DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This office action is in response to applicant’s arguments/remarks and amendments filed on 12/08/2025. Claims 1, 6, 11, and 17 have been amended. Claim 16 has been cancelled. No Claims have been newly added. Accordingly, claims 1, 3-4, 6-7, 9-11, 13-14, 17, and 19-20 are currently pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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) 1, 3-4, 6-7, 9-11, 13-14, 17, and 19-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hariri et al US 2018/0290627 A1 (hence Hariri) in view of Liu et al US 2021/0250554 A1 (hence Liu), Sanjay et al US 2013/0339156 A1 (hence Sanjay), Yamaguchi et al US 2010/0073153 A1 (hence Yamaguchi), and Mochizuki et al US 2023/0045538 A1 (hence Mochizuki).
In re claims 1, 11, and 20, Hariri discloses a remote access system for a vehicle based on detection of a mobile device (Abstract) and teaches the following:
controlling a door of a vehicle (Abstract),
a plurality of position sensing devices configured to sense an object outside the vehicle ([0018], and [0021])
a first authentication camera configured to: acquire images of the vehicle's surroundings; and perform a user authentication ([0022] and [0064]); and
a controller configured to: determine a movement direction of the object relative to the vehicle (Fig.4a, and [0021], [0035-0036], and [0062])
activate device located on a side where the object has moved to based on the user authentication ([0023, 0028, 0030, and 0056-0057)
determine a position of a user when the object sensed by the position sensing device is the user ([0057]);
and open a door of the vehicle corresponding to the position of the user (Fig.4b, and [0021], [0035-0036], [0057], and [0062])
determine a first average distance from the distances between the user and respective ones of the first group sensors ([0057])
determine a second average distance from the distances between the user and respective ones of the second group sensors ([0057])
open the first door when the first average value is smaller than the second average value ([0057], Fig.4a, Fig.4b, front door is open because distance 1-5 is smaller than distance 1-7)
wherein the first door and the second door are on a same side of the vehicle (Fig.1)
However, Hariri doesn’t explicitly teach the following:
acquire consecutive images of the vehicle's surroundings at regular intervals
a second authentication camera configured to retry the user authentication when the user authentication fails
determine a movement direction of the object based on the consecutive surrounding images
Nevertheless, Liu discloses smart entry for vehicle using image recognition (Abstract) and teaches the following:
acquire consecutive images of the vehicle's surroundings at regular intervals (Abstract and [0034])
a second authentication camera configured to retry the user authentication when the user authentication fails ([0036] “vehicle control system 10 determines whether or not the image captured by the second right camera 50b includes the facial image of the user U, and authenticates the user U”)
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skills in the art at the time the invention was filed to have modified the Hariri reference to include retrying using authentication using a second camera with a higher resolution, as taught by Liu, with a reasonable expectation of success, in order to reduce total power consumption (by initially employing low-resolution cameras) while maintaining authentication accuracy (via triggered high-resolution cameras) of the user (Liu [0037]).
Nevertheless, Sanjay discloses a system for selecting, or targeting, when advertising is to be displayed on a digital display device based on an approaching object and associated viewer ([0001]) and teaches the following:
determine a movement direction of the object based on the consecutive surrounding images ([0027])
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skills in the art at the time the invention was filed to have modified the Hariri reference to include tracking an object over a series of consecutive images captured over fixed intervals of a period of time, as taught by Sanjay, with a reasonable expectation of success, in order to determine direction and speed of direction of the object (Sanjay, [0027])
However, Hariri teaches activating the camera located on a side where the user has moved ([0057]), but doesn’t explicitly teach the following:
activate the position sensing device located on a side where the user has moved to
Nevertheless, Yamaguchi discloses a smart entry system that includes a portable device and a vehicle-side unit communicating with each other (Abstract and [0003]) and teaches the following:
activate the position sensing device located on a side where the user has moved to ([0080-0082])
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skills in the art at the time the invention was filed to have modified the Hariri reference to include activating one of the touch sensors so that the vehicle doors corresponding to the position of the user becomes an unlock standby state, as taught by Yamaguchi, with a reasonable expectation of success, in order to control opening of the door corresponding to the user position in order to improve a safety of the vehicle (Yamaguchi, [0037]).
