DETAILED ACTION
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection on 2/4/2026. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 12/30/2025 has been entered.
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 .
Claims 1-4, 8, 9, 11-14, 16 and 19 remain pending in this application. Claims 1, 8, 9, 11, and 19 have been amended. Claims 1, 9, and 11 are independent claims.
Claim Objections
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1, add “and” before the last limitation.
Appropriate correction is required.
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, 2, 4, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shintani, US PGPUB 2020/0309548 Al (hereinafter as Shintani) in view of Ucar et al., US Patent No. 11,256,937 B2 (hereinafter as Ucar) and Sicconi et al., US PGPUB 2024/0112562 A1 (hereinafter as Sicconi).
Regarding independent claim 1, Shintani teaches a system [see the system in fig. 1] comprising:
a processor [note the CPU in [0029]]; and
a memory in communication with the processor, the memory having instructions that, when executed by the processor [note the memory storing programs to be executed by the processor in [0029]], cause the processor to:
receive an input from an occupant of a vehicle when the vehicle is traveling on an initial route [see e.g. [0052] and note the voice data obtained as an utterance of an occupant of a vehicle; note from fig. 5 that the vehicle has started guidance before a factor for change has occurred];
responsive to determining a probability of a calamity occurring in a location of the vehicle meets a threshold, cause the vehicle to maneuver along a revised route that minimizes effects of the calamity on the vehicle instead of the initial route when a mood of the occupant is at least one of anger, sadness, fear, disgust, and surprise [note in fig. 5, S109 a change of route based on a factor for change occurring in S106, as described in [0068]; note from [0006] that the change of the route plan is because of at least one of information of an occupant and information concerning an environment (which also includes both the information of the occupant and the information concerning the environment); note from [0054] that the user information includes analyzing the feelings of the occupant and note the different feelings in [0052] including anger; see e.g. [0076] indicating occupant feeling information as a factor for rerouting; note from [0056] that the environment information includes disaster, atmospheric, weather information, etc.; note that the environment information is considered in the vicinity of the current location of the vehicle; note from the last 3 lines of [0093] that the decision basis for environment information affecting the route change being based on a probability of occurrence as compared to a threshold; note in [0145] and [0148]-[0149], respectively, rerouting the vehicle based on a negative utterance or an occurrence of a disaster; again, Examiner notes, based on [0006] that the change can be based on both; lastly note in [0043] indicating the control of the automated driving of the vehicle in accordance with a guidance route]; and
responsive to determining that the probability of the calamity occurring in the location of the vehicle does not meet the threshold, cause the vehicle to continue to monitor the occurrence of factors for change until the occurrence of a factor for change that causes the vehicle to maneuver along the revised route [note in fig. 5 the loop in the logical path of no change in factor; note that as long as the vehicle is enroute the rechecking for an occurrence of a factor for change continues; see fig. 10 and note steps S605 and S605 pertaining to traffic and environment conditions that may change and effect a factor of change in S608 thus causing the check in S106 of fig. 5 to give an affirmative outcome; see also [0091]-[0092] and [0068]].
Shintani does not explicitly teach that the input received from the occupant of the vehicle is describing a calamity affecting the initial route. Neither does it explicitly teach maneuvering along the revised route after receiving a confirmation from the occupant that the calamity is occurring when the mood of the occupant is being happy responsive to determining a probability of the calamity occurring in a location of the vehicle does not meet a threshold.
Ucar teaches input from a vehicle occupant that relates to anomalous events in a driving environment [note from col. 2, lines 49-53 that inherent human behavior including utterances can be leveraged to detect and/or validate anomalous events in a driving environment; note from col. 2, lines 32-33 that natural disasters are examples of such events; see also col. 14, lines 26-28].
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art having the teachings of Shintani and Ucar, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the input received from an occupant of a vehicle moving according to an initial route in the framework taught by Shintani by explicitly specifying that the input describes a calamity affecting the initial route, as per the teachings of Ucar. The motivation for these obvious combination of teachings would be to enable utilizing inherent human behavior/input to detect or validate anomalous events in a driving environment, as suggested by Ucar [again, see col. 2, lines 49-53].
