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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 19 June (two submitted that day) and 30 December 2024 are being considered by the examiner.
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.
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). 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).
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 would like to point out that any reference to specific figures, columns and lines should not be considered limiting in any way, the entire cited reference, as well as any secondary teaching reference(s), are considered to provide relevant disclosure relating to the claimed invention. Applicant is herein considered to have implicit knowledge of all teachings of the prior art of record.
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