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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 7/25/2023 is/are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the reference(s) given in the IDS are being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
Claim(s) 1, 7-8, 10-14, and 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Gadh (US 20140062401 A1).
Regarding independent claim 1, Gadh discloses an apparatus (Fig. 1 and ¶[38]: charging station 18) comprising:
a housing (Fig. 1: 18);
a network interface configured to enable network communications (Fig. 1 and ¶[38]: coordinators 22a-d);
an electric charging interface configured to connect to an electric vehicle to charge a battery of the electric vehicle (Fig 1: EVs charged in areas 24a-d);
at least one server that is housed within the housing and includes at least one processor (Fig. 2 and ¶[46-47]: control unit 40) configured to perform one or more data center functions (Fig. 1 and ¶[39-40]: gateway 20, housed within the charging station 18, tracks charging speed, max available current, total power available to power stations, peak demand times of the power grid, etc.); and
a power module that distributes power to the electric charging interface and to the at least one server (Figs. 1-3 and ¶[56-58, 44, 120-123]: source voltage 74 is distributed for charging at EV connections 78a-d and to provide power to control unit 72, which functions as an extension of gateway 20. The gateway itself also receives distributed power from source voltage 74 as implied from ¶[122] that no external power sources are required).
Regarding claim 7, Gadh discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the power module provides the power to the at least one server to perform the one or more data center functions while the electric charging interface is not charging the battery of the electric vehicle (¶[122, 39-40] no external power sources are required implies that power is provided to the gateway to track total available power of the power station).
Regarding claim 8, Gadh discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the power module distributes the power to the electric charging interface to charge the battery of the electric vehicle and to the at least one server to perform the one or more data center functions (¶[122, 39-40]).
Regarding claim 10, Gadh discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the apparatus is a self-adaptive electric charging station in which the power module distributes the power among the electric charging interface and the at least one server based on reservation information related to the electric charging interface and current power use data of the electric charging interface and the at least one server (¶[39-40, 156]: gateway 20, housed within the charging station 18, tracks charging speed, max available current, total power available to power stations, peak demand times of the power grid, etc. Charge current control is modulated based on available power (whereas unavailable power is reserved)).
Regarding independent claim 11, Gadh discloses a method comprising:
obtaining, by an electric charging station, power from one or more power sources (Figs. 1-3 and ¶[56-58, 44, 120-123]: source voltage 74 is distributed for charging at EV connections 78a-d and to provide power to control unit 72, which functions as an extension of gateway 20. The gateway itself also receives distributed power from source voltage 74 as implied from ¶[122] that no external power sources are required), wherein the electric charging station includes a charging interface that charges a battery of an electric vehicle connected thereto (Fig 1: EVs charged in areas 24a-d) and at least one server that performs at least one data center function (Fig. 1 and ¶[39-40]: gateway 20, housed within the charging station 18, tracks charging speed, max available current, total power available to power stations, peak demand times of the power grid, etc.);
determining available power for use by the electric charging station based on a first power required for charging the battery of the electric vehicle and based on a second power required for performing the at least one data center function (¶[156, 39-40]: Current control is modulated based on available power. Power is also used for the gateway 20 to track various parameters of the station); and
distributing the power among the charging interface and the at least one server based on the available power (¶[156, 39-40]).
Regarding claim 12, Gadh discloses the method of claim 11, further comprising:
based on a request to charge the battery of the electric vehicle connected to the charging interface, providing the power to the charging interface (¶[156]: Current control is modulated based on available power) and changing an operating state of the at least one server to a standby mode (¶[157]: cloud model of computing used instead of localized servers for achieving rapid speed of response at diverse locations. The examiner interprets that since localized servers are used less, they require less power) or reducing the power being supplied to the at least one server (alternative language used).
Regarding claim 13, Gadh discloses the method of claim 11, further comprising:
based on a request to charge the battery of the electric vehicle connected to the charging interface, providing the power to the charging interface and providing a residual amount of the power to the at least one server to perform the at least one data center function (¶[156-157]).
