DETAILED ACTION
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
This Office Action is in response to the communication filed on 3/9/2026.
Claims 1, 5 and 11 have been amended.
Claims 1-20 are pending for consideration.
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 .
Specification
The lengthy specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see page10 of the Remarks, filed on 3/9/2026, with respect to the 112(b) rejection of claims 1-20 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The 112(b) rejection of claims 1-20 has been withdrawn.
Applicant's arguments filed on 3/9/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues on pages 10-11 of the Remarks that there is no teaching or suggestion of "a plurality of access certificate chains stored by the mobile computer," much less of determining "a respective issuer identifier of a respective root certificate authority in the corresponding access certificate chain" where the determination is "for each of a plurality of access certificate chains stored by the mobile computer." See also, e.g., Shin, Abstract. ("The mutual authentication method includes: accepting an SECC certificate chain and providing the CS device with an EV certificate chain."); " 0008, 0131 (discussing a single EV certificate chain).
In response to the above argument, Examiner respectfully disagrees. Shin teaches a list of at least some RootCA Certificates maintained in the EV (i.e., electric vehicle) (Shin: paragraphs 0009). Shin further teaches matching the communication certificate chain (i.e., SECC certificate associated with the SECC certificate chain) associated with the terminal from among the plurality of access certificate chains stored by the mobile computer (Shin: paragraphs 0008 and 0013-0015, 0118, 0121 and 0129-0130, “authenticating the EV may include: receiving a list of at least some of RootCA Certificates maintained in the EV. The SECC Certificate may be authenticated by using the first RootCA Certificate included in the list as a trust anchor.”… “verifying the SECC Certificate using the at least one charging device series SubCA Certificate and a first RootCA Certificate stored in a storage of the EV”… “the EVCC 120 receives the SECC certificate chain including the SECC Leaf Certificate and the CPO SubCA certificates, i.e. the CPO SubCA 1 Certificate and the CPO SubCA 2 Certificate from the SECC 220, and verifies the SECC Leaf Certificate using the CPO subCA Certificates and the V2G RootCA Certificate stored in the HSM 170.”). Therefore, Applicant’s arguments are not persuasive.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-20 have been considered but are moot.
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) 1-5 and 11-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1)/102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Shin (US 20240010095) (hereinafter Shin).
Regarding claim 1, Shin discloses a system, comprising: a mobile computer including a processor and a memory, the memory storing instructions executable by the processor (Shin: paragraphs 0073-0075, “An EV user may charge the EV 100 at the charging station 200 using a plug-and-charge (PnC) method”) such that the mobile computer is programmed to:
upon requesting access to a terminal, receive a communication certificate chain from a terminal computer included in the terminal (Shin: paragraphs 0008, 0077, 0090, 0121 and 0131, “The original equipment manufacturer (OEM) 300 may refer to an electric vehicle manufacturer or an OEM server for authenticating an electric vehicle”… “mutual authentication method according to an aspect of the present disclosure may be performed in an electric vehicle (EV) to enable PnC charging through communication with a charging station (CS) device…receiving, from the CS device, a supply equipment communication controller (SECC) certificate chain including a SECC Certificate and at least one charging device series SubCA Certificate used to issue the SECC Certificate”);
establish a communication session with the terminal computer based on an issuer identifier of a root certificate authority included in the communication certificate chain received from the terminal computer and matching a subject identifier of a stored root certificate (Shin: paragraphs 0008, 0015, 0071, 0121-0124 and 0131, “the EVCC 120 receives the SECC certificate chain including the SECC Leaf Certificate and the CPO SubCA certificates, i.e. the CPO SubCA 1 Certificate and the CPO SubCA 2 Certificate from the SECC 220, and verifies the SECC Leaf Certificate using the CPO subCA Certificates and the V2G RootCA Certificate stored in the HSM” …“authenticating an SECC by verifying the SECC Certificate using the at least one charging device series SubCA Certificate and a first RootCA Certificate stored in a storage of the EV”);
upon establishing the communication session, determine, for each of a plurality of access certificate chains stored on the mobile computer, a respective issuer identifier of a respective root certificate authority in the corresponding access certificate chain (Shin: paragraphs 0008 and 0013-0015, 0118, 0121 and 0129-0130, “authenticating the EV may include: receiving a list of at least some of RootCA Certificates maintained in the EV. The SECC Certificate may be authenticated by using the first RootCA Certificate included in the list as a trust anchor.”… “verifying the SECC Certificate using the at least one charging device series SubCA Certificate and a first RootCA Certificate stored in a storage of the EV”… “the EVCC 120 receives the SECC certificate chain including the SECC Leaf Certificate and the CPO SubCA certificates, i.e. the CPO SubCA 1 Certificate and the CPO SubCA 2 Certificate from the SECC 220, and verifies the SECC Leaf Certificate using the CPO subCA Certificates and the V2G RootCA Certificate stored in the HSM 170.””);
