DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1-29 are considered in this office action. Claims 6, 13, 15-20 and 26 have been cancelled and new claims 27-29 have been added. Hence claims 1-5, 7-12, 14, 21-25 and 27-29 are pending examination.
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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 02/19/2026 have been fully considered and they seems to be somewhat persuasive. The new amendments have warranted new grounds of rejection. The new prior art China teaches the new amendments : receiving, by a server from a vehicle, location information of the vehicle; determining a target network based on the location information of the vehicle; receiving, by a obtaining, by the server, quality of service (QoS) information including a predicted QoS of the target network currently connected to a vehicle, the QoS information comprising a predicted QoS of the network; determining, by the server based on the QoS information of the target network and one or more preset conditions, adjustment information indicating a driving level of one of a driving assistance mode and a driving control mode to be adopted by the vehicle, operations of the one of the driving assistance mode and the driving control mode being based on communications between the server and the vehicle through the target network in Para [0012 and 0020].
The examiner believes he has responded to all the arguments presented by the applicant at this time. However, if the applicant believes that the examiner has missed any arguments to respond, the applicant is invited to call the examiner directly to expedite the process.
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 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 of this title, 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-2, 8-9, 12, 21-22, and 28 -29 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jiaxin (CN111223321/ WO2020107991) in view of China (CN 111186446A) and herein after will be referred as Jiaxin and China respectively.
Regarding Claim 9, Jiaxin teaches a network-connected autonomous driving method (Fig. 3 Para [0091]: “Taking the interaction between the server 101 shown in FIG1 and any one of the one or more terminals 102, such as the first terminal, as an example, as shown in FIG3, a method for autonomous driving planning provided in an embodiment of the present application includes the following steps S301-S305:”), comprising:
receiving, by a server from a vehicle, location information of the vehicle (Para [0102]); determining a target network based on the location information of the vehicle (Para [0096]);
obtaining, by the server, QoS information including a predicted QoS of the target network (Para [0096] Step 303: “S303. The server predicts the QoS of the communication network on the first segmented driving path in the first time period to obtain a first QoS prediction result. The first time period is a time period when the first terminal is driving on the first segmented driving path.”)
and transmitting, by the server, the adjustment information to the vehicle, wherein the adjustment information is processed by the vehicle and the one of the driving assistance mode and the driving control mode of the vehicle is adjusted to a driving level of a plurality of driving levels indicated by the adjustment information processed by the vehicle. (Para [0098] Step 305: “S305. The first terminal determines an automatic driving strategy when the first terminal travels on the first segmented driving path according to the first QoS prediction result.”);
(Para [0110]: “In the embodiment of the present application, different driving levels have different requirements for QoS parameters. For example, if vehicle 1 is at LO driving level or L1 driving level, since the operation of vehicle 1 is completed by the driver, the information that the network needs to provide to the driver includes sudden road information (congestion, vehicle breakdown, road closure for construction, etc.). It only needs to be pushed to the driver 5-10 minutes in advance so that the driver can decide whether to re- plan the route. The amount of data required to be pushed is relatively small, so the requirements for the bandwidth, latency or reliability provided by the network are relatively low. For example, the latency is 10s or the bandwidth is 100kbps. Or, for example, if vehicle 1 is at L2 driving level, because vehicle 1 needs to be controlled, the network needs to push high- precision map information in addition to road information so that the vehicle can clearly know whether it isin the correct lane and direction. Therefore, there is a higher demand for the bandwidth, latency, or reliability provided by the network. For example, the latency is 100ms, the bandwidth is 1M bps, etc.”).
China teaches determining, by the server based on the QoS information of the target network and one or more preset conditions, adjustment information indicating a driving level of one of a driving assistance mode and a driving control mode to be adopted by the vehicle, operations of the one of the driving assistance mode and the driving control mode being based on communications between the server and the vehicle through the target network (Para [0012] and [0020]);
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Jiaxin to incorporate the teachings of China to include teaches determining, by the server based on the QoS information of the target network and one or more preset conditions, adjustment information indicating a driving level of one of a driving assistance mode and a driving control mode to be adopted by the vehicle, operations of the one of the driving assistance mode and the driving control mode being based on communications between the server and the vehicle through the target network. Doing so would optimize the autonomous driving operation as indicated by China.
Similarly, claims 1 and 21-22 are rejected on the similar rational.
Regarding Claim 2, Jiaxin in view of China teaches the method according to claim 1. China teaches wherein each of the one or more preset conditions corresponds to a respective one of the plurality of driving levels of the vehicle (Para [0042]).
Similarly, claim 22 & 28 are rejected on the similar rational.
Regarding Claim 8, Jiaxin in view of China teaches the method according to claim 1.
Jiaxin also teaches plurality of driving levels comprises Level 1 - Level 5 of autonomous driving levels (Para [0003] and [0180]).
Similarly, claim 29 is rejected on the similar rational.
Regarding Claim 12, Jiaxin in view of China teaches method according to claim 9.
Jiaxin also teaches wherein the server is an Application Function (AF) network element (Para [0075] : “Among them, the vehicle-mounted terminal can be a user equipment (UE), access terminal, terminal unit, terminal station, mobile station, mobile station, remote station, remote terminal, mobile device, wireless communication equipment, terminal agent or terminal device in the fifth generation (5th generation, 5G) network or the future evolved public land mobile network (public land mobile network, PLMN), etc..”).