Shintani further teaches a determined mood of the occupant that includes being happy versus other determined moods of the occupant that include anger, etc. (a negative mood) [again, note the different feelings in [0052] indicating joy, anger, etc.; see also [0071]].
Ucar further teaches receiving a confirmation from an occupant that an anomalous event is occurring [note in col. 14, lines 30-38 indicating additional information (requested of a user via the interface of an application that can be displayed in a connected vehicle 141), wherein that information includes a selection of a certain disruptive road condition occurring on the route; note the selectable conditions of “construction”, “accident”, etc.].
Ucar also further teaches receiving a confirmation that the anomalous event is occurring that causes a sufficient number of notifications (above a certain threshold) corresponding to the anomalous event to have been received and consecutive action to be taken [see col. 6, lines 21-44; see also col. 7, lines 31-42; see also fig. 3 and note from col. 14, lines 61-64 the application of this method to any suitable event or condition].
Shintani/Ucar, however, still does not explicitly teach maneuvering along the revised route after receiving a confirmation from the occupant that the calamity is occurring when the mood of the occupant is being happy responsive to determining a probability of the calamity occurring in a location of the vehicle does not meet a threshold.
Sicconi teaches communication with a vehicle occupant that comprises receiving confirmation from the occupant regarding a condition encountering the vehicle, when the status of the occupant allows a conversation [note in [0072] that the driver may be asked questions (a request for additional information) about traffic conditions (which may include any condition related to the traffic ahead of the vehicle including a calamity occurring in a location of the vehicle) and further note that the request will only happen if it is “safe” to converse with the driver; see also [0062]; note e.g. in the last 8 lines of [0035] the detection of the safety based on the driver’s status; see also the adaptation based on a driver’s emotional state and contextual cues in [0038]; note sentiment analysis utilization and the detection of the emotional stance of the driver, whether positive, negative, or neutral in the middle of [0040]].
Sicconi’s known teaching of requesting confirmation via communication with a vehicle occupant when the status/mood of the occupant is permissive of a safe communication and utilizing the evaluation of whether the status/mood is positive in the decision of safety is applicable to the positive mood of being happy taught by Shintani in the scenario of a vehicle occupant with a probability of a calamity occurring in a location of the vehicle when traveling on a route in the case when additional verifications are needed to confirm the calamity (by increasing the probability of its occurrence to reach a threshold) as taught by Ucar.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that applying Sicconi’s technique of receiving occupant confirmation pertinent to conditions on a vehicle’s route when it is safe to do so to Ucar’s teaching of gathering confirmations to reach a certain threshold of a probability of a condition occurring and Shintani’s framework for rerouting the vehicle based on the probability of a calamity (the condition) occurring in a location of the vehicle meeting a threshold would have yielded the predictable results of attaining occupant confirmation for verifying the occurrence of the calamity when it is initially less probable in cases when it is safe to do so, such as when a user is identified to be happy as identified by Shintani. This would enable a channel to gather more relevant information for route planning effectiveness while avoiding potential dangers both from the calamity and from distracting a driver of the vehicle. See [0035], [0038], [0040], [0071]-[0072], and [0062] of Sicconi.
The rationale for the combination would be that a particular known technique was recognized as part of the ordinary capabilities of one skilled in the art. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been capable of applying this known technique to a known invention that was ready for improvement and the results would have been predictable to one of ordinary skill in the art. See MPEP 2143 I.D.
Regarding independent claims 9 and 11, they are rejected analogous to the rejection of independent claim 1. For claim 9, Shintani also teaches a non-transitory computer-readable medium having instructions that, when executed by a processor [see e.g. [0008]], cause the processor to perform the steps of claim 1. For claim 11, Shintani also teaches a method [see title, [0005], and claim 17] comprising the steps of claim 1. See the rejection of claim 1 for further details.
Regarding claims 2 and 12, the rejection of independent claims 1 and 11 are respectively incorporated. Shintani further teaches the input is an utterance from the occupant [again, see e.g. [0052] and note the voice data obtained as an utterance of an occupant of a vehicle].
Regarding claims 4 and 14, the rejection of independent claims 1 and 11 are respectively incorporated.