upon determining that the respective issuer identifier in one access certificate chain matches the subject identifier of the stored root certificate that matched the issuer identifier included in the communication certificate chain, select, from among the plurality of access certificate chains stored by the mobile computer, the one access certificate chain (Shin: paragraphs 0013-0015, 0098, 0109, 0118, 0121, 0129-0134 and 0141, “all the RootCAs may issue an OCSP certificate to allow the query of the validity of the certificates in the certificate chains associated with their RootCA certificates.”…“The verification result for the SECC Certificate may be determined in the EV by verifying the SECC certificate using the at least one charging device series SubCA Certificate and a V2G RootCA Certificate stored in a storage of the EV.”… “the EVCC 120 and the SECC 220 provide their certificate chains to the other party and authenticate the other party based on the certificate chain received from the other party. That is, the EVCC 120 receives the SECC certificate chain including the SECC Leaf Certificate and the CPO SubCA certificates, i.e. the CPO SubCA 1 Certificate and the CPO SubCA 2 Certificate from the SECC 220, and verifies the SECC Leaf Certificate using the CPO subCA Certificates and the V2G RootCA Certificate stored in the HSM 170.”); and
transmit the selected access certificate chain to the terminal computer (Shin: paragraphs 0124-0125, 0131 and 0146, “When a TLS session is established after the mutual authentication, the EVCC 120 and the SECC 220”… “the SECC 200 receives the contract certificate chain including the Contract Certificate and MO subCA certificates, i.e., the MO SubCA 1 Certificate and the MO SubCA 2 Certificate, from the EVCC 100. The SECC 200 reads the trust anchor for the MO subCA certificates, that is, the V2G RootCA Certificate or the OEM RootCA Certificate. The SECC 200 verifies the EV Certificate using the EV subCA Certificates and the trust anchor read from the HSM 270.”).
Regarding claim 11, the claim 11 discloses a method claim that is substantially equivalent to the system of claim 1. Therefore, the arguments set forth above with respect to claim 1 are equally applicable to claim 11 and rejected for the same reasons.
Regarding claims 2 and 12, Shin further discloses wherein the mobile computer is further programmed to, upon determining that the issuer identifier of the root certificate authority in the communication certificate chain does not match the subject identifier of the stored root certificate, prevent establishment of the communication session (Shin: paragraph 0135, “the EVCC 120 may send the same EV Certificate, during a TLS establishment, as that used in the paused session. After receiving a SessionSetupReq message from the EVCC 220, the SECC 220 may check if a pair of a session ID and the EV Certificate matches the one used in the paused session or not to resume the paused session. In this case, the rest of the communication process may be the same as that for establishing a new session described above. Meanwhile, the execution order of the operations 442-452 in FIG. 6 may be modified depending on the embodiments.”).
Regarding claims 3 and 13, Shin further discloses further comprising the terminal computer, including a second processor and a second memory storing instructions executable by the second processor such that the terminal computer is programmed to, upon receiving authorization from a third computer, permit the mobile computer to access the terminal (Shin: paragraphs 0024, 0078 and 0125, “The CSP 360 checks the eMAID account status in response to the request of the SECC 200, determines whether the contract for the EV is valid enough to provide the charging service, and provides an authorization result based on the determination to the SECC”).
Regarding claims 4 and 14, Shin further discloses, wherein the mobile computer is included in a vehicle, and the third computer is remote from the vehicle and the terminal (Shin: paragraph 0119 and figures 4-5
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).
Regarding claims 5 and 15, Shin further discloses further comprising the third computer, including a third processor and a third memory storing instructions executable by the third processor such that the remote computer is programmed to generate the authorization in response to receiving a specified number of tokens from a fourth computer (Shin: paragraphs 0025 and 0131-0134, “the processor to authenticate the EV may include program instructions causing the processor to: allow a service requested by the EV to be authorized, in response to a service request from the EV after the mutual authentication, by skipping an EV identification in an application layer based on a result of the mutual authentication”… “when the TLS session is established by the mutual authentication according to the present disclosure, the SECC 220 may provide the EVPnC as one of EV identification and authentication methods. At this time, the authentication in the application layer according to the ISO 15118-2 standard may be unnecessary. In addition, a service requested by the EVCC 120 may be authorized by using result of the mutual authentication.”).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6-10 and 16-20 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the closest prior art has been incorporated into the record and does not disclose, individually or in reasonable combination, the features disclosed in claims 6-10 and 16-20 as a whole.
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 TRANG T DOAN whose telephone number is (571)272-0740. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 7-4 ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Lynn D Feild can be reached on (571)272-2092. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/TRANG T DOAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2431
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