DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to the request for continued examination filed 10 February 2026.
Claims 1-12 have been amended.
Claims 1-12 are currently pending.
Claims 1-12 are rejected.
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 .
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. 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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 26 January 2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment/Remarks
The rejections under 35 USC § 112 have been remedied by amendment and are withdrawn.
Regarding 35 USC § 101, Applicant’s remarks have been fully considered but are not persuasive. Applicant argues that “the amended claims of the present application generally relate to various embodiments for automatically managing and distributing vehicles amongst a plurality of hubs, by incentivizing users to achieve/satisfy requests for distributing such vehicles. Applicant respectfully submits that such features are neither fundamental economic principles or practices, commercial or legal interactions, nor features relating to managing personal behavior and relationships or interactions between people.” Remarks at 15. Incentivizing users to participate in an activity, essentially doing a job for payment, is considered a commercial activity. Incentivizing users to do an activity rather than not do an activity is considered managing personal behavior. Applicant’s argument is not persuasive.
Applicant argues that “the amended claims automatically distribute the vehicles amongst the plurality of hubs by using the current positions detected by the GPS sensors. In addition, the claims recite a specific manner for calculating the price of the reward to be paid to each of the users. Applicant respectfully submits that such features, as recited by the amended claims, improve the technical field and/or at least amount to meaningful limits of the claims (as evidenced by no prior art rejection being set forth).” Remarks at 16. As an initial manner, Applicant is arguing limitations not in the claims; the claims do not recite distributing the vehicles among the hubs, automatically or otherwise. Second, even if an abstract idea is recited in specific manner, this does not make it any less abstract. Applicant’s argument is not persuasive.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Step 1
Claims 1-10 recite a method which is considered a process. Claim 11 recite a non-transitory computer readable storage medium which is considered a machine or manufacture. Claim 12 recites a server device comprising a number of programs. While the specification indicates that the server device can include structure such as a processor (see [0058]), no structure is currently recited in claim 12. Thus, claim 12 fails step 1 as not being directed to any of the statutory categories, more particularly as being directed to a product that does not have a physical or tangible form (see MPEP 2106.03(I)). (Note that in previous office actions, Examiner was interpreting the server device itself as structure; after in-office consultation, it is determined that that a server device, given its broadest reasonable interpretation, is not considered structure.)
Step 2A-Prong One
The claims recite the concept of gathering information about a number of vehicle and offering a paid reward to a user to move a vehicle (See “constructing a vehicle sharing system that includes the plurality of hubs, a server device, a user terminal, an administrator terminal, and a public server operating in conjunction with a communication circuit network; acquiring first information from the server device indicating a history of movement of the plurality of vehicles by each of the plurality of users; performing wireless communication between the server device and each of the plurality of vehicles to detect a current position of each of the plurality of vehicles, the current position of each of the plurality of vehicles being detected by the GPS sensor of each of the plurality of vehicles; periodically referring to the current position of each of the plurality of vehicles and automatically generating second information indicating a request to move a vehicle of the plurality of vehicles from a first hub of the plurality of hubs to a second hub of the plurality of hubs when a first current number of vehicles at the first hub is larger than a lower limit number and a second current number of vehicles at the second hub is smaller than the lower limit number; generating a price of a reward to be paid to each of the plurality of users when the request indicated by the second information is achieved, in accordance with a matching rate calculated as a degree of coincidence between the first information of each user and the second information; and notifying of the second information and information indicating the reward of each user” in claim 1, for example.). The concept includes ways of calculating the reward amount and ways of determining which users should be offered the reward (See “identifying one or more users having a history of movement from the first hub to the second hub based on the first information; and calculating, as the matching rate, for each of the one or more users, how high a degree of coincidence between movement content of a vehicle by each user based on the first information and the movement content of a vehicle based on the second information is among the one or more users, wherein in the notifying, each of the one or more users is notified of the second information and information indicating the reward of each user” in claim 2 and “wherein the price of the reward is lower as the matching rate is higher” in claim 3, for example.). This concept falls into the certain methods of organizing human activity grouping of abstract ideas including commercial interactions and managing personal behavior. Thus, claims 1-12 recite an abstract idea.
The mere nominal recitation of a generic computer component does not take the claim limitations out of the identified abstract idea grouping. Thus, the claims recite an abstract idea.
Step 2A-Prong Two
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claims recite the additional element a non-transitory computer readable storage medium (claim 11) or a server device comprising a number of programs (claim 12) and includes no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. The non-transitory computer readable storage medium or the server device does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Claim 1 does not positively recite any additional elements. For example, the GPS sensor is not actively involved in any step. Additionally, no elements are actively performing the recited steps. Thus, no elements are analyzed at this step for claim 1 and its dependent claims.
Step 2B
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed previously with respect to Step 2A-Prong Two, the additional element in the claim amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. The same analysis applies here in Step 2B, i.e., mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot integrate a judicial exception into a practical application at Step 2A or provide an inventive concept in Step 2B. See MPEP 2106.05(f). The claims do not provide an inventive concept (significantly more than the abstract idea). The claims are ineligible.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
US 2021/0027632 (“Ise”): Ise discloses a vehicle dispatch system.
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/MEREDITH A LONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3622