Shintani further teaches providing the probability to the occupant of the calamity occurring on the initial route before the vehicle proceeds along the initial route [see [0109]-[0110] indicating a display confirming the probability of a factor for occurrence of route change being detected for a vehicle, as shown in fig. 13; note in fig, 13 that the display provides options for changing an initial route before the vehicle proceeds along that route; note from [0093] that the environment information is a factor for a route change].
Regarding claims 8 and 19, the rejections of independent claims 1 and 11 are respectively incorporated.
Shintani further teaches at least one of:
providing alternate route options to choose from initially to the occupant before a trip has begun [note S102 in fig. 5 as described in [0062] and note generating route candidates for the occupant to select from as in S104 before navigation starts in S105]; and
providing alternate route options to the occupant after determination of the mood of the vehicle occupant.
Regarding claim 16, the rejection of independent claim 11 is incorporated.
Shintani further teaches:
receiving occupant data from an in-cabin sensor [note in fig. 2, the in-vehicle recognition camera, the in-vehicle recognition sensor, and the in-vehicle recognition unit, all receiving occupant data]; and
based on the occupant data, determining the mood of the occupant [note e.g. from [0054] analyzing the feeling of the occupant from the tone or tempo of a conversation, the facial expression (which would use data from the camera), as also in the example in [0052]; note the different feelings in [0052] indicating joy, anger, etc.; see also [0071]].
Claims 3 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shintani in view of Ucar and Sicconi, as applied to independent claims 1 and 11 above, respectively, and further in view of Kentley-Klay et al., US Patent No. 10,807,591 Bl (hereinafter as Kentley-Klay).
Regarding claims 3 and 13, the rejection of independent claims 1 and 11 are respectively incorporated.
Shintani teaches a calamity that is an environmental disaster such as an atmospheric or weather occurrence that may involve risk [note from [0006] that the change of the route plan is because of at least one of information of an occupant and information concerning an environment; note from [0056] that the environment information includes disaster, atmospheric, weather information, etc.; note that the environment information is considered in the vicinity of the current location of the vehicle; note from the last 3 lines of [0093] that the probability of a weather occurrence affects the decisions based on environment information; note from [0047] that the routing is to create a risk-avoiding route].
The previously combined art, however, does not explicitly teach that the calamity is at least one of: an earthquake, forest fire, flood, tornado, hurricane, and tsunami.
Kentley-Klay teaches a calamity that is at least one of: an earthquake, forest fire, flood, tornado, hurricane, and tsunami [note in col. 2, lines 2-14 examples of calamities that are one of an earthquake, fire, flood, hurricane, and tsunami].
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of the previously combined art and Kentley-Klay, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to substitute the environmental disaster examples taught by Kentley-Klay, such as one of an earthquake, fire, flood, hurricane, and tsunami, for the environmental disaster examples taught by Shintani to reach the recited limitation. Because Shintani teaches an environmental disaster but doesn’t specifically discuss a one of: an earthquake, forest fire, flood, tornado, hurricane, and tsunami and Kentley-Klay teaches one of an earthquake, fire, flood, hurricane, and tsunami, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been able to make a simple substitution of one known form of environmental disaster for another to generate the predictive result of accounting for other examples of known environmental disasters that may affect vehicle routes and need route planning to avoid accompanying risks or dangers. See MPEP 2143 I B.
Terminal Disclaimer
The terminal disclaimer filed on 12/29/2025 disclaiming the terminal portion of any patent granted on this application which would extend beyond the expiration date of any patent granted on application 18/397,472 has been reviewed and is accepted. The terminal disclaimer has been recorded.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s amendments to the claims in regards to the previously presented various informalities have been fully considered. The objection to claim 1 is reasserted.
Applicant’s amendment to the independent claims to address the written description requirement which had previously raised new matter issues has been fully considered and is persuasive. Thus, per the amendment, the 35 U.S.C. § 112 rejections have been respectfully withdrawn.
