DETAILED ACTION
Claims 13, 15 –23, and 25 are pending.
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 .
Response to Amendment
With regard to the Non-Final Office Action from 22 April 2026, the Applicant has filed a response on 20 July 2026.
Claims 14 and 24 have been cancelled.
A new claim — 25, has been entered.
Claim 14 was objected to for minor informalities. The claim has hereby been cancelled and the Examiner drops the objection.
The drawings of Figures 1 and 2 were objected to as they did not include legends indicating the names of the steps or elements. Figure 1 has been amended to provide the proper labels. There is however no comment on the status of Figure 2 and there is no amendment sheet that presents Figure 2. The objection to Figure 1 is hereby withdrawn but the objection to Figure 2 is maintained.
With regard to the 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection given to the claims, the Applicant has provided an amendment to the independent claims, the Applicant indicating (Remarks: Page 7 Par 5) that the claims currently recite a practical application by their current presentation. The Examiner considers independent claim 13, which now indicates that the entire limitations of the claim is directed to the practical application of using a vehicle speaker to output a first prosodically emphasised speech for attracting the user’s attention and producing readiness of the user to listen to an urgent information that is then output. The Examiner accepts this as a practical application suitable to provide more than just the mentioned abstract idea. The Examiner hereby withdraws the 101 rejection.
Response to Arguments
With regard to the 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection given to the claims, the Applicant has provided an amendment to the independent claims, the Applicant indicating (Remarks: Page 7 Par 5) that the claims currently recite a practical application by their current presentation. The Applicant however does not indicate what the practical application is. The Examiner will consider the claims by their current presentation.
With regard to the 35 U.S.C. 102 rejection given to the independent claims as well, independent claim 13 has been amended to include limitations of now-cancelled claim 14. The Applicant indicates (Remarks: Page 8) that the reference of JUNEJA et al. does not teach the limitations:
checking, by the control unit based on manually stored or learned behavior of a user of the vehicle …;
adjusting, by the control unit, a speech output to a current communication stats responsive …; and
automatically outputting, by a speaker of the vehicle, a first prosodically emphasized speech output …
The Examiner acquiesces, indicating that the amendment to the independent claims do not fully appear to be taught by the applied JUNEJA et al. reference.
The Applicant further states (Remarks: Page 9) that the applied reference ‘discloses adjusting tone of the output information, whereas amended independent claim 13 recites automatically outputting “a first prosodically emphasized speech output to attract attention and produce readiness to listen of the user and then … the information relating to the vehicle context.”’ The Examiner refers to [0065] of the applied prior art to show teaching for the generation of voice output in a loud and dangerous tone, teaching of a prosodically emphasised speech output that attracts the user’s attention and causes a readiness to listen, and then a generation of the output in a pleasant sounding tone, as the presentation of the information related to the context of the vehicle. The Examiner further refers to [0077] which alerts a user ‘with a high speech rate that there is a tire, for example, within 50 feet in front of him/her in the lane,’ to which the initial speech rate of presentation is directed to prepare readiness to listen in the user, and then, the intended message regarding the vehicle context goes on to be presented. The Examiner maintains that this is taught by the applied prior art.
The Applicant goes on to indicate (Remarks: Page 9 Par 3) that the claims recite two criteria for the adjustment, these being an importance value and a determination that the current communication status is one in which no communication is taking place between the user and the speech dialogue not being provided by the prior art. For the importance value, the prior art in [0057] provides that a determination is made that it is necessary for the system to instruct the driver to slow down. For the other criterion, the prior art in [0081] provides that ‘for example, if the cellphone wants to use the car's speakers 22 to talk to the driver, the system 10 can simply not provide control to the cellphone over the speaker 22 until the navigation system has finished using the car's speaker 22 and has released control over the car's speakers’ teaching of a determination to wait till a user is not engaged in a conversation with the system. The Examiner maintains the rejection in this instance.
With regard to the amended claim limitations that are not taught by the previously-applied reference, the Examiner will address these limitations in their appropriate rejection sections.
