DETAILED ACTION
This Final Office Action is in response Applicant communication filed on
12/24/2025. In Applicant’s amendment, claims 1, 13, and 20 were amended.
Claims 1-21 are currently pending and have been rejected as follows. IDS filed 12/11/2025 has been considered.
Response to Amendments
Rejections under 35 USC 101 are maintained. Rejections under 35 USC 103 are withdrawn.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s 35 USC 101 rebuttal arguments and amendments have been fully considered but they are not persuasive to overcome the rejection.
Applicant argues on p. 12-13 that the features of causing a throttle controller to control acceleration of the selected vehicle, a speed controller to control speed of the selected vehicle, or both to maintain movement of the vehicle within a maximum speed and/or a maximum following distance with respect to other vehicle represents the practical application and the specific technology that the claims improve, stating “the application addresses the technical problem of how to enable a fleet of multiple vehicles to serve different applications, each of which has its own operational requirements … This solution helps overcome problems in the prior art such as static allocation (which requires a group of vehicles to serve only one tenant at a time) and the universal fleet approach (which risks sharing of one tenant's private information with other tenants) … the Office's assertion that operation of the vehicle is "insignificant extra-solution activity" oversimplified the claims, as it failed to account for the fact that the ultimate point of the claims is to provide a method and system for operating a fleet of vehicles in a particular way. Examiner respectfully disagrees. Enabling a fleet of multiple vehicles to serve different applications with different operational requirements through vehicle fleet allocation rules is an improvement to the abstract idea of vehicle fleet management, rather than a technical improvement in the functioning of vehicle control technology. The claims recite to transmit configuration parameters and cause the vehicle to operate within those parameters by causing a throttle controller to control the vehicle acceleration and a speed controller to control vehicle speed or both to maintain a maximum speed and/or maximum following distance with respect to other vehicles. That is a result based use of existing controllers with no recited technological improvement to them. Result based functional language that applies an abstract idea to a technical environment with no recited technological improvement amounts to insignificant extra-solution activity. The “particular way” the claims provide a method and system for operating a fleet of vehicles must be an improvement to a computer or a technology, apply the judicial exception with a particular machine, effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing, or apply the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment such that the claims as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception (see MPEP §§ 2106.05(a-c, e)). The additional elements, individually and as an ordered combination, do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea. As such, the claims as a whole remain directed to patent ineligible subject matter.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s prior art arguments and amendments have been fully considered and they are persuasive to overcome the rejection. In particular, see applicant’s remarks on p. 14-17. Applicant’s amended claim feature requiring the service provider to maintain a common fleet of vehicles that are not initially assigned to any particular primary fleet is a materially different structure from Chu’s inter-fleet sharing and reassignment of vehicles. Further search and consideration did not produce another reference that discloses this specific architecture. As such, the amended claims overcome the prior art rejections.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-21 are clearly drawn to at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter recited in 35 U.S.C. 101 (method, system, and non-transitory computer readable medium). Claims 1-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without integrating the abstract idea into a practical application or amounting to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Regarding Step 1 of the 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance (‘2019 PEG”), Claims 1-12 and 21 are directed toward the statutory category of a method (reciting a “process”). Claims 13-19 are directed toward the statutory category of a machine (reciting a “system”). Claim 20 is not directed toward a statutory category because the claim is directed to a signal per se.
