DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to Application No. 18/290,766 filed on 1/20/2024. The amendment presented on 5/12/2026, which amends claims 1, 3, and 7-9, is hereby acknowledged. Claims 1-9 have been examined.
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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
The amendment presented on 5/12/2026 amending claim 9 obviates the outstanding 35 USC 101 rejections, and they are hereby withdrawn.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The response presented on 5/12/2026 providing supporting description from the Specification (see, ¶ [0064] and figure 5) obviates the outstanding 35 USC 112 rejections, and they are hereby withdrawn.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-9 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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.
Claims 1, 3, 8, and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ogawa (WO 2020/111134)(cited US 11,790,771 for English translation) in view of Sundqvist et al. (hereinafter Sundqvist)(US 2004/0076191).
Regarding claims 1, 8, and 9, Ogawa teaches as follows:
An on-board apparatus to be mounted in a vehicle (interpreted as the vehicle-mounted device 120 in figure 4), comprising:
a receiving unit (interpreted as the sensor data collector 200 in figure 4) configured to receive, via a transmission path (interpreted as communication line between the sensor device and the sensor data collector), a plurality of pieces of change information respectively indicating changes in measurement results of a plurality of sensors mounted in the vehicle (the sensor device 122 is a sensor installed in the vehicle 106. Although various sensors are installed in the vehicle, the sensor device among these various sensors is provided for generating driving assistance information. Examples of the sensor device include an image sensor, a laser sensor, and a millimeter-wave radar, see, col. 14, lines 23-33)(the vehicle-mounted device 120 includes a sensor data collector 200 that collects sensor data detected by the sensor device 122, see, col. 15, lines 24-33 and figure 4);
a delay processing unit (interpreted as the buffer input controller 202 and the buffer output controller 212 in figure 4) configured to perform delay processing for delaying and outputting at least one of the plurality of pieces of change information received by the receiving unit (in a case where the buffer input controller 202 is to output sensor data to the buffer unit 204, the buffer input controller 202 outputs the sensor data to the first buffer 206. The first buffer 206, the second buffer 208, and the third buffer 210 each store the input data, shifts the previously-stored data when new data is to be input, and subsequently stores the newly-input data in an available region, see, col. 15, lines 53-67)(the buffer output controller 212 adds, to the sensor data, information for specifying the delay time of the sensor data read from each of the first buffer 206, the second buffer 208, and the third buffer 210, and outputs the sensor data with the added information to the packet transmitter 216, see, col. 17, line 1-17); and
a detection unit (interpreted as the shadowing detector 214 in figure 4) configured to detect an abnormality (interpreted as the communication failure)(a communication failure with the base station 104 in this case is an occurrence of shadowing. Information about the occurrence of shadowing is transmitted from the shadowing detector 214, see, col. 15, lines 39-52) based on an internal output sequence that is an output sequence in which the delay processing unit outputs the plurality of pieces of change information (the shadowing detector 214 determines whether or not shadowing is occurring based on the frequency of a communication failure input from the packet transmitter 216 or the line speed of the communication line, see, col. 18, lines 4-18 and figure 4).
Ogawa does not teach detecting abnormality (detecting communication failure/shadowing) based on an internal output sequence (buffered sensor data).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Ogawa to include continuously monitoring the communication failure (shadowing) for sensor data delayed by the buffer or directly transmitted without the buffer in order to efficiently monitor all data traffic.
Ogawa does not teach the limitation of reordering sequence to compensate for transmission delay.
Sundqvist teaches as follows:
In order to cope with the variable transmission delays, causing so-called jitter in the time of arrival of the speech packets at the receiving node and potentially even resulting in packets arriving in a different order than transmitted, the receiving node is typically provided with a jitter buffer used for sorting the speech packets into the correct sequence and delaying the packets as needed to compensate for transmission delay variations, i.e. the packets are not played back immediately upon arrival (see, ¶ [0003]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Ogawa with Sundqvist to include the jitter buffer as taught by Sundqvist in order to efficiently compensate for transmission delay.
Regarding claim 3, Ogawa teaches as follows:
Wherein the delay processing unit delays the change information such that the internal output sequence differs from a receiving sequence in which the receiving unit receives the plurality of pieces of change information (the vehicle-mounted device 120 buffers the sensor data during a period in which shadowing is occurring, and can concurrently transmit the buffered sensor data when the shadowing is resolved. In this case, since the buffered sensor data is transmitted such that data with a shorter delay time is transmitted with priority, the server 102 can effectively use the received sensor data., see, col. 18, lines 46-53)(therefore, the buffers delay the sensor data with different periods based on the priority level).
Claims 2 and 4-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ogawa (WO 2020/111134)(cited US 11,790,771 for English translation) in view of Sundqvist et al. (hereinafter Sundqvist)(US 2004/0076191), and further in view of Tsuruoka (US 2015/0156129).
Regarding claims 2 and 4-5, Ogawa in view of Sundqvist teaches all limitations as presented above except for adjusting a delay time based on a load amount of the transmission path.
Tsuruoka teaches as follows:
The traffic controller 26 adjusts a retention time (equivalent to applicant’s delay time) for which an ACK packet P2 is delayed (an amount of delay) according to the bandwidth of the link 24. Adjustment of the amount of delay is performed through adjustment of the time period for retaining ACK packets P2 in the queue 28. Adjustment is performed so that the retention time is shorter when the bandwidth on the receiving side of the link 24 is wider, and the retention time is longer when the bandwidth on the receiving side of the link 24 is narrower (see, ¶ [0060] and figure 2).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Ogawa in view of Sundqvist with Tsuruoka to include the traffic controller as taught by Tsuruoka in order to efficiently adjust delay time accordance with the bandwidth of the transmission path.
Regarding claim 6, Ogawa in view of Sundqvist teaches all limitations as presented above except for the relation between a transmission path and a delaying time.
Tsuruoka teaches as follows:
FIG. 4 indicates an example of changes in the insert delay D with respect to changes in the link bandwidth (BW)… The link bandwidth BW and the insert delay D change in an inversely proportional relationship. The insert delay D, however, gradually changes continuously at the gradient K to a target amount of delay (see, ¶ [0066] and figure 4).
Therefore, it is rejected for similar reason as presented above.
Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ogawa (WO 2020/111134)(cited US 11,790,771 for English translation) in view of Sundqvist et al. (hereinafter Sundqvist)(US 2004/0076191), and further in view of Sakai et al. (hereinafter Sakai)(US 2020/0223439).
Regarding claim 7, Ogawa in view of Sundqvist teaches all limitations as presented above except for the abnormality type information.
Sakai teaches as follows:
The abnormality detection portion 32 detects an abnormality around the vehicle 10, for example, by referring to a reference table indicative of the correspondence between the type of at expected abnormality and a combination of the type of the matter that can cause an abnormality, detected from the image, the state of the vehicle 10 such as the speed of the vehicle 10, acquired by the sensor portion 12, traffic information at the current position of the vehicle 10, a road structure shown on the map data, and so on. Note that such a reference table is stored in the memory 22 in advance, for example. The discriminator has learned, in advance, to determine the type of an expected abnormality with respect to the combination. Such a discriminator can be a multilayer-perception neural network or a support vector machine, for example (see, ¶ [0043] and figure 2)
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Ogawa in view of Sundqvist with Sakai to include the discriminator as taught by Sakai in order to efficiently determine the type of abnormalities.
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 Jeong S Park whose telephone number is (571)270-1597. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday 8:00-4:30 ET.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Rebecca E Song can be reached at 571-270-3667. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/JEONG S PARK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2417
July 15, 2026
Prosecution Insights