DETAILED ACTION
Applicant submitted remarks in response to the latest Office action on 5 May 2026. Therein, Applicant amended claims 1, 7 and 8. Applicant did not add or cancel any claims. The submitted claims have been entered and are considered below.
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). Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Response to Amendments/Arguments
Applicant's amendments and related arguments have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Applicant asserts that the prior art of record “does not teach or suggest the output controller functions and timing as recited in the independent claims”. Examiner does not agree.
Applicant asserts the general allegation that Fujisawa does not teach “output controller functions” of the claim. Without providing specificity regarding which elements or limitations are not disclosed, Examiner cannot provide a reasoned explanation of how the prior art discloses the limitations at issue. Examiner cannot go through the entire claim and support each limitation with specific support. A broad generalization without substantive support by Applicant is not persuasive to Examiner. Thus, the explanation provided below for the existing and new limitations are sufficient to overcome Applicant’s assertion regarding “output controller functions”.
Further, Applicant asserts that the prior art of record does not disclose the “timing” of the claimed invention. Examiner does not agree.
As provided below and the previous Office action, Fujisawa discloses “a first prescribed time period” by teaching that “the lane change is cancelled due to the timeout, the guidance of “stopping lane change” is reproduced to be announced inside of the vehicle compartment” (see para. 0080). Additionally, this passage is also applicable to the newly added limitation of claim 1.
Fujisawa remains applicable to the amended claims as outlined below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
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.
Claims 1-5 and 7-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Fujisawa, et al. (U.S. Patent Publication No. 2018/0297611).
With reference to claim 1, Fujisawa teaches driving assistance device comprising: a recognizer configured to recognize a surrounding situation of a vehicle (see Fig. 2, #90 and related text); a driving controller configured to control at least steering of the vehicle on the basis of the surrounding situation recognized by the recognizer (see Fig. 2, #70 and related text); a receiver configured to receive an operation of an occupant of the vehicle (see Fig. 2, #70 and related text); and an output controller configured to cause an output to output a traveling state of the vehicle (see Fig. 2, #14, 40 and related text), wherein the driving controller causes a lane change of the vehicle to be made when a receiver receives an instruction for allowing the vehicle to make the lane change and a condition in which the lane change is made is satisfied (see para. 0039, monitors surrounding vehicles as condition; see para. 0078, executes lane change), wherein the output controller causes the output to output information about the lane change when the lane change has not been started by the driving controller even though a first prescribed time period has elapsed after the receiver received the instruction (see para. 0072, 0080, suspending is claimed first time), wherein the information about the lane change includes information about a proposed lane change by the driving controller (see para. 0070) and the approval method for the lane change (see para. 0071), and information about whether the lane change should be canceled (see para. 0080) and the cancelation method (see paras. 0080, timeout, or 0088-0089, approval not given).
For the next limitation, Fujisawa does not explicitly teach that the approval and cancelation method are the same operation in that embodiment. However, in a second embodiment, Fujisawa teaches that the approval method and the cancelation method are the same operation by the occupant (see para. 0104, driver action same for approval or cancelation, no required action is an action; see also Fig. 13, S131-S132, driver action is the same). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the effective date of filing to modify Fujisawa to include the same user operation for the first embodiment based on a reasonable expectation of success and the motivation to improve the notice instrument controlled by the notice adjuster section to continue providing a notice of a decrease in a residual period of time left up to the start point of time of a lane change by the vehicle control apparatus (see para. 0009).
Continuing with the claim, Fujisawa further teaches wherein the driving controller executes the lane change or cancels the execution of the lane change of the vehicle according to the content of the information about the lane change that is output by the output when the same operation is accepted by the receiver (see paras. 0104-0110, cancels or executes based on content of environment and operation of occupant), wherein the output controller, after the first prescribed time has elapsed (see para. 0080, timeout), causes the output to the output information about the lane change (see para. 0080, after timeout, change stopped), indicating that the lane change cannot be performed and that the lane change can be canceled by the same operation (see para. 0104, driver action same for approval or cancelation, no required action is an action; see also Fig. 13, S131-S132, driver action is the same), and wherein after the information regarding the lane change has been output, if the same operation is received, the execution of the lane change is canceled (see Fig. 13, S131 same as S123).
Referring to claim 2, Fujisawa further discloses wherein the output controller causes a process of outputting the information to end when the receiver has not received an instruction for canceling the lane change (see para. 0080, timeout ends the output) even though a second prescribed time period has elapsed after the information about the lane change was output to the output, and wherein the driving controller causes a process of making the lane change to continue (see para. 0080, suspending is claimed first time and causes lane change to continue; time to reach timeout is claimed second time).
For claim 3, Fujisawa does not explicitly disclose the claimed limitation. However, one of ordinary skill in the art would have the reasonable ability to modify, shorten or lengthen the specific amounts of time for each of the first and second time periods. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the effective date of filing to modify, shorten or lengthen the periods of time based on a reasonable expectation of success and the motivation to improve the notice instrument controlled by the notice adjuster section to continue providing a notice of a decrease in a residual period of time left up to the start point of time of a lane change by the vehicle control apparatus (see para. 0009).
With regards to claim 4, Fujisawa further discloses wherein the output includes a display, and wherein the output controller causes the display to display an image showing information about the lane change (see at least Fig. 18).
Referring to claim 5, Fujisawa further teaches wherein the output controller causes the output to output information about the lane change when the lane change has not been started by the driving controller (see para. 0080) even though a prescribed time period has elapsed after the process of outputting the information was ended (see para. 0080, suspending is claimed first time and causes lane change to continue; time to reach timeout is claimed second time). Fujisawa does not explicitly disclose a third time period. However, as Fujisawa discloses several different time periods, adding an additional time period would have been well within the ability of one of ordinary skill in the art under obvious element duplication. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the effective date of filing to add an additional period of time based on a reasonable expectation of success and the motivation to improve the notice instrument controlled by the notice adjuster section to continue providing a notice of a decrease in a residual period of time left up to the start point of time of a lane change by the vehicle control apparatus (see para. 0009).
Claims 7 and 8 define a driving assistance method and a program that recite similar elements to what is claimed in claim 1. Therefore, the teachings and reasoning applied to reject claim 1 are also applied to the rejections of claims 7 and 8.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 6 is 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.
Conclusion
Examiner previously stated at the end of the previous rejection that Applicant is considered to have implicit knowledge of the entire disclosure once a reference has been cited. The cited figures, columns and lines should not be considered the only relevant teachings. The entire reference must be taken as a whole. This includes any teachings within the reference that were not explicitly cited in the previous Office action. Any new citation of additional teachings of the previously cited art is not a new ground of rejection. Taking the references as a whole, the art supports the new rejection of the currently amended claims.
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 ADAM D TISSOT whose telephone number is (571)270-3439. The examiner can normally be reached 8:00-4:30.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Angela Ortiz can be reached at (571) 272-1206. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ADAM D TISSOT/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3663
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