DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Respond to Amendment
This action is in response to the application filed on ----1/2/2026 for application 18/732,046. Claim 1 – 15 are pending and have been examined.
Claim 1, 6 and 11 are amended.
Respond to Argument
Applicant's remark filed on 1/2/2026 has been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Regarding to claim rejection under 101 section, applicant stated that:
“This specific ‘nested’ temporal filtering is a technological process for engineering specialized training data and cannot be ‘practically performed in the human mind’”
“This extraction logic … is a ‘technical improvement to a computer implemented simulation process,’ … integrate the exception into a ‘practical application’ by providing a technological solution to the problem of congestion prediction inaccuracy caused by ‘noise’ from pre-existing traffic”
Examiner respectfully disagrees with the following reason:
The nested filtering as claimed: “setting a time window … that is contained in the first period and is shorter than the first period … extracting route information of moving bodies within the time window” recites observation, evaluation and judgement mental processes of data selection having clear and simple rule which, withing BRI, seems easy to be performed by human mind.
The stated improvement is not to a technology but to the improvement of the stated step of mental process.
Thus, examiner is unpersuaded and maintains the corresponding rejections.
Regarding claim rejection under 103 section, applicant stated that “Shi … does not disclose the nested temporal extraction of trip-starts”, “Fukumori … fails to teach ‘extracting route information of moving bodies that started to move in a second period that is contained in the first period and is shorter than the first period’ to isolate them from background traffic.” Examiner notes that the amended claim recites a conditional statement which, within BRI, only requires that “when a movement start time at which the moving body started to move is included within the time window, extracting route information”. Fukumori 0116: “The ‘movement date and time’ in the visit information database 322 is information indicating the date and time at which the vehicle 60 corresponding to the mobile body identification information has moved. In the first embodiment, one movement is considered to be, for example, a duration from when transmission of location information from any onboard navigation device 10 or portable terminal 20 has been started until the transmission ends”, 0125 “the analysis conditions include … a designation relating to a day subject to analysis … a designation relating to a time period subject to analysis”. It is clear that within the entire dataset, the vehicle/moving body that start to move within the designated time period/window are to be included in the study. Thus, at least Fukumori fulfill the claimed limitation.
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.
Claim 1 - 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Regarding Claim 1,
Step 1 Analysis
Claim 1 is directed to a non-transitory recording medium storing a program, which is an article of manufacture and is one of the statutory categories.
Step 2A Prong One Analysis:
Claim 1 recites the abstract ideas in the following limitations:
from route information indicating a movement condition of a plurality of respective moving bodies in a specific geographical range in a first period for each of a plurality of time points, setting a time window of a second period that is contained in the first period and is shorter than the first period, and when a movement start time at which the moving body started to move is included within the time window
extracting route information of moving bodies within the time window;
based on the extracted route information, generating tally information in which a number of the moving bodies is tallied for each combination of a departure point and an arrival point in movements of the moving body contained in the route information, and
generating information indicating a degree of congestion of traffic in the specific geographical range
The steps of indicating, setting extracting and generating recite observation, evaluation and judgement mental processes and can practically be performed in human mind with or without physical aid and thus falls under the mental processes group of abstract idea.
And thus, the claim falls within judicial exception of abstract idea and requires further analysis under Step 2A Prong Two.
Step 2A Prong Two Analysis:
Claim 1 recites the following additional elements along with the abstract ideas:
generating training data, in which the tally information is employed as input feature values and the information indicating the degree of congestion is employed as label information, as training data for a machine learning model for deriving a degree of congestion of traffic corresponding to tally information.
The additional element of “generating training data”, within BRI, recites recording the tally data and/or tally data of the next time intervals in the memory. Thus, this additional element is recited in high generality which add insignificant extra solution activity to the judicial exception (MPEP 2106.05(g)).
Claim 1 does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. Claim 1 directs to abstract idea.
Step 2B Analysis:
The steps of generating training data is well-understood, routine, conventional activity recognized in MPEP 2106.05(d)iii – electronic recordkeeping.
Claim 1 does not contribute inventive concept. Claim 1 is not eligible.
Regarding Claim 2 – 15,
Claim 2 – 15 fails to remedy these deficiencies and thus rejected with the same reason.