Regarding claim 14, Gadh discloses the method of claim 11, further comprising:
based on a request to perform a computing or hosting function of a distributed data center, reducing the power supplied to the charging interface and providing a residual amount of the power to the at least one server to perform the computing or hosting function (¶[159, 156-157, 39-40]: local redistribution of power is performed based on EV or grid constraints. A “residual amount of power” powers the gateway to track various parameters of the station).
Regarding claim 17, Gadh discloses the method of claim 11, wherein determining the available power for the use by the electric charging station includes:
determining the first power required for charging the battery of the electric vehicle based on a charging profile and a charging state (¶[49]: maximum current of 10, 16, 32 and a fast charge are signaled with 16%, 25%, 50% and 90% PWM respectively according to the standard.),
wherein the charging profile is for one of a fast charging mode, a regular charging mode, or a slow charging mode (¶[49]: fast charge) and the charging state is one of a starting state, an in progress state, and a finishing state (the examiner interprets that fast charge being be initiated corresponds to a starting state).
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.
Claim(s) 21-24 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gadh.
Regarding independent claim 21, Gadh discloses a system comprising:
a (Fig 1: EVs charged in areas 24a-d), wherein (Fig. 1 and ¶[39-40]: gateway 20, housed within the charging station 18, tracks charging speed, max available current, total power available to power stations, peak demand times of the power grid, etc.);
a power source that supplies power to the (¶[37, 39, 104]: power grid); and
a cloud service (¶[157] and Fig. 1: cloud model of computing through internet 12 database 16 and gateway 20) that controls the power source to distribute the power among the plurality of electric charging stations to charge one or more electric vehicles connected thereto (Fig 1: EVs charged in areas 24a-d) and to perform the one or more data center functions of the distributed data center (Fig. 1 and ¶[39-40]: gateway 20, housed within the charging station 18, tracks charging speed, max available current, total power available to power stations, peak demand times of the power grid, etc.).
Gadh does not explicitly disclose a plurality of electric charging stations.
However, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to provide more than one charging station, since it has been held that mere duplication of the essential working parts of a device involves only routine skill in the art. St. Regis Paper Co. v. Bemis Co., 193 USPQ 8 (CA7 1977).
Regarding claim 22, Gadh discloses the system of claim 21, wherein the cloud service is configured to obtain a first request for charging the battery of the electric vehicle and a second request for performing a computing or hosting function of the distributed data center and determine distribution of the power among the plurality of electric charging stations based on the first request and the second request (¶[14] and Fig. 1: hand held devices 14 send commands through the cloud for initiating charging and viewing charging statistics).
Regarding claim 23, Gadh discloses the system of claim 21, wherein the cloud service determines a power use value based on the power being used by the plurality of electric charging stations to charge the one or more electric vehicles (¶[156]: Current control is modulated based on available power) and controls the power source to supply residual power to the one or more servers based on the power use value (¶[159, 156-157, 39-40]: local redistribution of power is performed based on EV or grid constraints. A “residual amount of power” powers the gateway to track various parameters of the station).
Regarding claim 24, Gadh discloses the system of claim 21, wherein the cloud service obtains information related to a reservation of one or more of the plurality of electric charging stations for charging and performs predictive planning for distributing the power among the electric charging interface and the one or more servers of the plurality of electric charging stations (¶[39]: peak times of power demand are taken into account for charging).
Claim(s) 2, 4, and 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gadh in view of Goergen (US 20220063429 A1, published 2022-03-03) and Gao (US 20180324976 A1).
Regarding claim 2, Gadh discloses the apparatus of claim 1.
Gadh does not disclose wherein the at least one server includes a plurality of server blades.
Goergen discloses a server (Fig. 11: 170) includes a plurality of server blades (¶[51-52, 63, 78]: server blades 106 in secure housing 100 of electric vehicle 144 in Fig. 11, or truck or car 12 in Fig. 8).