Claims 4, 10, and 24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jiaxin in view of China in further view of van Loon et al. (US9014667) and herein after will be referred as van Loon.
Regarding Claim 10, Jiaxin in view of China teaches the method according to claim 9.
Van Loon teaches receiving, by the server, a registration request transmitted by the vehicle (Col.4 Line 15-30: “The first phase involves the phase during which a terminal A-D performs an attach to the telecommunications network 1. In this phase, various communication steps are performed, including authentication steps, as exemplified in 3GGP TS23.060 (Release 7). The authentication steps perform a security function and involve exchange of an authentication triplet
(for GPRS) or quintet (for UMTS). In a Subsequent phase, a packet data protocol (PDP) con
text may be established to carry traffic flows over the telecommunications network 1. APDP context typically includes a radio access bearer provided between a terminal A and the
SGSN 5 and switched packet data channels or tunnels provided between the SGSN 5 and the GGSN 7. A session between the terminal A and another party would then be carried on the established PDP context”);
registering, by the server, the vehicle according to the registration request and generating a registration response (Col.5 Line 10-25: “It should be noted that one or more of these modules may be implemented as Software modules running on a processor (not shown). The SGSN 5 further contains memory and storage (not shown) for performing these operations in a manner generally known to the skilled person. The SGSN 5 comprises an access request receiver 20 configured for receiving an access request from the terminals A-D for access to the telecommunications network 1. The access request of a terminal contains the IMSI of the SIM available in this terminal. The SGSN5 has an access module 21 configured for denying access for a terminal to the telecommunications network 1 if the access request is received outside the grant access time interval(s) for that terminal (or within the access deny interval). The access denial may relate to the network attach or the 25 establishment of the PDP context.”);
and transmitting, by the server, the registration response to the vehicle (Col.5 Line 30-40: “The data retrieval module 22 is configured for retrieving data from the HLR 6, in particular the applicable access grant time interval associated with the terminals A-D from which the access request was received. However, it should be appreciated that the SGSN 5 itself may be pre-configured with respect to particular terminals and therefore already comprise the grant access time interval(s) for these terminals. This may be particularly advantageous for stationary terminals. The SGSN 5 also comprises a PDP context establishing module 23 and an authenticator 24.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Jiaxin to incorporate the teachings of van loon to include receiving, by the server, a registration request transmitted by the vehicle; registering, by the server, the vehicle according to the registration request, and generating a registration response; and transmitting, by the server, the registration response to the vehicle.
Doing so vehicle would more accurately perform autonomous driving by receiving QoS information from the server.
Similarly, claims 4 and 24 are rejected on the similar rational.
Claims 3, 5, 7, 11, 14, 23, 25 and 27 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jiaxin in view of China and in further view of van Loon and in further view of Hongmei et al. (CN 111186446A) and herein after will be referred as Hongmei.
Regarding Claim 5, Jiaxin in view of China and in further view of van Loon teaches the method according to claim 4.
Jiaxin also teaches the server is an Application Function (AF) network element, and the server obtains the predicted QoS of the network from a 5G Network Data Analytics Function (NWDAF) network element based on data of the registered vehicle (Para [0075]).
Hongmei further teaches wherein the registration response indicates that the vehicle is successfully registered in the server ([0058]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Jiaxin to incorporate the teachings of Hongmei to include the registration response indicates that the vehicle is successfully registered in the server. Doing so vehicle would more accurately perform autonomous driving.
Similarly, claims 3, 23, 25 and 27 are rejected on the similar rational.
Regarding Claim 11, Jiaxin in view of China and in further view of van Loon teaches the method according to claim 10.
Hongmei teaches wherein in response to a successful registration, generating, in the server, a service instance corresponding to the vehicle, the service instance being configured to obtain and store real-time parameters of the vehicle, the real-time parameters comprising at least one of location of the vehicle, vehicle speed, acceleration, driving direction, or traffic flow at current location of the vehicle (Para [0058] : “The road condition information is obtained, for example, through vehicle-mounted sensors, such as a speed sensor, a gyroscope, a GPS navigation, a camera, and the like.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Jiaxin to incorporate the teachings of Hongmei to include to obtain and store real-time parameters of the vehicle, the real-time parameters comprising at least one of location of the vehicle, vehicle speed, acceleration, driving direction, or traffic flow at current location of the vehicle. Doing so vehicle would more accurately perform autonomous driving.
Regarding Claim 14, Jiaxin in view of China and in further view of van Loon and in further view of Hongmei teaches the method according to claim 13.
Jiaxin also teaches wherein the determining the QoS information further comprises: obtaining, by the server, the predicted QoS of the network from a 5G Network Data Analytics Function (NWDAF) network element based on the location of the vehicle ([0075]: “Among them, the vehicle-mounted terminal can be a user equipment (UE), access terminal, terminal unit,
terminal station, mobile station, mobile station, remote station, remote terminal, mobile device, wireless communication equipment, terminal agent or terminal device in the fifth generation (5th generation, 5G) network or the future evolved public land mobile network (public land mobile network, PLMN), etc.”).
Similarly, claim 7 is rejected on the similar rational.
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 ABDHESH K JHA whose telephone number is (571)272-6218. The examiner can normally be reached M-F:0800-1700.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, James J Lee can be reached on 571-270-5965. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ABDHESH K JHA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3668
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