Drawings
The drawing of Figure 2 is objected to because it does not include legends that indicate the names of the steps and elements referenced by the numbers in the figures, which the Examiner has deemed necessary for properly understanding the drawings. See 37 CFR 1.84(o).
Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. The figure or figure number of an amended drawing should not be labeled as “amended.” If a drawing figure is to be canceled, the appropriate figure must be removed from the replacement sheet, and where necessary, the remaining figures must be renumbered and appropriate changes made to the brief description of the several views of the drawings for consistency. Additional replacement sheets may be necessary to show the renumbering of the remaining figures. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the Examiner, the Applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
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 13 and 25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over JUNEJA et al. (US 2016/0236690 A1: hereafter — Juneja) in view of Keohane et al. (US 2020/0259948 A1: hereafter — Keohane).
For claim 13, Juneja discloses a method for operating a speech dialogue system of a vehicle (Juneja: [0004] — operation within a vehicle whereby the system adaptively interacts with a driver via voice), the method comprising:
determining, by sensors of the vehicle, a vehicle context (Juneja: [0004] — obtaining vehicle environment parameters from a plurality of sensors; [0032] — determining a vehicle state; [0053], [0054] — monitoring vehicle-related aspects, such as that the vehicle is moving at a vehicle speed (this being the context of the vehicle));
determining, by a control unit of the vehicle, information stored in the control unit and relating to the vehicle context (Juneja: [0019] — circuitry of the device including a microprocessor and memory devices; [0042] — a continuous update of the models for the driver state (indicating the storage of information in the control unit relate to vehicle context); [0032] — determining an environmental state surrounding the vehicle; [0054] — a plurality of sensors to monitor environmental aspects, such as a detection of the presence of a child positioned at the rear of the vehicle as well as visibility being unclear based on weather conditions (all these as they relate to the vehicle state));
checking, by the control unit, whether the information relating to the vehicle context has a validity duration shorter than a predefined reference value and is to be graded as urgent (Juneja: [0054] — determining that a closing vehicle speed is not decreasing in reference to the location of the child at the rear of the vehicle (which is an indication of urgency for the driver, such that the information of the child being at the rear of the vehicle is valid in the short time while the driver is reversing the vehicle and not reducing the vehicle speed); [0067]–[0068] — detecting information related to the vehicle context such as that aa driver’s hand temperature and pressure exceed certain predefined values; [0021] — so that a driver is able to identify the significance and timeliness of information faster (determining the urgency of information to be presented to the driver)); and
checking, by the control unit based on [[manually stored or learned behavior of a user of the vehicle]], and responsive to the information relating to the vehicle context being graded as urgent, whether the information relating to the vehicle context has an importance value exceeding a predetermined threshold value for the user (Juneja: [0056] — based on the determined information and the urgency, determining to generate voice output information for the user (indicating the determination of an the information being important enough to have to inform the driver); [0057] — a scenario where it is determined that the driver needs to be instructed of the determined situation (a check for an importance value after an urgency has been determined));
determining, by the control unit, that a current communication status of the speech dialogue system is one in which no communication is taking place between the user and the speech dialogue system (Juneja: [0081] — ‘for example, if the cellphone wants to use the car's speakers 22 to talk to the driver, the system 10 can simply not provide control to the cellphone over the speaker 22 until the navigation system has finished using the car's speaker 22 and has released control over the car's speakers’ (teaching of a determination to wait till a user is not engaged in a conversation with the system, thereby being able to determine there’s no current conversation taking place between the user and the speech dialogue system));
adjusting, by the control unit, a speech output to the current communication status [[responsive to the information relating to the vehicle context having an importance value exceeding the predetermined threshold value for the user and]] responsive to the determination that the current communication status is one in which no communication is taking place between the user and the speech dialogue system (Juneja: [0081] — ‘for example, if the cellphone wants to use the car's speakers 22 to talk to the driver, the system 10 can simply not provide control to the cellphone over the speaker 22 until the navigation system has finished using the car's speaker 22 and has released control over the car's speakers’ (providing that speech output/audible notice by the device is presented after it has been determined that there’s no current conversation taking place between the user and the speech dialogue system));
automatically outputting, by a speaker of the vehicle, a first prosodically emphasized speech output to attract attention and produce readiness to listen of the user and then automatically outputting, by the speaker of the vehicle, the information relating to the vehicle context (Juneja: [0037] — ‘safety warnings that are given in a different tone of voice based on the nearness of the danger (e.g., louder as they are closer), possibly mixed with warning tones (beeps) appropriate to the warning condition’ (teaching of providing speaker output alerts such as tones and beeps to a user to attract the user’s/driver’s attention); [0077] — alerting a user with a high speech rate that there is a tire, for example, within 50 feet in front of him/her in the lane (the initial speech rate of presentation is directed to prepare readiness to listen in the user, and then, the intended message regarding the vehicle context goes on to be presented).
