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 .
Status of Claims
This action is in reply to the Application Number 18/752,448 filed on 06/24/2024.
Claims 3, 6, 16, and 19 have been cancelled.
Claims 1-2, 4-5, 7-15, 17-18, and 20-26 are currently pending and have been examined.
This action is made FINAL in response to the “Amendment” and “Remarks” filed on 12/16/2025.
Claim Objections
Claim 20 is objected to because of the following informalities:
In claim 20, line 1, “The method of claim[[ 19,” should read “The method of claim[[ 19]] 14,”.
Appropriate correction is required.
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 1-2, 4-5, 7-15, 17-18, and 20-26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Abdelmoula (U.S. Pub. No. 2019/0096397 A1) in view of Roberts (U.S. Pub. No. 2012/0035800 A1) in further view of Anthony (U.S. Pub. No. 2018/0315260 A1) in even further view of Murata (U.S. Pub. No. 2019/0050354 A1).
Regarding Claim 1:
Abdelmoula teaches:
An onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system for a vehicle, the system comprising:, (See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 2nd-20th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 67th paragraph))
an input interface configured to capture audio data representing an utterance spoken by an operator of the vehicle while operating the vehicle;, (See (Abdelmoula: Detailed Description – 31st-32nd, 37th, and 41st-56th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
determine, based on the audio data, that the operator triggered a diagnostic mode session; and based on determining that the operator triggered the diagnostic mode session, communicate diagnostic data to a remote service center server via the network transceiver and the network, the diagnostic data comprising a pertinent portion of the event data and information representing the utterance, the information representing the utterance comprises a transcription of the utterance,, (See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 2nd-14th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 32nd-56th and 63rd-72nd paragraphs, FIG. 1-5))
sentiment analysis on the transcription of the utterance to, (See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 5th and 20th paragraphs and Detailed Description –37th, 48th, and 57th paragraphs))
Abdelmoula does not teach but Roberts teaches:
an event data buffer; an event data recorder configured to, while the vehicle is operating, record, in the event data buffer, event data received from one or more components of the vehicle;, (SeeRoberts: Summary of the Invention – 8th-10th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 21st-35th and 40th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
a network transceiver configured to communicate via a network; and a vehicle electronic control unit configured to:, (See (Roberts: Detailed Description – 27th, 31st, and 65th-67th paragraphs))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula with these above aforementioned teachings from Roberts in order to create an effective onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Roberts’s vehicle diagnostic, communication, and signal delivery system in order to record event data received from components of a vehicle in an event data buffer of the vehicle. Combining Abdelmoula and Roberts would thus provide “an apparatus and method that can left attached to the vehicle in order to record certain events that occurs in the vehicle” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph) and “an apparatus that allows better connection between a computing device, such as a diagnostic tool and a USB connector.” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph)
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts does not teach but Anthony teaches:
wherein the vehicle electronic control unit is further configured to: perform, using a natural language processing unit,, (See (Anthony: Summary – 6th-10th paragraphs and Detailed Description of Preferred Embodiments – 26th-27th, 32nd-42nd, and 97th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula in view of Roberts with these above aforementioned teachings from Anthony in order to create a safe and efficient onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Anthony’s automotive diagnostics system using supervised learning models in order to process, using a natural language processing unit, audio data from a user in a vehicle and communicate the audio data to a cloud-based data storage server accessible by a remote service center server. Combining Abdelmoula and Anthony would thus allow “the same sensor set to adapt to support new feature sets via software upgrades. In particular, audio, vibration and other sensors are utilized with available filter and digital signal processing as inputs to a machine learning model. Subsets of the sensors, filters, signal processing and neural networks diagnose vehicle faults or other developing problems by building unique machine learning models for each vehicle.” (Anthony: Summary – 6th paragraph)
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony does not teach but Murata teaches:
determine a priority of the diagnostic mode session; and determine, based on the priority of the diagnostic mode session, when to communicate the diagnostic data to the remote service center server., (See (Murata: Summary – 6th-8th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 20th-29th, 35th-41st, and 57th-67th paragraphs))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony with these above aforementioned teachings from Murata in order to create a user-friendly onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Murata’s electronic control unit in order to determine a priority of a diagnostic mode session associated with immediately communicating, while a vehicle is operating, diagnostic data to a remote service center server and determine, based on the priority of the diagnostic mode session, when to communicate the diagnostic data to the remote service center server. Combining Abdelmoula and Murata would thus provide “an electronic control unit that is capable of efficiently transmitting diagnostic data without flooding the communication channel and/or the external device, that is, without increasing the data transmission amount.” (Murata: Summary – 6th paragraph)