Gadh and Goergen both disclose charging stations. It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to incorporate the server blades in the vehicle of Goergen into the charging station of Gadh to provide higher capacity of processing for tracking charging speed, max available current, total power available to power stations, peak demand times of the power grid, etc. It has been held to be within the general skill of a worker in the art to employ/use a known technique to improve similar devices (methods, products) in the same way is obvious. KSR International Co. v Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 127 S. Ct. 1727, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
Gadh does not disclose the apparatus further comprising:
a server housing that stores the plurality of server blades in an air sealed space.
Gao discloses a server housing that stores the plurality of server blades in an air sealed space (¶[6, 18, 31, 42, 45] and Figs. 3-4: air supply system 435 form a closed-loop airflow to cause the air flow to travel through the servers of the electronic racks to exchange heat generated by the servers without removing the housing air).
Gadh an Gao both disclose systems for processing data. It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to incorporate the closed air system for the data processing electronics of Gao into the housing of the charging station of Gadh to prevent contaminants such as dirt and water damaging sensitive electronic equipment used for data processing.
Regarding claim 4, Gadh in view of Goergen and Gao discloses the apparatus of claim 2, wherein the server housing is a server depository that stores at least one replacement server blade of the plurality of server blades, and the at least one replacement server blade is configured to be deployed in the electric vehicle (Goergen - ¶[51-52, 63, 78]: server blades 106 in secure housing 100 of electric vehicle 144 in Fig. 11, or truck or car 12 in Fig. 8).
Regarding claim 6, Gadh in view of Goergen and Gao discloses the apparatus of claim 4, wherein the plurality of server blades further include at least one charging station type server blade that forms a part of a distributed data center (server blades 106 of Goergen (¶[51-52] aiding in the computational process of Gadh (¶[39-40]: tracking charging speed, max available current, total power available to power stations, peak demand times of the power grid, etc.) form part of the distributed data center of Gadh comprising gateway 20, internet 12, and database 16 (Fig. 1)).
Claim(s) 3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gadh in view of Goergen and Gao, and further in view of Choo (Screen captures from YouTube video clip entitled “Underground Bicycle Parking Systems in Japan,” 5 pages, uploaded on June 8, 2013 by user “Danny Choo”. < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcZSU40RBrg > Retrieved from internet).
Regarding claim 3, Gadh in view of Goergen and Gao discloses the apparatus of claim 2, wherein the housing includes an opening that provides an access to the plurality of server blades (Gao - ¶[41] and Fig. 7: server blades 703 being inserted into the array of server slots from frontend 704 of electronic rack 700) and further comprising:
Gadh and Gao do not disclose a lifting mechanism configured to move the server housing below a ground level for storage and above the ground level for the access by a user via the opening.
Choo discloses a lifting mechanism configured to move the bikes below a ground level for storage and above the ground level for the access by a user via the opening (at time 2 min 40 sec into the video, a lifting mechanism is demonstrated to move bikes to and from storage underground).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to incorporate the underground storage mechanism of Choo into the processing system of Gadh, modified by Goergen, to save space above ground.
Claim(s) 5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gadh in view of Goergen and Gao, and further in view of Komaria (US 20050068888 A1).
Regarding claim 5, Gadh in view of Goergen and Gao discloses the apparatus of claim 4. Goergen discloses replacing select components (¶[65]).
Gadh and Goergen do not disclose wherein the server housing includes at least one indicator that indicates that a faulty electric vehicle type server blade is stored therein.
Komaria discloses at least one indicator that indicates that a faulty (¶[5-6]: if a server blade fails, an error recovery process is initiated to resolve the error).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to incorporate the procedure in Komaria into the vehicle of Gadh, modified by Goergen, to perform maintenance on a server blade when it is not working properly.
Claim(s) 9 and 18-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gadh in view of Ekselius (US 20170047737 A1).
Regarding claim 9, Gadh discloses the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the power module allocates a first amount of the power to the electric charging interface to perform charging of the battery of the electric vehicle (¶[122, 39-40]).
