Prosecution Insights
Last updated: October 02, 2026
Application No. 18/725,680

VEHICLE-BASED COMMUNICATION METHOD AND APPARATUS, VEHICLE AND STORAGE MEDIUM

Non-Final OA §102§103
Filed
Jun 28, 2024
Priority
Mar 02, 2023 — CN 202310192219.5 +1 more
Examiner
SUGDEN, NOAH JAMES
Art Unit
2475
Tech Center
2400 — Computer Networks
Assignee
Huizhou Desay Sv Automotive Co. Ltd.
OA Round
1 (Non-Final)
85%
Grant Probability
Favorable
1-2
OA Rounds
9m
Est. Remaining
98%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 85% — above average
85%
Career Allowance Rate
28 granted / 33 resolved
+26.8% vs TC avg
Moderate +13% lift
Without
With
+13.0%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
3y 0m
Avg Prosecution
28 currently pending
Career history
68
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
1.4%
-38.6% vs TC avg
§103
73.1%
+33.1% vs TC avg
§102
20.1%
-19.9% vs TC avg
§112
5.0%
-35.0% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 33 resolved cases

Office Action

§102 §103
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 . Priority Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed in parent Application No. CN 202310192219.5, filed on 03/02/2023. Information Disclosure Statement The information disclosure statements (IDS’s) submitted on 06/28/2024 and 06/30/2024 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner. Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102 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 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. Claims 1-5, 7, 9-14, and 16-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Ma et al. (CN 108471401 A), hereinafter Ma. Re. Claim 1, Ma teaches a vehicle-based communication method, applied in a vehicle, wherein the vehicle comprises a sending end and a receiving end of a message, and the method comprises: determining, by the sending end, message information containing a plurality of pieces of semaphore information (Pg. 2, Paragraph 2 - as a sender, a CAN node starts the message before sending the message data written in sending register byte in the form of CAN controller), wherein a piece of semaphore information among the plurality of pieces of semaphore information comprises a start position of data of a respective semaphore, a signal identifier of the respective semaphore, and a data length of the respective semaphore (Pg. 3, Paragraphs 5-6 - As a further preferred embodiment, the generating method of the signal layout comprising: The names of all CAN signal of given network matrix table of each message, length and initial position, defined name of each CAN signal in CAN bus development and test tool, the length and starting position in the message. Pg. 3, Paragraph 2 - the signal structure variable is pre-defined in accordance with message data length of signal structure type, comprising signal variable and a placeholder variable name, length of the signal variable, position in the signal group structure respectively consistent with name, length of the CAN signal in network matrix table and the position in the message), and the start position is determined based on a preset message data length (Pg. 3, Paragraph 2 - the signal structure variable is pre-defined in accordance with message data length of signal structure type, comprising signal variable and a placeholder variable name, length of the signal variable, position in the signal group structure respectively consistent with name, length of the CAN signal in network matrix table and the position in the message); determining, by the sending end, a length of placeholder data of a semaphore among a plurality of semaphores and a bit field data structure containing the placeholder data according to the message information (Pg. 7, Paragraph 5 - The given network matrix table of each message of all CAN signal name, starting position and length information on the CAN bus development and test tool canoe the industry mainstream defined name of each CAN signal, the length thereof in the message of the start bit, then adding all the CAN signal in the corresponding canoe message, will generate a signal layout of the graphical form for each message) and the preset message data length, wherein the length of the placeholder data is determined according to the start position and the data length of a respective semaphore (Pg. 3, Paragraph 2 - the signal structure variable is pre-defined in accordance with message data length of signal structure type, comprising signal variable and a placeholder variable name, length of the signal variable, position in the signal group structure respectively consistent with name, length of the CAN signal in network matrix table and the position in the message); and packing, by the sending end, the plurality of semaphores based on the bit field data structure to obtain a target message, and sending the target message to the receiving end (Pg. 2, Paragraph 3 - CAN signal is generally the form, from the byte array form of the received message parsing for extracting CAN signal form, and a very important work assignment CAN signal and packaging into sending message byte array form of upper layer application). Re. Claim 9, Claim 9 is the hardware component of Claim 1 and as such, the method contained within is rejected under the same theory as Claim 1. Additionally, Ma discloses at least one processor; and a memory communicatively connected to the at least one processor; wherein, the memory stores a computer program executable by the at least one processor (Pg. 4, Paragraph 4 - A terminal device, comprising a processor and a computer readable storage medium, the processor configured to implement each instruction, the computer readable storage medium for storing a plurality of instructions, the instructions adapted to be executed by a processor to load and execute the following processing). Re. Claim 10, Claim 10 is a hardware claim related to the method claimed in Claim 1 and