DETAILED ACTION
Notice to Applicant
Applicant's election with traverse of claims 1-12 in the reply filed on 2026-06-04 is acknowledged. The traversal is on the ground(s) that the apparatus claims (a vehicle, and a non-transitory compute readable storage medium) would not present a serious search burden because they include all the relevant limitations of the elected method. This is not found persuasive because during prosecution the claims may be amended in different ways with branching searches.
If, during the course of prosecution, the method claims are found allowable, and the apparatus claims are amended to correspond in every relevant detail to the allowable method claims, the claims will be rejoined at allowance.
The requirement is still deemed proper and is therefore made FINAL.
Claims 1-20 are pending, claims 13-20 being withdrawn. Claims 1-12 are examined herein. This is the first action on the merits.
Claim Objections
Claims 9 and 12 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 9’s limitation, “and determined that the vehicle is able to travel to the charging pile position, determining […]”, is confusing because of its use of a bare participle (determined) with gerunds (determining). It should be amended to say something like “and having determined […] further determining” or the like.
Claim 11 includes a similarly confusing passage: “terminating heating the battery determining that […]”. It should be amended to something like “having determined that” or “after determining” or the like. In addition, the condition “the vehicle travels to the target charging pile” is in a confusing tense, and could be interpreted as “traveling to” or “has traveled to,” and should be amended to something like “arrives at the target charging pile.”
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
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.
Claims 1-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Regarding Claim 1, the claim requires “estimating […] a remaining electric quantity at a time of the vehicle traveling to the target charging pile.” It is unclear whether this refers to “any time” during the traveling or refers, specifically, to the time when the vehicle “has traveled” to the target charging pile—i.e., the state of charge (SOC) at the charging pile, when the battery will actually begin charging. While ordinarily, the claim would just be read according to its broadest reasonable interpretation of “any time during the traveling,” claim 11’s limitation that “the vehicle travels to the target charging pile” amplifies the ambiguity, suggesting a translation issue from the original patent that casts the metes and bounds of the claim in doubt. The claim has been interpreted to require estimating a future state of charge at the charging pile/station.
Regarding Claim 7, the claim requires “determining an average heating rate of the battery with a preset duration onward from a current moment.” That is, the plain reading of the claim requires determining an average, i.e., a really existing, empirical average, and to do so in the present over a future that does not yet exist. The specification only seems to make this worse, by defining “an average heating rate of the battery” as “(T1-T2)/5” where “5” is a preset duration of “5 minutes” (¶ 0072). Since the temperature at time1 should be lower than temperature at time2, because the battery is being heated, the average rate is defined as a negative quantity in the specification. The Office has interpreted this broadly to refer to some kind of algorithm for achieving a certain temperature over a given time interval at a known specific heat capacity and adjustable heating rate.
Regarding Claim 10, the limitation “estimating a remaining electric quantity […] traveling to a charging pile” is indefinite because it is unclear whether the “a charging pile” is a new charging pile or refers to “a charging pile located on a path planned based on a current position and the endpoint position.” Likewise, it is unclear whether the “determining a charging pile with the remaining electric quantity greater than a preset threshold as a midway energy-replenishing charging pile for the vehicle” refers to a new charging pile or refers to the previously mentioned “a charging pile located on a path planned based on a current position and the end point position.”
In addition, “the remaining electric quantity greater than a preset threshold” has no clear antecedent basis.
In addition, it is unclear how to read the “or” in the list of steps: does it apply to all the dependent clauses that follow it? or just determining “that the endpoint position input by the user is not he charging pile position and the vehicle is unable to travel to the end position”? The claim has been interpreted as generally requiring a determination of a reachable charging pile endpoint.
In addition, claim 10 appears to require determining that “the endpoint position input by the user is not the charging pile position,” despite depending on claim 9, where the endpoint position input by the user is determined to be the charging pile position. That is, claim 10 requires determining X and not-X, with no clear way to sequentially construct the method steps.
The other dependent claims are rejected for depending on claim 1.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102/103
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-5, 8-9, and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as anticipated by Chopra (US 2023/0137357 to Chopra et al.).