Applicant’s prior art arguments with respect to the amended independent claims have been considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues that “Turning to the cited references, even when they are considered in combination they do not teach or suggest the decision structure now recited in the amended independent claims. The amended claims require two coordinated control paths: a high-probability path in which the system automatically selects the revised route based on specific negative emotions, and a low-probability path in which the system uses the combination of (a) a probability that does not meet the threshold, (b) the occupant's mood being happy, and (c) receipt of confirmation that the calamity is occurring, as a precondition to causing the vehicle to maneuver along the revised route. In the low-probability condition, the only recited circumstance in which the revised route is taken is after such confirmation has been received from a happy occupant…. Thus, even taken together, the references do not disclose or suggest using the combination of (i) a probability of the calamity occurring in the location of the vehicle that does not meet a threshold, (ii) the occupant's mood being happy, and (iii) receipt of confirmation from that happy occupant, as the condition under which the vehicle is caused to maneuver along the revised route, while reserving automatic rerouting for high-probability conditions associated with specified negative emotions. Nor do the references provide any articulated reason to reorganize their teachings into this two-branch control logic. The amended independent claims therefore remain directed to subject matter that is not taught or suggested by the cited combination.” [see pp. 7-8 of the response].
Examiner respectfully notes that:
(i) Shintani clearly teaches a situation where a condition for a factor of change (which could be a probability of traffic or environmental conditions) has not been met but continues to be monitored until it is met for vehicle rerouting to occur [note in fig. 5 the loop in the logical path of no change in factor; note that as long as the vehicle is enroute the rechecking for an occurrence of a factor for change continues; see fig. 10 and note steps S605 and S605 pertaining to traffic and environment conditions that may change and effect a factor of change in S608 thus causing the check in S106 of fig. 5 to give an affirmative outcome; see also [0091]-[0092] and [0068]; note from [0056] exemplary environment information including disaster, atmospheric, weather information, etc.; note from the last 3 lines of [0093] that the decision basis for environment information affecting the route change being based on a probability of occurrence as compared to a threshold].
(ii) Shintani further clearly teaches a determined mood of the occupant that includes being happy versus other determined moods of the occupant that include anger, etc. (a negative mood) [again, note the different feelings in [0052] indicating joy, anger, etc.; see also [0071]]. .
(iii) The combination of Ucar, Sicconi, and Shintani teaches receipt of confirmation from that happy occupant, as the condition under which the vehicle is caused to maneuver along the revised route [again, note applying Sicconi’s teaching of receiving occupant confirmation pertinent to conditions on a vehicle’s route when it is safe to do so to Ucar’s teaching of gathering confirmations to reach a certain threshold of a probability of a condition occurring and Shintani’s framework for rerouting the vehicle based on the probability of a calamity (the condition) occurring in a location of the vehicle meeting a threshold would have yielded the predictable results of attaining occupant confirmation for verifying the occurrence of the calamity when it is initially less probable, in cases when it is safe to do so, such as when a user is identified to be happy as identified by Shintani].
Examiner respectfully reiterates that Sicconi’s known teaching of requesting confirmation via communication with a vehicle occupant when the status/mood of the occupant is permissive of a safe communication and utilizing the evaluation of whether the status/mood is positive in the decision of safety is applicable to the positive mood of being happy taught by Shintani in the scenario of a vehicle occupant with a probability of a calamity occurring in a location of the vehicle when traveling on a route in the case when additional verifications are needed to confirm the calamity (by increasing the probability of its occurrence to reach a threshold) as taught by Ucar. This would enable a channel to gather more relevant information for route planning effectiveness while avoiding potential dangers both from the calamity and from distracting a driver of the vehicle. See [0035], [0038], [0040], [0071]-[0072], and [0062] of Sicconi.
Finally, Examiner reminds Applicant that one cannot show nonobviousness by attacking references individually where the rejections are based on combinations of references. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 208 USPQ 871 (CCPA 1981); In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091, 231 USPQ 375 (Fed. Cir. 1986).
Thus, Examiner respectfully asserts that the independent claims, as amended, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shintani in view of Ucar and Sicconi. Applicant is referred to the full updated rejections above for further details.
The rejections of the dependent claims are also accordingly being reasserted.
The double patenting rejections previously presented have been withdrawn in view of the approved Terminal Disclaimer as acknowledged above.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Examiner notes the following cited art:
US PGPUB 2013/0033384 A1, which teaches receiving confirmation from a user when the probability of an obstruction on the road is lower than a threshold [see e.g. [0106]].
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MARIA S AYAD whose telephone number is (571)272-2743. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday, 7:30 am - 4:30 pm. Alt, Friday, EST.
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/MARIA S AYAD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2172