[ocean2]

You may want to read claim 1 of the patent publication again. The claim indicates that a specific field is used for different purposes depending on a transmission mode. It is not an arbitrary or obvious choice to use the HE-SIG A field to indicate the number of scheduled users or the number of symbols in the HE-SIG B field.

Do you have any examples where any packet field is used to indicate a number of users or symbols?

[orlp]

I had cause and effect backwards of the field contents. I typically refuse to read patents so the language is rather foreign and confusing to me.

Either way, reinterpreting a field depending on the mode of communication is equally not novel.