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 .
Response to Amendment
The amendment filed on January 28th, 2026 has been entered.
The amendment of Claims 1, 6-8, 12, 18-20 have been amended. Claims 2-5, and 13-17 have been canceled. Claims 21-26 have been added. Claims 1, 6-8, 12, and 18-26 are currently pending and are ready for examination.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to the independent claims 1, and 12, filed have been fully considered and are persuasive. Regarding Claim 20, Applicant’s arguments are not persuasive, because Claim 20 is a method claim and does not recite all limitations of Claims 1 and 12. Further, as explained in the rejection below, Claims 20-26 recite contingent limitations, which cause the scope of the claims to significantly differ from the controller and device claims of Claims 1 and 12. Examiner suggests amending Claims 20-26 to ensure all limitations are positively recited and ensure that the allowable subject matter of Claims 1-19 is properly incorporated.
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 22, 24-26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 22 recites the limitation "the at least one event data segment” in Line 6. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation. Further, in Line 7, the Claim recites “the stripe”. Claim 20 recites both a data stripe and a full data stripe. It is unclear whether “the stripe” in Claim 22 refers to “a data stripe” or to “a full data stripe”.
Claim 24 similarly recites the limitations "the at least one event data segment” and “the data stripe” with the similar issues as with respect to Claim 22.
Claim 25 recites “the at least one parity data segment”, in Line 3, which lacks antecedent basis.
Claim 26 recites “the plurality of data segments” in Line 4, and “the at least one plurality of data segment” in Line 7. Both limitations lack antecedent basis.
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.
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 20-26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Arulambalam et al., US Patent Application Publication Number 20130091237 (herein “ARULAMBALAM”) in view of Nagai, US Patent Application Publication Number 20090024274 (herein “NAGAI”).
Examiner’s Note: Claim 20 is a method claim that recites contingent limitations. The limitation in a state in which a partial data stripe of the data stripe is formed based on the user data, obtaining predetermined information. The claim does not positively recite a state in which a partial data stripe is formed, only forming a data stripe. The obtaining predetermined information is contingent on the state in which a partial stripe is formed. As such, the Broadest Reasonable Interpretation of Claim 20 does not require obtaining predetermined information.
Further, the limitation filling at least one missing data segment of the partial data stripe with event data indicative of an event that occurred to the vehicle in response to detection of the event that occurred to the vehicle to form a full data stripe, is contingent on detection of the event that occurred to the vehicle. However, the detection of the event is not positively recited and the limitation is not required. As such, the Broadest Reasonable Interpretation of Claim 20 does not require this limitation. The limitation storing the full data stripe… is contingent on the full data stripe being generated. As such, the BRI of Claim 20 does not require this limitation.
Examiner suggests amending the claim to positively recite the conditions upon which the contingent limitations depend. That is, positively reciting a forming a partial data stripe, positively reciting detecting an event that occurred to the vehicle. Thus, closely resembling the storage controller and storage device claims, which have been indicated allowed.
The limitations of claims 21-24 are all contingent on conditions not required, as such, the BRI of the claims do not require them to occur.
In view of this claim interpretation, the limitations are met as follows:
Regarding claim 1, ARULAMBALAM discloses A method of operating a storage device (FIG. 1, 10) comprising:
forming a data stripe for storage in a redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) manner based on user data including data generated by information processing in a vehicle (FIG. 10, DISK0-DISK4, having stripes 0-5, each stripe having multiple segments or chunks or stripe sector units SSU);
generating parity data based on the user data and the event data (FIG. 8, Parity block processor (PBP) 814 in RAID decoder/encoder (RDE) 140, [0075] “Parity block processor (PBP) 814 performs Block Parity Generation on SSU sector data as directed by the write operation sequencer (WOS) 812”. Parity data is generated based on SSU sector data which includes user data and event data, thus it is “corresponding” to the stored user data and event data);
ARULAMBALAM does not expressly disclose vehicle data. However, NAGAI discloses a buffer configured to store event data indicative of an event that occurred to the vehicle (FIG. 1, recording section 11, [0051] “The vehicle information from the impact sensors 110-1 to 110-n, the electronic controller 111, and the GPS 112 connected to the in-vehicle bus 113 is recorded in the FeRAM 102, via the I/F 104. The vehicle information includes a radiator temperature, conditions of the engine, a degree of acceleration, a magnitude of an impact, opening/closing of the doors, ON/OFF of the wipers, a shift position, ON/OFF of the headlights and the direction indicator lamps, brake pressure, brake locked or not, occurrence or non-occurrence of a slip, a degree of accelerator pedal opening, vehicle speed, engine rotational speed, a steering angle, and position information. Although a CCD (Charge Coupled Device) camera or the like may be provided in the vehicle to acquire image data, it is preferable that the image data is small in data size.” E.g. vehicle information from the impact sensors 110-1 to 110-n provides data on magnitude of an impact, which may be reasonably interpreted as “event data indicative of an event that occurred to the vehicle”);
generating, based on predetermined information the at least one event data segment based on the stored event data ([0035] “The recording section 11 records vehicle information at time intervals of 1 second under the control of the recording control section 13 e.g. immediately after new vehicle registration”. E.g. vehicle event data are sensed and generated every 1 second interval for example, as user data such as image are generated at the same time/state. [0086] “data may be acquired using a DRAM or the like (for example, an amount of information corresponding to 1 M bytes is acquired, and when the DRAM is filled with the information, data is delivered to an HDD) and written in the HDD after the lapse of a predetermined time period.” E.g. vehicle event data may be temporarily buffered in DRAM and then generated into event data segments, in segment sizes, to be written into HDD).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify ARULAMBALAM’s padding of stripe data in RAID drives to further include NAGAI’s vehicle event data and user data for recording, to allow use of pre-accident information and post-accident information to investigate an accident in more detail (see NAGAI Abstract).
With respect to Claim 25, ARULAMBALAM further teaches The method of claim 20, wherein the parity data comprises first parity data and second parity data having a different type from the first parity data, and wherein the at least one parity data segment comprises a plurality of parity data segments corresponding to the first parity data and the second parity data (FIG. 10, different segments or SSU’s have different parity data)
With respect to Claim 26, ARULAMBALAM further teaches The method of claim 20, further comprising: storing second event data of the vehicle; generating, based on the second event data, a plurality of second event data segments each corresponding to a respective event data segment from the plurality of data segments; and generating a plurality of second parity data based on the plurality of second event data segments, each second parity data generated based on a different type of correction code, wherein the at least one parity data segment comprises a plurality of parity data segments respectively corresponding to the plurality of second parity data. (FIG. 10, different segments or SSU’s have different parity data. [0077] “In embodiments in which SSUs are aligned to DSA boundaries, the data for the entire SSU are written and a new error correction code (ECC) for the entire SSU is generated without retrieving any prefix or suffix data from disk array 141.” E.g. each SSU /segment have different new ECC).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-19 are allowed.
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 ROCIO DEL MAR PEREZ-VELEZ whose telephone number is (571)270-5935. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9:30AM-5:00PM.
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ROCIO DEL MAR PEREZ-VELEZ
Supervisory Patent Examiner
Art Unit 2133
/ROCIO DEL MAR PEREZ-VELEZ/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2133