Regarding Claim 1, Chopra teaches:
a vehicle battery preheating method (abstract) comprising determining a target charging pile (¶ 0039)
estimating a state of charge (SOC) at the charging pile and ascertaining the charging power of the target charging pile (¶ 0037 and 0040-0042) so as to determine a target temperature based on estimated SOC at arrival and charging power (¶ 0044)
determining a first target heating rate and duration from a current temperature and the target temperature, and heating the battery according to the current estimated heating duration and a traveling duration (¶ 0045-0048)
Regarding Claim 2, Chopra teaches:
obtaining a target heating power of the battery by adjusting heating power of the battery according to the estimated heating duration and the traveling duration and heating the battery (¶ 0045-0048)
Regarding Claims 3-4, Chopra teaches:
increasing or decreasing the current heating power of the battery to achieve the desired target temperature within the traveling duration; and maintaining a current heating power when it is on target to achieve the desired temperature (¶ 0047-0048)
Regarding Claim 5, Chopra teaches:
iterating on the heating rate so that if the current heating rate is insufficient to reach the target temperature within the estimated duration, a second target heating rate is set according to the remaining duration, the target temperature, and the current temperature (¶ 0045, 0049-0050)
Regarding Claim 8, Chopra teaches:
wherein determining the target temperature involves determining an optimal charging battery temperature in view of the charging power and the remaining SOC according to a preset relationship (¶0040-0042)
Regarding Claim 9, Chopra teaches:
selecting a charging station that is able to be reached by estimating the range of the battery at a given SOC and comparing it to the distance to the charign pile, and setting it as an endpoint for the purposes of the preconditioning (¶ 0028 and 0039)
Regarding Claim 12, Chopra teaches:
terminating the heating when the battery reaches the target temperature (¶ 0045-0050)
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.
The factual inquiries 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 6 and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chopra (US 2023/0137357 to Chopra et al.).
Regarding Claim 6, Chopra teaches:
iterating the heating to control the battery temperature (¶ 0046)
While Chopra does not explicitly teach determining a maximum heating power, the corresponding maximum heating rate, and setting the heating rate to that dictated by the maximum heating power, it teaches attempting to reach the optimal charging temperature for a given SOC, and using an appropriate heating power for doing so. It would have been obvious, when the duration was short, and the temperature difference was large, to use the maximum heating power to achieve the highest rate, so as to get closest to reaching the optimal temperature. A structure or method step that is obvious to try— such as one that is chosen from a finite number of identified, predictable solutions, with a reasonable expectation of success, has been found to be obvious. See KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007).
Regarding Claim 7, Chopra teaches:
methods of determining the necessary heating rate over a given duration, and either teaches or renders obvious determining a mean heating rate over a given duration to reach a given temperature, all else equal (¶ 0043-0050)
Claims 10 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chopra (US 2023/0137357 to Chopra et al.) in view of Li (US 2013/0345976 to Li et al.).
Regarding Claim 10, Chopra teaches:
selecting an appropriate charging station, that is reachable, determining vehicle range based on a wide variety of factors (¶ 0028)
While it does not explicitly describe a step of determining the vehicle is unable to travel to a selected charging pile position, determining a charging pile that is reachable as an intermediate endpoint position, and estimating the future SOC at the endpoint. Chopra already teaches machine learning and other algorithms for determining vehicle range and estimating SOC both in the present and in the future. Li, meanwhile, from the same field of invention, broadly teaches determining which charging states are within range, and calculating fastest and shortest routes there (abstract, Figs.). It would have been obvious to determine an intermediate position, within range of the vehicle given the present SOC, at which to charge the battery, and to perform the appropriate preheating to optimize the charging, whenever the original destination is determined to be unreachable, so that the vehicle does not run out of charge and get stranded.
Regarding Claim 11, Chopra teaches:
navigation devices, etc.
Displaying destinations on vehicle user interfaces for routing purposes was conventional in the art. It would have been obvious to display the intermediate charging pile and its destination in order to route the driver there.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Michael Dignan, whose telephone number is (571) 272-6425. The examiner can normally be reached from Monday to Friday between 10 AM and 6:30 PM. If any attempt to reach the examiner by telephone is unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Tiffany Legette, can be reached at (571)270-7078. Another resource that is available to applicants is the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR). Information regarding the status of an application can be obtained from the (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAX. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, please feel free to contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). Applicants are invited to contact the Office to schedule an in-person interview to discuss and resolve the issues set forth in this Office Action. Although an interview is not required, the Office believes that an interview can be of use to resolve any issues related to a patent application in an efficient and prompt manner.
/MICHAEL L DIGNAN/Examiner, Art Unit 1723
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