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 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1 – 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shi et al., (hereinafter Shi), US20160314686 in view of Fukumori et al., (hereinafter Fukumori), US20220028255.
Claim 1. Shi discloses: a data generation process comprising:
A non-transitory recording medium storing a program that is executable by a computer to perform a data generation process (0002, “data mining”; Shi’s system performs data processing/mining, the program and recording medium are obvious and inherent to the system)
generating training data (0031, “(Step 1), Data Collection”; 0046, “The data for training are from 4 February to 14 Mar. 2012, 40 days in total”), in which the tally information is employed as input feature values and the information indicating the degree of congestion is employed as label information (0018, “(c) Prediction model (predictor) rendering: Let vij represent the traffic volume (tally information) sampled at sensor j at time i. Suppose that there are in total m sensors in the road network of interest and the state of the whole road network at time i is denoted as Vi=[vi1, vi2, ... vim]. The linear regression based predictor to predict the traffic volume at senor j with time lag τ is ṽi+ τj = Viwj”; i.e., input is the tally information which represents the traffic volume/tally information and the output is future traffic volume/degree of congestion), as training data for a machine learning model for deriving a degree of congestion of traffic corresponding to tally information (0043, “The prediction model is BP neural network (machine learning model)”).
Shi does not explicitly teach:
from route information indicating a movement condition of a plurality of respective moving bodies in a specific geographical range in a first period for each of a plurality of time points, setting a time window of a second period that is contained in the first period and is shorter than the first period, and when a movement start time at which the moving body started to move is included within the time window, extracting route information of moving bodies within the time window;
based on the extracted route information, generating tally information in which a number of the moving bodies is tallied for each combination of a departure point and an arrival point in movements of the moving body contained in the route information, and generating information indicating a degree of congestion of traffic in the specific geographical range;
Fukumori, in the same field of endeavor, explicitly teaches:
from route information indicating a movement condition of a plurality of respective moving bodies in a specific geographical range in a first period for each of a plurality of time points (Fukumori, fig. 5 & 0011, “traffic information analysis device … receives changes in location information for a plurality of mobile bodies”, “map information storage unit that stores a road on which the plurality of mobile bodies can travel”, “number-of-passages tallying unit … tallies the number of passages of the plurality of mobile bodies within a predetermined period for a predetermined location or predetermined section of the road”; 0046, “predetermined location or predetermined section of a road designated in the analysis conditions as the analysis target (specific geographical range) … within a predetermined period (first period)”), setting a time window of a second period that is contained in the first period and is shorter than the first period, and when a movement start time at which the moving body started to move is included within the time window, extracting route information of moving bodies within the time window, extracting route information of moving bodies within the time window (Fukumori, fig. 5 & 0011, “output unit … output the number and/or ratio of mobile bodies for each number of passages”, fig. 5 (route information) demonstrate the movement route information, movement date and time information (second period) of plurality of mobile body within/shorter than the analysis target period; 0116, “The ‘movement date and time’ in the visit information database 322 is information indicating the date and time at which the vehicle 60 corresponding to the mobile body identification information has moved. In the first embodiment, one movement is considered to be, for example, a duration from when transmission of location information from any onboard navigation device 10 or portable terminal 20 has been started until the transmission ends”; It is clear that within the entire dataset, the vehicle/moving body that start to move within the analysis target period/window are to be included in the study);
based on the extracted route information, generating tally information in which a number of the moving bodies is tallied for each combination of a departure point and an arrival point (Fukumori, Fig. 12 & 0197 – 0199, “The number-of-passages tallying unit … may output the number and/or ratio for each number of passages (passage frequency) for each of the plurality of road sections (for example, the roads A21, A22, A23, A31, A32, A33”; traveling on each of the road section has entry/arrival and finishing/departure point, for example A21 in Fig. 12, vehicle can traveling from B2/arrival point to B1/departure point) in movements of the moving body contained in the route information, and generating information indicating a degree of congestion of traffic in the specific geographical range (refer to the mapping above & Fukumori, 0124 – 0128, “a designation relating to a range of roads that can be designated as analysis targets or a designation relating to a period subject to analysis, a designation relating to a day subject to analysis (for example, a weekday, a holiday, a business day, etc.), a designation relating to a time period subject to analysis, a designation of a predetermined unit subject to analysis, etc.”; the number of passage is indication of degree of congestion);
Shi and Fukumori both teach method of analyzing traffic information and are analogous. It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention with a reasonable likelihood of success to further include the details of automatic tally data generation taught by Fukumori in the traffic prediction system of Shi to achieve the claimed teaching. One of the ordinary skill in the art would have motivated to make this modification in order to allow measurement of a specific location and specific time (Fukumori, 0124 - 0128) .