The reference of Juneja however fails to disclose the further teachings of this claim regarding manually stored or learned behaviours of the user of the vehicle being applied to determine an importance value exceeding a threshold, and the adjustment of speech output being responsive to the information relating to the vehicle context having an importance value exceeding the predetermined threshold value for the user.
This is however not new to the art as the reference of Keohane isnow introduced to teach these as:
checking, by the control unit based on manually stored or learned behavior of a user of the vehicle, and responsive to the information relating to the vehicle context being graded as urgent, whether the information relating to the vehicle context has an importance value exceeding a predetermined threshold value for the user (Keohane: [0067] —a threshold value being configured by the user or an administrator, such that the system can ‘determine the threshold by utilizing a machine learning (ML) model to identify the distinctions in the user's behavior pattern’; [0021] — ‘utilize analytics and heuristics to learn the driving behaviors and customized preferences of a user’; [0068] — ‘a machine learning (ML) model to learn patterns in the user's behavior’; [0025] — ‘According to at least one embodiment, the personalized notification management program may perform an analysis of the notification to determine the importance or relevancy of the notification, such as who the notification is from (e.g., spouse, child, supervisor, parent) and the urgency of the notification content (e.g., “I need you to call me right now.”). The urgency rating may enable the personalized notification management program to route certain notifications of high importance to a text-to-speech engine and play on the audio of a vehicle while the user is driving’);
adjusting, by the control unit, a speech output to the current communication status responsive to the information relating to the vehicle context having an importance value exceeding the predetermined threshold value for the user and responsive to the determination that the current communication status is one in which no communication is taking place between the user and the speech dialogue system (Keohane: [0025] — ‘According to at least one embodiment, the personalized notification management program may perform an analysis of the notification to determine the importance or relevancy of the notification, such as who the notification is from (e.g., spouse, child, supervisor, parent) and the urgency of the notification content (e.g., “I need you to call me right now.”). The urgency rating may enable the personalized notification management program to route certain notifications of high importance to a text-to-speech engine and play on the audio of a vehicle while the user is driving’; [0066] — ‘If the weighed notification is above a previously determined threshold (e.g., 70%), then the notification may be considered important or relevant’).
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to improve upon the teaching of Juneja which checks whether information related to vehicle context has an importance value exceeding a predetermined user threshold to present an urgent information to the user, by applying the known teaching of Keohane which provides speech output to the user in response to the information having an importance value exceeding the predetermined user threshold, after having stored or learnt the behaviour of the user of the vehicle, as taught by Keohane, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result of alerting the driver to urgent information that are deemed necessary to inform the user of, rather than simply alerting the user on every notification and causing further distractions to the user. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
As for claim 25, system claim 25 and method claim 13 are related as apparatus and the method of using same, with each claimed element’s function corresponding to the claimed method step. Juneja in [0004] provides a vehicle with a plurality of sensors, a microprocessor in [0019] suitable to read on the control unit, these being suitable to read upon the limitations of this claim. Accordingly, claim 25 is similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied above with respect to method claim 13.
Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Juneja (US 2016/0236690 A1) in view of Keohane (US 2020/0259948 A1) as applied to claim 13, further in view of KESERICH (US 2022/0205802 A1).
For claim 15, claim 13 is incorporated but the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane fails to disclose the limitation of this claim, for which the reference of Wolff is now introduced to teach as the method, wherein, responsive to a communication status being present in which a speech output of the speech dialogue system is occurring, the speech output is interrupted and is automatically switched to a second prosodically emphasized speech output introducing a change in topic (Keserich: [0010], [0068] — an active audio conversation being one that is being held between the user and the navigation assistance apparatus (indicating a current speech output by the system); [0070] — interrupting a user’s conversation to provide a navigation instruction (which is a speech output that changes the topic of an on-going conversation); [0057] — output data comprising politeness data factor and tone data factor (which would inherently indicate a prosodical switch in the system’s interruption)).
The combination of Juneja in view of Keohane provides teaching for automatically outputting speech by a system to a user, but differs from the claimed invention in that the claimed invention further provides teaching for the interruption of an ongoing speech output to provide a second prosodically emphasised speech output that introduces a change in topic. This is however not new to the art as the reference of Keserich is seen to teach above.
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to improve upon the teaching of the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane which provides outputting speech by a system to a user, by incorporating the known teaching of Keserich which provides an interruption of an ongoing speech output to provide a change in topic, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result of being able to quickly and effectively capture a user’s attention in an urgent situation. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
Claim 16 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Juneja (US 2016/0236690 A1) in view of Keohane (US 2020/0259948 A1) further in view of Keserich (US 2022/0205802 A1) as applied to claim 15, and further in view of KIM et al. (US 2015/0223200 A1: hereafter — Kim).
For claim 16, claim 15 is incorporated and the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane further in view of Keserich has been seen to teach the limitation of determining that a user is speaking and taking that as a communication status of the user (Keserich: [0010], [0068] — an active audio conversation being one that is being held between the user and the navigation assistance apparatus (indicating a current conversation whereby the user is speaking).
The combination of Juneja in view of Keohane further in view of Keserich however fails to disclose the limitation of this claim, for which the reference of Kim is now introduced to teach as the method, wherein, responsive to a communication status being present in which the user is speaking automatically, a prosodic third speech output is issued for interrupting, attracting attention, and producing readiness to listen of the user (Kim: [0113] — a voice notification being presented in a higher voice tone (a particular prosody) so as to attract a user’s attention (thereby interrupting and getting a user ready to listen)).
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to combine the known teaching of Kim which provides issuing a voice notification at a different prosody to attract a user’s attention, with the teaching of the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane further in view of Keserich which determines that a user is speaking and taking that as a communication status of the user, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result that such a sudden change in prosody would gain a listener’s attention so that an urgent message may be effectively conveyed. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
Claims 17 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Juneja (US 2016/0236690 A1) in view of Keohane (US 2020/0259948 A1) further in view of Keserich (US 2022/0205802 A1) further in view of Kim (US 2015/0223200 A1) as applied to claim 15, and further in view of Shetty et al. (US 2020/0401370 A1: hereafter — Shetty).
For claim 17, claim 16 is incorporated but the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane further in view of Keserich and further in view of Kim fails to teach the limitation of this claim, for which the reference of Shetty is now introduced to teach the method, after issuing one of the first, second or third speech outputs, a reaction of the user is monitored (Shetty: [0045] — after issuing a voice reply to a user, determining the user’s attentiveness score (taking this attentiveness score as a measure of the user’s reaction); [0023] — the attentiveness score is an indication of the user not paying attention to the device (so the user wouldn’t react accordingly to speech outputs of the device)).
The combination of Juneja in view of Keohane further in view of Keserich and further in view of Kim provides teaching for a system providing speech output, but differs from the claimed invention in that the claimed invention now further provides monitoring a reaction of the user after issuing the speech output. This however isn’t new to the art as the reference of Shetty goes to show monitoring a user for attentiveness, just as provided above.
