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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 12/09/25 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
The amendment received 12/09/25 has been entered in full.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the pending claims have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection is used to teach the amended limitations of the claims.
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 1-5, 7-11, and 13-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tatematsu et al. US 2022/0371512 (hereinafter “Tatematsu”, cited in the IDS) in view Yan et al. US 10,930,151 (hereinafter “Yan”) and further in view of Sharma Banjade et al. US 2025/0128698 (hereinafter “Sharma Banjade”).
Regarding claim 1, Tatematsu discloses a method (see paragraph 0047, a passage control system that controls passage of a vehicle by opening and closing a gate, see also figure 1)
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comprising: capturing
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determining, model and color can be determined from the images, also see paragraph 0113 where this can be obtained using machine learning)
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;
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; and responsive to
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The claimed invention discloses describing attributes of the vehicle and a vehicle identifier whereas Tatematsu discloses first plate recognition and if that fails to recognize the automobile then attributes about the vehicle itself can be found. Thus Tatematsu does not explicitly disclose verifying the status of the vehicle based on the concordance of both the plurality of parameters and the vehicle identifier.
Yan discloses a parking management method and as seen in figure 4 detects both a vehicle and a license plate of the vehicle and if both the parameters of vehicle is detected and the license plate number is recognized then tracks the vehicle and the license plate to determine entry/exit of the vehicle parking event information
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Tatematsu and Yan are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of monitoring parking events.
Before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine Tatematsu with Yan to determine a concordance of the plurality of parameters and the vehicle identifier. Tatematsu discloses that both can be carried out, and by making them in concordance as is done by Yan would make the system more secure.
Tatematsu does not explicitly disclose using an edge device in order to capture, process, and transmit instructions to a server, however it is well known to use edge devices in order to speed up processing of local information as taught by Sharma Banjade.
Sharma Banjade discloses that a parking facility may contain one or more edged computed devices to monitor that status of a parking facility and allow communication with outside systems to control the parking facility (see paragraphs 0113, 0115, and 0119)
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Tatematsu and Sharma Banjade are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of monitoring a parking facility.
Before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine Tatematsu and Sharma Banjade to use an edge device such as the MEC of Sharma Banjade to carry out the processing of the parking control systems functions. The motivation would be to use the MEC platform to carry out the processing of the computing platform in a faster manner.
Regarding claim 2, Tatematsu discloses the plurality of parameters comprise identifying attributes of the vehicle (see paragraph 0111 copied above).
Regarding claim 3, Tatematsu discloses wherein the first machine learning model is trained to output the identifying attributes of the vehicle using example data comprising images of vehicles that are labeled with one or more candidate identifying attributes (see paragraph 0111 copied above).
Regarding claim 4 Tatematsu discloses the vehicle identifier comprises geographical nomenclature and a string of characters (see paragraph 0050)
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.
Regarding claim 5, Tatematsu discloses the second machine learning model is trained to identify the geographical nomenclature and the string of characters using training example images of license plates, where each of the training example images is labeled with its corresponding geographical nomenclature and string of characters (see above paragraph 0050 and 0106-0107)
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.
Claims 7-11 are similarly analyzed to claims 1-5.
Claims 13-17 are similarly analyzed to claims 1-5.
Claims 6, 12, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tatematsu et al. US 2022/0371512 (hereinafter “Tatematsu”, cited in the IDS) in view of Sharma Banjade and further in view of Correnti et al. US 2021/0076010 (hereinafter “Correnti”, cited in the IDS).
Regarding claim 6, as discussed above Tatematsu discloses the limitations of claim 1. Tatematsu further discloses wherein determining the vehicle identifier for first data set comprises determining that the vehicle identifier is unknown (see paragraph 0295-0296)
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Tatematsu nor Sharma Banjade do not explicitly disclose transmitting an alert to an administrator, the alert associated with at least a portion of the subset of images, and receiving, from the administrator, input that specifies the vehicle identifier.
Correnti discloses transmitting an alert to an administrator associated with a portion of the subset of images (see paragraph 0123) with transmitting a notification indicative of an alarm event to alert a monitoring station in which further information can be obtained to determine that inputs specifics about the vehicle and occupants (see paragraphs 0142-0143)
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Tatematsu and Correnti are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of monitoring vehicle access.
Before the effective filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine Tatematsu and Correnti to alert an administrator and determine further information of a vehicle. The motivation would be to problem solve when a vehicle is not properly recognized as authorized.
Claim 12 is similarly analyzed to claim 6.
Claim 18 is similarly analyzed to claim 6.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOHN B STREGE whose telephone number is (571)272-7457. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9-5 (PST).
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, Chan Park can be reached at (571)272-7409. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JOHN B STREGE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2669