as such, the shared elements between the claims are rejected under the same theory. Additionally, Ma teaches a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a computer instruction (Pg. 10, Paragraph 15 - the computer program product may include a computer-readable storage medium on which carries readable program instruction for computer to perform various aspects of the present disclosure). Re. Claims 2, 11, and 17, Ma teaches Claims 1, 9 and 10. Additionally, Ma further teaches wherein determining, by the sending end, the length of the placeholder data of the semaphore among the plurality of semaphores and the bit field data structure containing the placeholder data according to the message information and the preset message data length comprises: determining, by the sending end, a first bit field of the semaphore according to a sum of a start position of data of the semaphore and a data length of the semaphore, wherein a start position of the first bit field is the start position of the data of the semaphore, and an end position of the first bit field is a position corresponding to the sum (Pg. 3, Paragraphs 6-7 - The names of all CAN signal of given network matrix table of each message, length and initial position, defined name of each CAN signal in CAN bus development and test tool, the length and starting position in the message; adding the all CAN signals to the corresponding message, for each message generates a signal layout of the graphical form. Examiner understands the complexity of the claimed limitation and finds that, here, Ma discloses a start position and a length, which when used in combination (for each and every CAN signal/semaphore) will result in the process as described herein. Given a start position and length, an end position is easily attained by inference); determining, by the sending end, a plurality of second bit fields according to the preset message data length, and determining the length of the placeholder data according to a bit field gap between a respective second bit field of the plurality of second bit fields and the first bit field, wherein a sum of the length of the placeholder data and the data length of the semaphore is consistent with a length corresponding to the second bit field (Pg. 3, Paragraphs 6-7 - The names of all CAN signal of given network matrix table of each message, length and initial position, defined name of each CAN signal in CAN bus development and test tool, the length and starting position in the message; adding the all CAN signals to the corresponding message, for each message generates a signal layout of the graphical form. Examiner understands the complexity of the claimed limitation and finds that, here, Ma discloses a start position and a length, which when used in combination (for each and every CAN signal/semaphore) will result in the process as described herein. Given a start position and length, an end position is easily attained by inference. Additionally this is a generic process that is performed for all messages/bit fields in the CAN signal/semaphore and thus can be replicated for both the first bit and second bit fields); and determining, by the sending end, the bit field data structure containing the placeholder data according to the message information and the length of the placeholder data (Pg. 3, Paragraph 2 - the message variable is pre-defined in accordance with message data length of complex type, comprising the array variable and signal of the structure variable; the signal structure variable is pre-defined in accordance with message data length of signal structure type, comprising signal variable and a placeholder variable name, length of the signal variable, position in the signal group structure respectively consistent with name, length of the CAN signal in network matrix table and the position in the message). Re. Claims 3, 12, and 18, Ma teaches Claims 2, 11 and 17. Additionally, Ma further teaches wherein the bit field data structure at least comprises a target semaphore identifier, a target data length, and the placeholder data, and determining, by the sending end, the bit field data structure containing the placeholder data according to the message information and the length of the placeholder data comprises: determining, by the sending end, the signal identifier of the semaphore as the target semaphore identifier, and determining the data length of the semaphore as the target data length (Pg. 3, Paragraph 2 - the signal structure variable is pre-defined in accordance with message data length of signal structure type, comprising signal variable and a placeholder variable name, length of the signal variable, position in the signal group structure respectively consistent with name, length of the CAN signal in network matrix table and the position in the message); and determining, by the sending end, the bit field data structure containing the placeholder data according to the bit field gap and the length of the placeholder data (Pg. 7, Paragraph 6 - placeholder variable is to ensure the size of the message data length of signal group structure, filling in the placeholder signal layout position is not empty signal, the placeholder size and position size). Re. Claims 4, 13, and 19, Ma teaches Claims 3, 12 and 18. Additionally, Ma further teaches wherein determining, by the sending end, the bit field data structure containing the placeholder data according to the bit field gap and the length of the placeholder data comprises: in response to the bit field gap being a non-empty gap, determining, by the sending end, the length of the placeholder data corresponding to the non-empty gap as the target placeholder length of the semaphore corresponding to the bit field gap, wherein a type of the bit field gap comprises an empty gap and the non-empty gap, the empty gap indicates that the second bit field is consistent with the first bit field, and the length of the placeholder