DETAILED ACTION
This action is responsive to the amendments filed 1/14/2026.
Claims 1-13, 15 and 16 are pending. Claims 1, 3, 10 and 12 are currently amended, and Claims 15 and 16 are new.
All prior rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 102 are withdrawn as necessitated by amendment.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1, 2, 11, 12, 15 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kitahara, et al., U.S. PGPUB N0. 2021/0199463 (“Kitahara”), in view of Yu, et al., U.S. PGPUB No. 2020/0166941 (“Yu”).
With regard to Claim 1, Kitahara teaches a central apparatus for communicating with a mobile terminal that is movable with a mobile body, the mobile terminal including:
positional-information acquisition circuitry that acquires positional on the mobile body and transmits the positional information to the central apparatus ([0043], [0057], [0088], vehicle itself specifies the position of the subject vehicle based on the downloaded map information and further discloses the use of GPS to identify an initial position of the vehicle. The vehicle uploads the vehicles traveling trajectory as a point sequence, or uploads GPS positioning results which the server uses to calculate vehicle position at each time point);
measurement-information acquisition circuitry that acquires measurement information by measuring a space around the mobile body as a space to be mapped ([0044], [0052], [0056], a means of acquiring measurement information which the examiner is interpreting as distance information and landmark information captured using camera data retrieved from a camera mounted on the vehicle)
extraction-information generation circuitry that generates extraction information by extraction from the measurement information based on the positional information and command information transmitted from the central apparatus to the mobile terminal ([0055]-[0056] and [0058] a means of extracting coordinates from the features/landmarks obtained in the measurement information wherein the position coordinates of the feature may be specified by combining the current position of the own vehicle and the relative position information of the feature with respect to the own vehicle. [0125]-[0127] describe that the server can specify details of a suppression transmission mode, and instruct a vehicle to operate in the suppression transmission mode for data that is extracted and transmitted to the server);
the central apparatus comprising: map-information circuitry that generates map information based on the extracted information transmitted from the mobile terminal to the central apparatus ([0088], [0090] The server generates static and dynamic map information based on the probe data derived from the extracted information generated by the vehicle camera data); and
map generation control circuitry that evaluates completeness on a type and positional accuracy of a feature in the map information generated by the map-information and generates the command information based on the completeness ([0127], [0201], [0209]-[0210], the upload suppression section can be a road segment for which a sufficient amount of probe data exists for generating or updating a map, where the server directs reduced uploads along such a section of road. A necessity of updating map data can be further identified at the server by identifying position misalignments from existing data, indicating the map data is inaccurate and that additional probe data is needed. The server then sets a flag to update the tile, meaning that aligned data does not trigger a command for additional probe points).
Yu teaches the map generation control circuitry including transmit-command selection circuitry that predicts, based on the positional information transmitted from the mobile terminal to the central apparatus, an accessible range that represents a range that the mobile terminal can reach, and selects the command information that is to be transmitted from the central apparatus to the mobile terminal, from the command-information management circuitry based on the accessible range and the target place included in the command information.
Yu teaches at [0045]-[0047] that vehicles transmit position information to a backend server, and can also transmit a destination such that the backend server provides navigational information to the vehicle, including a route. [0058]-[0059] describe that a server can receive event information from a first set of vehicles regarding an event at a particular location. [0064] describes that a number of detection reports can be determined as not sufficient, which causes a command instructions to be issued to additional vehicles to provide additional reports regarding the event. [0067] describes that the instruction can be sent to vehicles upon determining that the vehicle’s range of travel along a route includes the event location, thereby predicting the vehicle will travel along the route and encounter the event.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time this application was filed to modify Kitahara to include the selective resampling requests for event reporting as described in Yu. One of skill in the art would have sought the combination, to improve the functioning of the system of Kitahara by enabling for additional reporting of incidents to be carried out as needed, while limiting the bandwidth used by ensuring that only vehicles nearby to the event or determined likely to encounter it are enabled to transmit data as needed.
With regard to Claim 2, Kitahara teaches:
the command information includes: a target place that represents a place to be extracted; and a target feature type that represents a type of feature to be extracted ([0126]-[0129], a means of identifying a specific ‘road segment’ which the examiner is interpreting as a target place and ‘during specific weather events’ as a target feature type);
map generation of the central apparatus switches the target feature type included in the command information based on completeness ([0138]-[0140], evaluates the specific landmark features (i.e. coordinates) and determine degrees of accuracy for the landmark and thus determining accurate coordinates for map information based on statistically calculating the coordinates of each landmark and when the variance of the coordinate of each landmark is equal to or less than a predetermined threshold value, it means the coordinates of the landmark can be detected with a certain degree of accuracy); and
the extraction-information generation of the mobile terminal associates and estimates a feature type and feature region from the measurement information, the feature type representing a type of a feature, the feature type representing a type of a feature, the feature region representing a region of the feature, and generates the extraction information on the feature region corresponding to the feature type by extraction from the measurement information based on a result of determination as to whether the positional information and the feature type correspond respectively to the target place and target feature type that are included in the command information ([0128]-[0130]; [0146]-[0147]; [0055]-[0056] and [0058], a means of identifying a suppression mode and specific object types for the vehicle to identify. Based on the suppression mode, the vehicle may identify high quality feature information based on distance from the feature type in a specific region. The vehicle generates extraction information by identifying the landmark for a particular road segment corresponding to a map tile. The examiner is interpreting ‘switching the target feature’ based on the corrected map element coordinates received from the vehicle for a particular road segment thus switching the target feature type from unknown to known or completed. A means of extracting coordinates from the features/landmarks obtained in the measurement information wherein the position coordinates of the feature may be specified by combining the current position of the own vehicle and the relative position information of the feature with respect to the own vehicle. The examiner is interpreting ‘based on command information transmitted from the central apparatus to the mobile terminal’ as the map information received from the server that allows for the vehicle to further identify specified feature as well as vehicle position information).
With regard to Claim 11, the claims recites a system for carrying out similar steps to those found in the apparatus claim 1. Therefore, the claim is rejected under similar rationale.
With regard to Claim 12, the claim recites a method for carrying out similar steps to those found in the apparatus claim of independent claim 1. Therefore, the claim is rejected under similar rationale.
With regard to Claim 15, Kitahara teaches wherein the command information includes information indicating a subset of the measurement information that is to be extracted from the measurement information through the processing for extracting the extraction information, the subset of the measurement information being less than an entirety of the measurement information.
[0125]-[0128] describe that the server defines specific data that a vehicle can transmit for portions of road data for which sufficient probe data already exists when the server commands collection in a suppression mode. The data collected is not all extracted and submitted, rather settings can be made to only upload dynamic information or part of feature information rather than the entirety of collected data.
With regard to Claim 16, the claim recites a method for carrying out similar steps to those found in the apparatus claim of Claim 15. Therefore, the claim is rejected under similar rationale.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 13 is currently considered to be allowable over the prior art. Claims 3-10 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 have been considered but are moot, as the rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 102 have been withdrawn, and the newly cited Yu reference cures any deficiencies with regard to Kitahara teaching or suggesting the elements added to the claims via the amendments.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 KEITH D BLOOMQUIST whose telephone number is (571)270-7718. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, 8:30-5 PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Kieu Vu can be reached at 571-272-4057. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/KEITH D BLOOMQUIST/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2171
3/19/2026