However, Hariri teaches cameras and receivers (Fig.1, #30, #32) but doesn’t explicitly teach the following:
wherein the plurality of position sensing devices comprising: a first group of ultrasonic sensors matched to a first door of the vehicle; and a second group of ultrasonic sensors matched to a second door of the vehicle;
Nevertheless, Mochizuki discloses a control device, control method, and storage medium capable of detecting with higher accuracy whether an object exists in an opening/closing range of a door (Abstract) and teaches the following:
wherein the plurality of position sensing devices comprising: a first group of ultrasonic sensors matched to a first door of the vehicle; and a second group of ultrasonic sensors matched to a second door of the vehicle ([0021], [0022], [0026])
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skills in the art at the time the invention was filed to have modified the Hariri reference to include the ultrasonic sensors on the doors, as taught by Mochizuki, with a reasonable expectation of success, in order to use said sensors to calculate a distance between a door of a vehicle and an object in proximity to said door (Mochizuki, [0022]).
In re claims 3 and 13, Hariri teaches the following:
wherein the controller is further configured to: extract the object from the surrounding images acquired through the first authentication camera; and determine whether the object corresponds to a pre-stored user image ([0109])
In re claims 4 and 14, Hariri teaches the following:
wherein the controller is further configured to: determine a gesture of the object based on the consecutive surrounding images; and determine whether the gesture corresponds to a pre-stored pattern ([0034])
In re claims 6, and 19, Hariri teaches the following:
wherein the second authentication camera is disposed in a direction perpendicular to a direction of the first authentication camera (Fig.3, [0022])
In re claims 7 and17, Hariri teaches the following:
wherein the second authentication camera is configured to be located on a side of the vehicle, wherein the controller is further configured to activate the position sensing device positioned on the same side as the second authentication camera performed the user authentication retry (Fig.1, [0022], Fig.3, [0021], and [0023])
In re claim 9, Hariri teaches a position sensing device as recited above but doesn’t explicitly teach the following:
wherein the position sensing device is a side view monitoring camera of the vehicle
Nevertheless, Liu teaches the following:
wherein the position sensing device is a side view monitoring camera of the vehicle ([0034])
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skills in the art at the time the invention was filed to have modified the Hariri reference to include the cameras for position detection, as taught by Liu, with a reasonable expectation of success, in order to improve range-based verification and authentication (Liu, Abstract).
In re claim 10, Hariri teaches the following:
wherein the controller is further configured to open a door of the vehicle after performing additional user authentication ([0030]),
using a second authentication camera disposed in a direction perpendicular to a direction of the first authentication camera ([0022])
However, Hariri doesn’t explicitly teach the following:
open a door of the vehicle after performing additional user authentication using a second authentication camera
Nevertheless, Liu teaches the following:
open a door of the vehicle after performing additional user authentication using a second authentication camera ([0033], and [0047-0049], the motivation to combine has been provided above in claim 6)
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see applicant’s arguments/remarks, filed on 08/20/2025, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1, 3-4, 6-7, 9-11, 13-14, 16-17, and 19-20 under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hariri, Liu, Sanjay, Yamaguchi, and Mochizuki have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
With respect to applicant’s arguments/remarks that Liu fails to teach or suggest a second authentication camera configured to retry the user authentication when the user authentication fails, the examiner respectfully disagrees with that statement. Liu discloses in Paragraphs 0034-0035 that the vehicle control system 10 recognizes a possible facial image of the user U on the basis of the image captured by the first right camera 50a, and in Paragraph 0036, Liu discloses The vehicle control system 10 determines whether or not the image captured by the second right camera 50b includes the facial image of the user U, and authenticates the user U based a portion of the image having a feature amount whose concordance with the feature amount of a registered facial image of the user U is an authentication threshold value or more. Therefore, in Liu, the first camera always fails authentication because it only needs to recognize a portion of the image and not actually performing an authentication. Camera 50b is the camera that does the user authentication. A review of the specification doesn’t give a specific definition on what to consider in order to fail authentication (see paragraphs 0101-0106). Accordingly, the BRI of “when the user authentication fails” reads on “a possible facial image of the user U, a portion of the image having a feature amount whose concordance with the feature amount of a registered facial image of the user U prepared in advance is a determination threshold value or more” which is different from the authentication performed using camera 50b and Paragraph 0036.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 RAMI KHATIB whose telephone number is (571)270-1165. The examiner can normally be reached M-F: 9:00am-5:30pm.
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/RAMI KHATIB/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3669
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