Regarding Claim 2:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 1. Abdelmoula does not teach but Roberts teaches:
The system of claim 1, wherein the pertinent portion of the event data comprises event data recorded prior to and after the diagnostic mode session is triggered., (See (Roberts: Detailed Description – 21st-35th and 40th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula with these above aforementioned teachings from Roberts in order to create an effective onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Roberts’s vehicle diagnostic, communication, and signal delivery system in order to record event data received from components of a vehicle in an event data buffer of the vehicle. Combining Abdelmoula and Roberts would thus provide “an apparatus and method that can left attached to the vehicle in order to record certain events that occurs in the vehicle” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph) and “an apparatus that allows better connection between a computing device, such as a diagnostic tool and a USB connector.” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph)
Regarding Claim 4:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 1. Abdelmoula further teaches:
The system of claim 1, wherein determining, based on the audio data, that the operator triggered the diagnostic mode session comprises determining that the audio data comprises a hotword., (See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 2nd-14th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 31st-32nd and 46th-61st paragraphs, FIG. 1-5))
Regarding Claim 5:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 4. Abdelmoula further teaches:
The system of claim 4, wherein, after determining that the audio data comprises the hotword, the vehicle electronic control unit is configured to determine, by processing the audio data with an automatic speech recognition system, the transcription of the utterance., (See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 2nd-20th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 32nd, 37th, and 46th-54th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
Regarding Claim 7:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 1. Abdelmoula in view of Roberts does not teach but Murata teaches:
The system of claim 1, wherein the priority of the diagnostic mode session comprises: a first priority associated with immediately communicating, while the vehicle is operating, the diagnostic data to the remote service center server, or a second priority associated with communicating, when the operator is no longer operating the vehicle, the diagnostic data to the remote service center server., (See (Murata: Summary – 6th-8th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 20th-29th, 35th-41st, and 57th-67th paragraphs))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula in view of Roberts with these above aforementioned teachings from Murata in order to create a user-friendly onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Murata’s electronic control unit in order to determine a priority of a diagnostic mode session associated with immediately communicating, while a vehicle is operating, diagnostic data to a remote service center server and determine, based on the priority of the diagnostic mode session, when to communicate the diagnostic data to the remote service center server. Combining Abdelmoula and Murata would thus provide “an electronic control unit that is capable of efficiently transmitting diagnostic data without flooding the communication channel and/or the external device, that is, without increasing the data transmission amount.” (Murata: Summary – 6th paragraph)
Regarding Claim 8:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 1. Abdelmoula further teaches:
The system of claim 1, wherein the input interface is configured to capture the audio data responsive to the operator speaking a hotword., (See (Abdelmoula: Detailed Description – 41st-56th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
Regarding Claim 9:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 1. Abdelmoula further teaches:
The system of claim 1, wherein the input interface is configured to capture the audio data when the operator activates a user interface element of an infotainment system or a button of the vehicle., (See (Abdelmoula: Detailed Description – 31st-32nd, 37th, and 41st-56th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
Regarding Claim 10:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 1. Abdelmoula does not teach but Roberts teaches:
The system of claim 1, wherein: the event data buffer comprises a circular storage buffer; and the vehicle electronic control unit is configured to, in response to determining that the operator triggered the diagnostic mode session, trigger the event data recorder to store the pertinent portion of the event data in a non-volatile datastore., (See (Roberts: Summary of the Invention – 8th-10th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 29th-35th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula with these above aforementioned teachings from Roberts in order to create an effective onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Roberts’s vehicle diagnostic, communication, and signal delivery system in order to record event data received from components of a vehicle in an event data buffer of the vehicle. Combining Abdelmoula and Roberts would thus provide “an apparatus and method that can left attached to the vehicle in order to record certain events that occurs in the vehicle” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph) and “an apparatus that allows better connection between a computing device, such as a diagnostic tool and a USB connector.” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph)