Gadh does not disclose charging the battery of the electric vehicle in a slow charging mode.
Ekselius charging the battery of the electric vehicle in a slow charging mode (¶[61]).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to incorporate the slow charging of Ekselius into Gadh to provide a cheaper option to a user for charging their electric vehicle.
Regarding claim 18, Gadh discloses the method of claim 17, further comprising:
determining a priority of a request to perform the at least one data center function (); and
Gadh does not disclose switching the charging interface to the slow charging mode based on the priority of the request.
Ekselius disclose switching the charging interface to the slow charging mode based on the priority of the request (¶[61]: user can utilize slow charging mode).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to incorporate the slow charging of Ekselius into Gadh to provide a cheaper option to a user for charging their electric vehicle.
Regarding claim 19, Gadh in view of Ekselius discloses the method of claim 17, further comprising:
suspending operations of the at least one server that performs the at least one data center function based on determining that the charging interface is charging the battery of the electric vehicle in the fast charging mode and is at the in progress state (Ekselius - ¶[61]: user suspends fast charging to choose cheaper slow charge).
Claim(s) 15-16 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gadh in view of Heishi (US 20150022140 A1).
Regarding claim 15, Gadh discloses the method of claim 11, wherein the power includes one or more of an alternating current (AC) power (¶[48, 50, 130]) or a direct current (DC) power (alternative language used). and further comprising:
(Figs. 1-3 and ¶[56-58, 44, 120-123]: source voltage 74 is distributed for charging at EV connections 78a-d and to provide power to control unit 72, which functions as an extension of gateway 20. The gateway itself also receives distributed power from source voltage 74 as implied from ¶[122] that no external power sources are required).
Gadh does not disclose converting the power to a fault managed power that is supplied to the charging interface and the at least one server.
Heishi discloses converting the power to a fault managed power (¶[7, 26, 52, 83,101]: power sources are ensured be secured and to have not faulty connections ).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to incorporate secure connection of Heishi into Gadh to prevent unwanted power loss or disruption during use.
Regarding claim 16, Gadh in view of Heishi discloses the method of claim 15, wherein Heishi discloses the electric charging station is a residential charging station (Fig. 1 and ¶[161, 185]: EV 18 charged at home) and further comprising:
determining an amount of the fault managed power to allocate to the electric charging station based on power use by one or more residential electric appliances (Fig. 1 and ¶[155-156]: power is determined and supplied to electrical appliances 51).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to incorporate the electric vehicle being charged at home as in Heishi into Gadh for benefit of convenience to the user.
Regarding claim 20, Gadh discloses the method of claim 11.
Gadh does not disclose wherein obtaining the power from the one or more power sources includes:
obtaining the power from the battery of the electric vehicle to distribute the power to the at least one server to continue operations while the charging interface is not receiving the power.
Heishi obtaining the power from the battery of the electric vehicle to distribute the power to the at least one server to continue operations while the charging interface is not receiving the power (¶[3]: vehicle to home for the purpose of emergency power supply, implying that power is not available from the grid to charge battery of the vehicle, but energy is available from the vehicle battery to power the charging station or other appliances of the house).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to incorporate the vehicle to house configuration of Heishi into Gadh to ensure the servers of Gadh are uninterrupted by disruption of grid power.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Giken (“Automated Bicycle Parking Facility,” posted by Giken, 8 pages < https://www.giken.com/en/products/grin-base-ec/ > retrieved online 5/30/2026), system described by Choo.
ServerLIFT (“ServerLIFT SL-1000X® Electric Super-Duty Data Center Lift,” posted by ServerLIFT, 11 pages, < https://serverlift.com/data-center-lifts/sl-1000x/ > Retrieved online 5/30/2026)
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Ryu-Sung P. Weinmann whose telephone number is (703)756-5964. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9am-5pm ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Julian Huffman, can be reached at (571) 272-2147. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Ryu-Sung P. Weinmann/Examiner, Art Unit 2859 June 8, 2026
/JULIAN D HUFFMAN/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2859
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