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to improve upon the teaching of the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane further in view of Keserich and further in view of Kim which provides that a system is making a speech output, by applying the known teaching of Shetty which monitors a user for attentiveness in response to a system output as a way of determining the user’s reaction, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result of possibly reissuing a speech notification to a user upon determining that an important notification needs to be provided, but the user was determined not to be paying attention. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
For claim 18, claim 17 is incorporated and the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane further in view of Keserich, further in view of Kim, and further in view of Shetty discloses the method, wherein, responsive to monitoring of the user not showing the user having any reaction or a negative reaction, a further speech output prosodically strengthened in comparison to the first, the second, or third previous speech outputs is performed (Shetty: [0045] — in a situation whereby it is determined that a user isn’t paying attention (indication of no reaction), the system presents the voice reply at an increased volume (an indication of a prosodically strengthened speech output) to draw the user’s attention).
Claim 19 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Juneja (US 2016/0236690 A1) in view of Keohane (US 2020/0259948 A1) further in view of Keserich (US 2022/0205802 A1), further in view of Kim (US 2015/0223200 A1), and further in view of Shetty (US 2020/0401370 A1) as applied to claim 17, and further in view of Fujii et al. (US 2013/0218553 A1: hereafter — Fujii).
For claim 19, claim 17 is incorporated but the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane further in view of Keserich, further in view of Kim, and further in view of Shetty provides teaching for the method, [[wherein, responsive to the monitoring of the user showing the user reacting positively]], the speech dialogue system issues the urgent information with an importance value lying above the threshold value (Shetty: [0045] —the system presents the voice reply at an increased volume (an indication delivering an urgent information with a higher importance by increasing the volume).
The combination of Juneja in view of Keohane further in view of Keserich, further in view of Kim, and further in view of Shetty however fails to disclose the further limitation of this claim, for which the reference of Fujii is now introduced to teach as:
the method, wherein, responsive to the monitoring of the user showing the user reacting positively, the speech dialogue system issues the urgent information with an importance value lying above the threshold value (Fujii: [0030] — determining that a user is in the state to be able to listen to a message from the system (a determination that the user is positively reacting, in that the user can receive the message), causing the system to output the message to the user).
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to combine the teaching of the teaching of the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane further in view of Keserich, further in view of Kim, and further in view of Shetty which provides delivering an urgent message with greater importance, with the known teaching of Fujii which determines that a user is positively reacting to receiving a message by determining that the user is in a state to be able to listen to the information to be presented, before presenting the information to the user, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result of delivering an important message to a user only after determining that the user is able to actually receive the message, ensuring proper message delivery and also that the user will react appropriately to the received urgent massage. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Juneja (US 2016/0236690 A1) in view of Keohane (US 2020/0259948 A1) further in view of Keserich (US 2022/0205802 A1) as applied to claim 15, and further in view of MOEGELE et al. (US 2017/0249941 A1: hereafter — Moegele).
For claim 20, claim 15 is incorporated and the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane further in view of Keserich provides teaching for issuing the urgent information with an importance value lying above the threshold value, as an interruption (Juneja: [0056] — informing the driver about the urgent information by making use of voice output in a very firm and somewhat loud tone; [0061] — notifying a driver through a speech output; [0065] — a different situation whereby the system generates an audible output for the user in a loud and dangerous-sounding tone).
This combination however fails to teach the further limitation of this claim regarding the storing of a dialogue state, until after an interruption, to then communicate the state back to the user.
This is not new to the art as the reference of Moegele is now introduced to teach this as:
the method, wherein a state of the speech dialogue system or a dialogue course until interruption is stored and, after issuing the urgent information with an importance value lying above the threshold value, the state is communicated to the user or reproduced repeatedly to the user at least in a partially summarized form (Moegele: [0018], [0020] — when an interruption occurs to an ongoing conversation, the interruption is allowed to go through, and after the interruption is done, the previous dialogue is resumed, with a summary of the dialogue being output to the user).