Regarding Step 2A, prong 1 of the 2019 PEG, Claims 1, 13, and 20 are directed to an abstract idea by reciting by a service provider, maintaining a common fleet of vehicles that are not initially assigned to any particular primary fleet, from which vehicles may be temporarily assigned to a plurality of primary fleets; and by … maintaining, in …, a data set comprising vehicle identification codes for each of the vehicles in the common fleet; for each of a plurality of partners, assigning, from the common fleet, a respective primary fleet of vehicles to that partner, in which each primary fleet comprises: a service level requirement comprising a minimum number of vehicles that must be available for that primary fleet, and a set of configuration parameters that specify, limit, and/or regulate the operating behavior of each vehicle that is assigned to that primary fleet; updating the data set to associate any vehicles that are assigned to a primary fleet with the partner to which that primary fleet is assigned; receiving, from a first partner of the plurality of partners, a first trip request; in response to determining that the primary fleet of the first partner cannot fulfill the trip request and that the common fleet has a number of vehicles that equals or exceeds total unfulfilled service level requirements for all of the partners: selecting a vehicle from the common fleet and assigning the selected vehicle to the primary fleet of the first partner; and updating the data set to associate the selected vehicle with the primary fleet of the first partner to which that primary fleet is assigned […]. (Example Claim 1).
The claims are considered abstract because these steps recite certain methods of organizing human activity like managing interactions between people. The claims manage vehicle fleets and allocate resources based on service agreements.
Regarding Step 2A, prong 2 of the 2019 PEG, the judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the claims (the judicial exception and the additional elements such as a processing device; a memory containing programming instructions that are configured to, when executed by the processing device, cause the processing device to manage a group of vehicles to serve multiple partners; a service provider system of the service provider; a data store; transmitting the configuration parameters to an on-board computing device of the vehicle for use in movement of the vehicle; causing the selected vehicle to fulfill the first trip request in accordance with the set of configuration parameters governing operation of each vehicle that is assigned to the primary fleet of the first partner by causing a throttle controller to control acceleration of the selected vehicle, a speed controller to control speed of the selected vehicle, or both to maintain movement of the vehicle within a maximum speed and/or a maximum following distance with respect to other vehicles) are not an improvement to a computer or a technology, the claims do not apply the judicial exception with a particular machine, the claims do not effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing nor do the claims apply the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment such that the claims as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception (see MPEP §§ 2106.05(a-c, e)).
Dependent claims 2-12, 14-19, and 21 do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the limitations recite mere instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea ‐ see MPEP 2106.05(f).
Regarding Step 2B of the 2019 PEG, the additional elements have been considered above in Step 2A Prong 2. The claim limitations do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because they are directed to limitations referenced in MPEP 2106.05I.A. that are not enough to qualify as significantly more when recited in a claim with an abstract idea because the limitations recite mere instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea ‐ see MPEP 2106.05(f).
Applicant's claims mimic conventional, routine, and generic computing by their similarity to other concepts already deemed routine, generic, and conventional [Berkheimer Memorandum, Page 4, item 2] by the following [MPEP § 2106.05(d) Part (II)]. The claims recite steps like: “Receiving or transmitting data over a network, e.g., using the Internet to gather data,” Symantec, “Performing repetitive calculations,” Flook, and “storing and retrieving information in memory,” Versata Dev. Group, Inc. v. SAP Am., Inc. (citations omitted), by performing steps to “maintaining” a common fleet, “maintaining” vehicle identification data “receiving” a trip request, “selecting” a vehicle, “updating” vehicle association data, “transmitting” configuration data, and “causing” the selected vehicle to fulfill the trip request (example Claim 1).
By the above, the claimed computing “call[s] for performance of the claimed information collection, analysis, and display functions ‘on a set of generic computer components' and display devices” [Elec. Power Group, 830 F.3d at 1355] operating in a “normal, expected manner” [DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P., 773 F.3d at 1245, 1258 (Fed. Cir. 2014)].
Conclusively, Applicant's invention is patent-ineligible. When viewed both individually and as a whole, Claims 1-21 are directed toward an abstract idea without integration into a practical application and lacking an inventive concept.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. US 20230186209 A1; WO2023011947A1; Bhatnagar et al., An Agent-Based Fleet Management Model for First- and Last-Mile Services, 2022.
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 extension fee 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 MOHAMED EL-BATHY whose telephone number is (571)270-5847. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 8AM-4:30PM.
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/MOHAMED N EL-BATHY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3624
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