data corresponding to the empty gap is zero (Pg. 7, Paragraph 6 - The different signal layout and MCU size end mode of each message, each message defining a signal group structure type consistent with the message data length, the member variable of the signal group structure with the signal variable and placeholder variables two variables. the name of the signal variable and signal names of the network matrix table in the same signal length and network matrix table is consistent in structure, location and network signal position in the matrix table in the same message); and determining, by the sending end, a placeholder position of the placeholder data in the bit field data structure and the bit field data structure containing the placeholder data according to the non-empty gap and the target placeholder length (Pg. 7, Paragraph 6 - placeholder variable is to ensure the size of the message data length of signal group structure, filling in the placeholder signal layout position is not empty signal, the placeholder size and position size). Re. Claims 5, 14, and 20, Ma teaches Claims 1, 13 and 19. Additionally, Ma further teaches wherein packing, by the sending end, the plurality of semaphores based on the bit field data structure to obtain the target message comprises: writing, by the sending end, values of the plurality of semaphores into variables corresponding to target semaphore identifiers to obtain target variables, and packing the target variables to obtain the target message, wherein the bit field data structure further comprises the target semaphore identifiers (Pg. 2, Paragraph 3 - CAN signal is generally the form, from the byte array form of the received message parsing for extracting CAN signal form, and a very important work assignment CAN signal and packaging into sending message byte array form of upper layer application), and the target semaphore identifiers are consistent with signal identifiers of the plurality of semaphores (Pg. 7, Paragraph 6- the name of the signal variable and signal names of the network matrix table in the same signal length and network matrix table is consistent in structure, location and network signal position in the matrix table in the same message). Re. Claims 6, 15, and 21, Ma teaches Claims 5, 14 and 20. Additionally, Ma further teaches after sending, by the sending end, the target message to the receiving end, further comprising: after the receiving end receives the target message, unpacking, by the receiving end, the target message and obtaining values of the target variables from an unpacked result to control a vehicle driving state corresponding to the vehicle according to the values (Pg. 9, Paragraph 12 - the CAN node receives message and in the message buffer area, analyzing the message, firstly, according to the message ID, finds out the corresponding message FrameM, then the message buffer area of current message data writing FrameM message corresponding to complex variable theory-array variable of FrameM, message variables can array variable and signal group structure variable FrameM are in the same address space, networks, content update of FrameM array variable directly updates the complex variable theory-content of the FrameM-sigGroup type signal group structure variable). 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. The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows: 1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art. 2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue. 3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art. 4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness. Claims 7 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ma in view of Han, Ling (CN 111917753 A), hereinafter Han. Re. Claims 7, and 16, Ma teaches Claims 1, and 9. However, Ma does not expressly teach wherein the bit field data structure is determined based on C or C++ programming language. Yet, Han explicitly teaches wherein the bit field data structure is determined based on C or C++ programming language (Pg. 6, Paragraph 17 - A Modbus TCP message analyzing method based on bit domain claimed by the invention, using C++ as development language to realize the analyzing end of the analyzing method of the invention). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to add the teaching of Han to the teaching of Ma. The motivation for such would be as Han provides a means for improving transmission efficiency by programming the bit field data structure in C++ (Pg. 6, Paragraph 17, Han). All of the claimed elements were known in the prior art and one skilled in the art could have combined the elements, as claimed by known methods, and the combination would have yielded predictable results to one having ordinary skill in the art at the time of invention. Conclusion The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Yan, Chen (CN 105450488 A) – Pg. 4, Paragraph 7 – Pg. 7, Paragraph 11; Wu, Hao (CN 107479526 A) – Pg. 4, Paragraph 1 – Pg. 6, Paragraph 7; Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NOAH JAMES SUGDEN whose telephone number is (571)270-7406. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Thurs 9:00-6:00 ET, Fri 9:00-1:00 ET. 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, Khaled Kassim can be reached at (571) 270-3770. 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. /N.J.S./Examiner, Art Unit 2475 /KHALED M KASSIM/supervisory patent examiner, Art Unit 2475
Read full office action

Prosecution Timeline

Jun 28, 2024
Application Filed
Jul 13, 2026
Non-Final Rejection mailed — §102, §103 (current)

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Prosecution Projections

1-2
Expected OA Rounds
85%
Grant Probability
98%
With Interview (+13.0%)
3y 0m (~9m remaining)
Median Time to Grant
Low
PTA Risk
Based on 33 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allowance rate.

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