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to improve upon the teaching of the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane further in view of Keserich which provides the interruption of a current conversation, by incorporating the known teaching of Moegele which stores a communication state of a current conversation so that if the conversation gets interrupted, it can later be restored, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result of giving the user the ability to continue a previous conversation without having to entirely restart that previous conversation. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
Claim 21 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Juneja (US 2016/0236690 A1) in view of Keohane (US 2020/0259948 A1) as applied to claim 13, further in view of Chu et al. (US 2016/0306264 A1: hereafter — Chu).
For claim 21, claim 13 is incorporated but the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane fails to disclose the limitation of this claim, for which the reference of Chu is now introduced to teach as the method, wherein the importance value of information is determined in a self-learning manner from historical user behavior (Chu: [0202] — self-learning involving the tracking of user behaviour to be able to rank and identify features which pertain to the user).
The combination of Juneja in view of Keohane provides teaching for determining an importance value in relation to a user based on vehicle context, but differs from the claimed invention in that the claimed invention further determines the importance value based on a self-learning manner from historical user behaviour. This however isn’t new to the art as the reference of Chu is seen to teach above.
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to improve upon the teaching of the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane which determines the importance value of an information to a user, by incorporating the known teaching provided by the Chu reference which provides self-learning through tracking user behaviour so as to be able to identify features that pertain to the user, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result of ranking information that are pertinent to the particular user and thereby understanding what the user would be more interested in so that such may be presented to the user. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
Claims 22 and 23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Juneja (US 2016/0236690 A1) in view of Keohane (US 2020/0259948 A1) as applied to claim 13, further in view of YORK et al. (US 2020/0357406 A1: hereafter — York).
For claim 22, claim 13 is incorporated but the reference of Juneja fails to disclose the limitation of this claim, for which the reference of York is now introduced to teach as:
the method, wherein an individual validity value is allocated to each class of information (York: [0304], [0306], [0312] — a notification model which is able to determine an importance score (as an individual validity value) of a notification (of a class of information) as it pertains to a particular user, ranking some notifications to have a higher importance for the user than some other notifications).
The combination of Juneja in view of Keohane provides teaching for determining information related to a vehicle context, but differs from the claimed invention in that the claimed invention further provides teaching for having an individual validity value being allocated to each class of information. This is however not new to the art as the reference of York is introduced to teach as provided above.
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to improve upon the teaching of the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane which determines information related to a vehicle context, by incorporating the known teaching provided by the York reference which provides assigning of importance to notifications as it pertains to a particular user, to thereby come up with the claimed information, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result of being able to determine if a received information is important enough to have to take a user’s attention from a task the user might be currently engaged in. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
For claim 23, claim 22 is incorporated and the combination of Juneja in view of Keohane further in view of York discloses the method, wherein the individual validity value is adjusted depending on the user [[or the vehicle context]] (York: [0304], [0306], [0312] — a notification model which is able to determine an importance score (as an individual validity value) of a notification (of a class of information) as it pertains to a particular user, ranking some notifications to have a higher importance for the user than some other notifications).
Conclusion
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Burk et al. (US 2022/0019767 A1) provides teaching for a machine learning model that can learn the behaviours of a user and apply it to vehicle contexts ([0042], [0071]).
CHIN et al. (WO 2019/214799 A1)provides teaching for a machine learning system able to collect user profile information and user habit information, identifying behaviour rules, to be applied to a current context associated with a situation (Page 5 Par 3 – Page 3 Par 1).
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 OLUWADAMILOLA M. OGUNBIYI whose telephone number is (571)272-4708. The examiner can normally be reached Monday – Thursday (8:00 AM – 5:30 PM Eastern Standard Time).
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s Supervisor, PARAS D. SHAH can be reached at (571) 270-1650. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/OLUWADAMILOLA M OGUNBIYI/Examiner, Art Unit 2653
/Paras D Shah/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2653
10/02/2026
