HE signal field. The station(s) may receive the first frame and determine whether the one of the set of RUs is allocated. The station(s) may transmit a second frame to the access point based on resource allocation information in the first frame. Other methods, apparatus, and computer-readable media are also disclosed.

Litigation:

A review of available data indicates that U.S. Patent No. 10,965,425 has been asserted in litigation. A case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Case 2:25-cv-00534). A search of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) dockets for 2026 did not yield any specific results for this patent at this time.

Plain-Language Summary of Independent Claims

This patent has two independent claims: claim 1, which describes a method, and claim 11, which describes an apparatus (a device) that carries out that method.

Claim 1: This claim outlines a method for a wireless device (referred to as a "station") to receive and interpret control information in a Wi-Fi network. Here's a simplified breakdown:

• The station receives a specific type of control signal called a "high efficiency signal B (HE-SIG-B) field."
• This HE-SIG-B field is divided into two main parts:
  1. A "common subfield" that contains general information for all devices in a group.
  2. A "station-specific subfield" that has information just for one particular device.
• The key innovation is that within the station-specific subfield, there is a "type" indicator. This "type" indicator tells the device how large its specific information block is. This allows the system to send different amounts of information to different devices in the same transmission.
• By reading this "type" indicator, the device can correctly determine the size and format of the rest of the information meant for it, even if other devices are receiving different types or amounts of information.

Claim 11: This claim describes the physical device, or "apparatus," that puts the method of claim 1 into practice. It essentially states that a wireless station is built with:

• A transceiver to send and receive the wireless signals, including the HE-SIG-B field.
• A processor (the "brains" of the device) that is programmed to:
  • Receive the HE-SIG-B signal.
  • Examine the "type" information within the part of the signal dedicated to that station.
  • Use that "type" information to figure out the size of its specific instructions.
  • Process the rest of the station-specific information accordingly.

In essence, this patent describes a more flexible and efficient way to send control information in a multi-user Wi-Fi environment by allowing for variable-sized information packets for each user, with a "type" field to tell each user's device how to read its specific packet.