DETAILED ACTION
This office action addresses Applicant’s response filed on 15 July 2025. Claims 8-12, 23, and 25-28 are pending.
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 § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 8-12, 23, and 25-28 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
The claims have been amended to require vertical channels and vertical movement from an entry portion of the docking station to an exit portion of the docking station, which is not adequately supported by the originally-filed disclosure. Vertical arrangements are discussed at ¶¶72-77 of the specification as filed and illustrated in corresponding Figs. 10A-10H. None of the disclosed vertical embodiments involve vertical channels or vertical movement “from an entry portion of the docking station to an exit portion of the docking station” as recited in claims 8 and 9; instead, all embodiments include horizontal and curved sections.
More importantly, persons having ordinary skill in the art, reading Applicant’s disclosure, would not recognize Applicant to have been in possession of the claimed vertical scooter docking. The disclosure states at ¶72 that “the electric scooters 210 can operate such that the wheels provide opposing forces to one another, increasing a level of friction and grip between the wheels and the channels. In such cases, the docking station, via the rails, can facilitate the movement of the scooter 210 up or down vertically within a station. In such cases, the scooter 210 controls the torque applied to the wheels (via internal wheel motors) to adjust the grip to the inside of a rail, channel, or other component.” Looking at Figs. 10A-H, it is implausible that the torque and friction of the wheels would be sufficient to allow the scooters to overcome gravity to climb the vertical portions of the rails, because there is no mechanism for pressing the wheels against the rails to provide friction, and gravity would be working to separate the wheels from the rails in the vertical section. Similarly, any side-to-side movement/tilting of the scooter would also reduce contact and friction between the wheel and rail.
Furthermore, the disclosed concept of “the wheels provide opposing forces to one another, increasing a level of friction and grip between the wheels” is also inapplicable around the curved portion of the rail, where gravity would change the angle of the scooter relative to the rails, thus separating at least one wheel from the rail. Thus, the disclosed basis for the scooters being able to move vertically would fail at the beginning of the vertical ascent. Rotation of the scooter around the curve would also be blocked by the handlebars of the scooter hitting the upper rail in all illustrated embodiments. There is also no disclosed mechanism for holding the scooters in place in their storage positions in the vertical section, and the weight of the scooter would cause the scooter to slide/roll back down the rail, particularly if there are vibrations or other disturbances to the dock, such as from new scooters entering the rails.
In short, even assuming, arguendo, that moving and storing scooters on vertical rails could be accomplished by some means, significant engineering challenges would remain beyond the disclosed strategy of relying on the grip and opposing force between the scooter wheels and the rail and controlling the torque of the wheels. Thus, the vertical dock embodiments are not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the art that Applicant had possession of the claimed invention at the time of filing.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 23 and 25-28 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 23 recites “the multiple channels”, which lacks proper antecedent basis because the claim recites “one or more vertical channels”. Furthermore, although not strictly conflicting, either “electric scooters” (claims 23 and 28) or “the multiple electric scooters” (claims 23, 26, and 27) should be amended for consistency.
Claim 25 further recites “the entry portion of the docking station and the exit portion of the docking station”, which lacks proper antecedent basis.
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) 23 and 28 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Buchanan (US 5,941,397) in view of Fowler (US 2008/0231228).
Regarding claim 23, Buchanan discloses a docking station for electric scooters, comprising: one or more channels configured to receive one or more wheels of the electric scooters and an inner wheel track of the multiple channels configured to be gripped by the one or more wheels of the multiple electric scooters (Fig. 1, vertical channels with inner wheel track gripped by wheel; col. 1, lines 4-6). Buchanan does not appear to explicitly disclose charging rails configured to charge the multiple electric scooters via charging rails within the multiple channels; Fowler discloses these limitations (¶116). It would have been obvious to persons having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Buchanan and Fowler, because doing so would have involved merely the routine combination of known elements according to known techniques to produce merely the predictable results of automatically charging scooters docked at the station. KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 82 U.S.P.Q.2d 1385, 1395. Buchanan discloses a scooter docking station having rails for the scooter wheels. Fowler teaches that the rails of the docking station can charge the vehicle through the wheels. The teachings of Fowler are directly applicable to Buchanan in the same way, so that Buchanan’s docking station would similarly use the rails to charge the scooters.
Regarding claim 28, Buchanan discloses that the one or more vertical channels form a vertical column within which the electric scooters are stored (Fig. 1, vehicle stored within vertical column formed by channel).
Claim(s) 25 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Buchanan in view of Fowler, Wang (US 2019/0263281) and Marzocca (US 9,511,655).
Regarding claim 25, Buchanan does not appear to explicitly disclose a cleansing area positioned between the entry portion of the docking station and the exit portion of the docking station. However, Buchanan teaches a scooter dock (Fig. 1; col. 1, lines 4-6), Wang teaches a station that docks multiple scooters (any of Figs. 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, or 14), and Marzocca discloses a cleansing area positioned between the entry portion of the docking station and the exit portion of the docking station (col. 6, line 62 to col. 7, line 2). It would have been obvious to persons having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Buchanan, Fowler, Wang, and Marzocca, because doing so would have involved merely the routine combination of known elements according to known techniques to produce merely the predictable results of cleaning and storing multiple scooters for later use. KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 82 U.S.P.Q.2d 1385, 1395. Buchanan discloses a scooter dock. Wang teaches arranging docks in a docking station to dock multiple scooters. Marzocca teaches that the docking station should have a cleaning area for cleaning the scooters. The teachings of Wang and Marzocca are directly applicable to Buchanan in the same way, so that Buchanan’s dock would similarly be used in a multi-scooter docking station with a cleaning area, in order to store and clean multiple scooters for later use.
Claim(s) 27 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Buchanan in view of Fowler and He (US 2010/0013183).
Regarding claim 27, Buchanan does not appear to explicitly disclose that the one or more vertical channels include at least two distinct channels configured to receive two front wheels of the multiple electric scooters. However, scooters with two front wheels are known, as taught by He (Abs), and Buchanan teaches vertical channels corresponding to the wheels of the scooters (Fig. 1), which would involve a channel for each of the front wheels. It would have been obvious to persons having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Buchanan, Fowler, and He, because doing so would have involved merely the routine use of a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way, or the routine substitution of an element for a known alternative, to achieve the predictable results of docking different types of scooters. KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 82 U.S.P.Q.2d 1385, 1396. Buchanan discloses docking scooters at a station having rails for receiving the wheels of a scooter. He teaches that the scooter is a three-wheel scooter having two front wheels. The teachings of He are directly applicable to Buchanan in the same way, so that Buchanan would similarly dock three-wheel scooters.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments have been considered but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection. Applicant asserts that the prior art fails to teach newly-added limitations, which are addressed above using newly-cited prior art.
Conclusion
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3 January 2026
/ARIC LIN/ Examiner, Art Unit 2851