Claim 2. Shi and Fukumori combination renders obviousness of all the limitation in Claim 1. The combination further teach:
generating the route information by dividing the movement conditions of the plurality of respective moving bodies recorded in the first period with reference to an activity of the moving body (refer to the mapping in Claim 1 & Fukumori, the analysis target period, in this case, is the first period. Fukumori, fig. 6, The record of mobile/moving bodies are divided into plurality of mobile/moving bodies record with a reference of the mobile body identification information).
The reason for combination is same as Claim 1.
Claim 3. Shi and Fukumori combination renders obviousness of all the limitation in Claim 2. The combination further teach:
a breakpoint of the activity of the moving body in the movement condition is a portion where a location of the moving body is indicated as lingering in a certain range for a certain period of time (Fukumori, 0078 – 0081, “a location that is identified by the location information 121 measured immediately after the ignition switch has been turned on (the engine has been started) and the onboard navigation device 10 has automatically activated can be transmitted to the traffic information analysis device 30 as a first vehicle location, in other words, a departure location. Further, a location that is identified by the location information 121 measured immediately before the ignition switch is turned off (the engine is stopped) can be transmitted to the traffic information analysis device 30 as a final vehicle location, in other words, a parking location”, “information indicating that the location information 121 represents the parking location may be added to the location information 121 before transmission to the traffic information analysis device 30”; parking is the breakpoint of driving which lingers during the parking time).
The reason for combination is same as Claim 1.
Claim 4. Shi and Fukumori combination renders obviousness of all the limitation in Claim 1. The combination further teach:
the route information is information in which identification information of the route information has been associated with a series of location information of a moving body at each of the plurality of time points (Fukumori, 0078, “Transmission of the location information 121 and the mobile body identification information … performed in real time, for example, whenever the sensor unit 14 performs a measurement at a predetermined interval (for example, every three seconds)”); and
a list is created in which movement start times of the route information have been associated with identification information of the route information, and for a plurality of second periods having different respective start times and end times, identification information of the route information for which the movement start time is contained in the second period is extracted from the list, and the route information associated with the identification information of the extracted route information is extracted (Fukumori, fig. 6 & 0129 – 0136, “the number-of-passages tallying unit 313 creates the route information database 323 (list) by rearranging the ‘movement date and time’ and ‘movement route information’ for each ‘mobile body identification information’ of vehicles 60 that have passed the designated road”; Fukumori organize the list in chronological order and the location information is recorded very frequently. The time that the movement route information/identification information of a road section start to show in the record is the starting time that the mobile body is traveling in the road section. Based on this information, the tallying unit can perform the counting.).
The reason for combination is same as Claim 1.
Claim 5. Shi and Fukumori combination renders obviousness of all the limitation in Claim 1. The combination further teach:
employing the generated training data to train the machine learning model (refer to the mapping in Claim 1. Shi teaches the training of machine learning model using collected/generated training data).
Regarding Claim 6 – 10, these are the corresponding data generation method claims of Claim 1 – 5. These claims are rejected with same reason.
Regarding Claim 11 – 15, these are the corresponding data generation device claims of Claim 1 – 5. Shi and Fukumori combination further teach: a memory and a processor coupled to the memory, the processor being configured to execute processing (refer to the mapping in Claim 1, memory and processor are inherent in the system of Shi).
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 SHIEN MING CHOU whose telephone number is (571)272-9354. The examiner can normally be reached Monday- Friday 9 am - 5 pm.
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, Hitesh Patel can be reached on 571-270-5442. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/SHIEN MING CHOU/Examiner, Art Unit 3666
/Hitesh Patel/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3667
5/5/26
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