Regarding Claim 11:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 1. Abdelmoula does not teach but Roberts teaches:
The system of claim 1, wherein the event data comprises at least one of communication data associated with one or more communication systems of the vehicle, memory data associated with one or more electronic control units of the vehicle, or one or more diagnostic trouble codes., (See (Roberts: Summary of the Invention – 8th-10th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 26th-35th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula with these above aforementioned teachings from Roberts in order to create an effective onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Roberts’s vehicle diagnostic, communication, and signal delivery system in order to record event data received from components of a vehicle in an event data buffer of the vehicle. Combining Abdelmoula and Roberts would thus provide “an apparatus and method that can left attached to the vehicle in order to record certain events that occurs in the vehicle” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph) and “an apparatus that allows better connection between a computing device, such as a diagnostic tool and a USB connector.” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph)
Regarding Claim 12:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 1. Abdelmoula in view of Roberts does not teach but Anthony teaches:
The system of claim 1, wherein communicating, via the network transceiver and the network, the diagnostic data to the remote service center server comprises communicating the diagnostic data to a cloud-based data storage server accessible by the remote service center server., (See (Anthony: Summary – 10th paragraph and Detailed Description of Preferred Embodiments – 32nd, 42nd-47th, 81st, and 91st paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula in view of Roberts with these above aforementioned teachings from Anthony in order to create a safe and efficient onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Anthony’s automotive diagnostics system using supervised learning models in order to process, using a natural language processing unit, audio data from a user in a vehicle and communicate the audio data to a cloud-based data storage server accessible by a remote service center server. Combining Abdelmoula and Anthony would thus allow “the same sensor set to adapt to support new feature sets via software upgrades. In particular, audio, vibration and other sensors are utilized with available filter and digital signal processing as inputs to a machine learning model. Subsets of the sensors, filters, signal processing and neural networks diagnose vehicle faults or other developing problems by building unique machine learning models for each vehicle.” (Anthony: Summary – 6th paragraph)
Regarding Claim 13:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 1. Abdelmoula further teaches:
The system of claim 1, wherein the vehicle electronic control unit is configured to: receive, via the network transceiver and the network, diagnostic result information from the remote service center server; and display, on a display of the vehicle, the diagnostic result information., (See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 3rd, 8th, and 13th-18th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 39th-40th, 54th, and 58th-61st paragraphs))
Regarding Claim 14:
Abdelmoula teaches:
A computer-implemented onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic method for a vehicle, the method, when executed on data processing hardware, causes the data processing hardware to perform operations comprising:, (See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 2nd-20th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 67th and 73rd paragraphs))
capturing audio data representing an utterance spoken by an operator of the vehicle while operating the vehicle; determining, based on the audio data, that the operator triggered a diagnostic mode session while operating the vehicle; processing the audio data to generate a transcription for the utterance;, (See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 2nd-14th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 31st-56th and 63rd-72nd paragraphs, FIG. 1-5))
sentiment analysis on the transcription of the utterance to, (See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 5th and 20th paragraphs and Detailed Description –37th, 48th, and 57th paragraphs))
based on determining that the operator triggered the diagnostic mode session and determining when to communicate the diagnostic data to the remote service center server, communicating diagnostic data to the remote service center server via a network transceiver of the vehicle and a network, the diagnostic data comprising a pertinent portion of the event data and the transcription of the utterance., (See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 2nd-14th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 33rd-45th and 63rd-72nd paragraphs, FIG. 1-5))
Abdelmoula does not teach but Roberts teaches:
recording event data received from one or more components of the vehicle in an event data buffer of the vehicle;, (See (Roberts: Summary of the Invention – 8th-10th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 21st-35th and 40th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula with these above aforementioned teachings from Roberts in order to create an effective onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Roberts’s vehicle diagnostic, communication, and signal delivery system in order to record event data received from components of a vehicle in an event data buffer of the vehicle. Combining Abdelmoula and Roberts would thus provide “an apparatus and method that can left attached to the vehicle in order to record certain events that occurs in the vehicle” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph) and “an apparatus that allows better connection between a computing device, such as a diagnostic tool and a USB connector.” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph)
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts does not teach but Anthony teaches:
performing, using a natural language processing unit,, (See (Anthony: Summary – 6th-10th paragraphs and Detailed Description of Preferred Embodiments – 26th-27th, 32nd-42nd, and 97th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula in view of Roberts with these above aforementioned teachings from Anthony in order to create a safe and efficient onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Anthony’s automotive diagnostics system using supervised learning models in order to process, using a natural language processing unit, audio data from a user in a vehicle and communicate the audio data to a cloud-based data storage server accessible by a remote service center server. Combining Abdelmoula and Anthony would thus allow “the same sensor set to adapt to support new feature sets via software upgrades. In particular, audio, vibration and other sensors are utilized with available filter and digital signal processing as inputs to a machine learning model. Subsets of the sensors, filters, signal processing and neural networks diagnose vehicle faults or other developing problems by building unique machine learning models for each vehicle.” (Anthony: Summary – 6th paragraph)
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony does not teach but Murata teaches:
determine a priority of the diagnostic mode session; determining, based on the priority of the diagnostic mode session, when to communicate the diagnostic data to a remote service center server; and, (See (Murata: Summary – 6th-8th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 20th-29th, 35th-41st, and 57th-67th paragraphs))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony with these above aforementioned teachings from Murata in order to create a user-friendly onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Murata’s electronic control unit in order to determine a priority of a diagnostic mode session associated with immediately communicating, while a vehicle is operating, diagnostic data to a remote service center server and determine, based on the priority of the diagnostic mode session, when to communicate the diagnostic data to the remote service center server. Combining Abdelmoula and Murata would thus provide “an electronic control unit that is capable of efficiently transmitting diagnostic data without flooding the communication channel and/or the external device, that is, without increasing the data transmission amount.” (Murata: Summary – 6th paragraph)
Regarding Claim 15:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 14. Abdelmoula does not teach but Roberts teaches:
The method of claim 14, wherein the pertinent portion of the event data comprises event data recorded prior to and after the diagnostic mode session is triggered., (See (Roberts: Detailed Description – 21st-35th and 40th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula with these above aforementioned teachings from Roberts in order to create an effective onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Roberts’s vehicle diagnostic, communication, and signal delivery system in order to record event data received from components of a vehicle in an event data buffer of the vehicle. Combining Abdelmoula and Roberts would thus provide “an apparatus and method that can left attached to the vehicle in order to record certain events that occurs in the vehicle” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph) and “an apparatus that allows better connection between a computing device, such as a diagnostic tool and a USB connector.” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph)
Regarding Claim 17:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 14. Abdelmoula further teaches:
The method of claim 14, wherein determining, based on the audio data, that the operator triggered the diagnostic mode session comprises determining that the audio data comprises a hotword., (See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 2nd-14th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 31st-32nd and 46th-61st paragraphs, FIG. 1-5))
Regarding Claim 18:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 17. Abdelmoula further teaches:
The method of claim 17, wherein, after determining that the audio data comprises the hotword, determining, by processing the audio data with an automatic speech recognition system, the transcription of the utterance., (See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 2nd-20th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 32nd, 37th, and 46th-54th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
Regarding Claim 20:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 19. Abdelmoula in view of Roberts does not teach but Murata teaches:
The method of claim[[ 19, wherein the priority of the diagnostic mode session comprises: a first priority associated with immediately communicating, while the vehicle is operating, the diagnostic data to the remote service center server, or a second priority associated with communicating, when the operator is no longer operating the vehicle, the diagnostic data to the remote service center server., (See (Murata: Summary – 6th-8th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 20th-29th, 35th-41st, and 57th-67th paragraphs))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula in view of Roberts with these above aforementioned teachings from Murata in order to create a user-friendly onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Murata’s electronic control unit in order to determine a priority of a diagnostic mode session associated with immediately communicating, while a vehicle is operating, diagnostic data to a remote service center server and determine, based on the priority of the diagnostic mode session, when to communicate the diagnostic data to the remote service center server. Combining Abdelmoula and Murata would thus provide “an electronic control unit that is capable of efficiently transmitting diagnostic data without flooding the communication channel and/or the external device, that is, without increasing the data transmission amount.” (Murata: Summary – 6th paragraph)
Regarding Claim 21:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 14. Abdelmoula further teaches:
The method of claim 14, wherein the operations further comprise capturing the audio data in response to the operator speaking a hotword., (See (Abdelmoula: Detailed Description – 41st-56th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
Regarding Claim 22:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 14. Abdelmoula further teaches:
The method of claim 14, wherein the operations further comprise capturing the audio data when the operator activates a user interface element of an infotainment system or a button of the vehicle., (See (Abdelmoula: Detailed Description – 31st-32nd, 37th, and 41st-56th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
Regarding Claim 23:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 14. Abdelmoula does not teach but Roberts teaches:
The method of claim 14, wherein: the event data buffer comprises a circular storage buffer; and the operations further comprise, in response to determining that the operator triggered the diagnostic mode session, storing the pertinent portion of the event data in a non-volatile datastore., (See (Roberts: Summary of the Invention – 8th-10th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 29th-35th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula with these above aforementioned teachings from Roberts in order to create an effective onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Roberts’s vehicle diagnostic, communication, and signal delivery system in order to record event data received from components of a vehicle in an event data buffer of the vehicle. Combining Abdelmoula and Roberts would thus provide “an apparatus and method that can left attached to the vehicle in order to record certain events that occurs in the vehicle” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph) and “an apparatus that allows better connection between a computing device, such as a diagnostic tool and a USB connector.” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph)
Regarding Claim 24:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 14. Abdelmoula does not teach but Roberts teaches:
The method of claim 14, wherein the event data comprises at least one of communication data associated with one or more communication systems of the vehicle, memory data associated with one or more electronic control units of the vehicle, or one or more diagnostic trouble codes., (See (Roberts: Summary of the Invention – 8th-10th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 26th-35th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula with these above aforementioned teachings from Roberts in order to create an effective onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Roberts’s vehicle diagnostic, communication, and signal delivery system in order to record event data received from components of a vehicle in an event data buffer of the vehicle. Combining Abdelmoula and Roberts would thus provide “an apparatus and method that can left attached to the vehicle in order to record certain events that occurs in the vehicle” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph) and “an apparatus that allows better connection between a computing device, such as a diagnostic tool and a USB connector.” (Roberts: Background of the Invention – 6th paragraph)
Regarding Claim 25:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 14. Abdelmoula in view of Roberts does not teach but Anthony teaches:
The method of claim 14, wherein communicating, via the network transceiver and the network, the diagnostic data to the remote service center server comprises communicating the diagnostic data to a cloud-based data storage server accessible by the remote service center server., (See (Anthony: Summary – 10th paragraph and Detailed Description of Preferred Embodiments – 32nd, 42nd-47th, 81st, and 91st paragraphs, FIG. 1-3))
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Abdelmoula in view of Roberts with these above aforementioned teachings from Anthony in order to create a safe and efficient onboard voice-activated vehicle diagnostic system and method. At the time the invention was filed, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to incorporate Abdelmoula’s method and apparatus for providing feedback with Anthony’s automotive diagnostics system using supervised learning models in order to process, using a natural language processing unit, audio data from a user in a vehicle and communicate the audio data to a cloud-based data storage server accessible by a remote service center server. Combining Abdelmoula and Anthony would thus allow “the same sensor set to adapt to support new feature sets via software upgrades. In particular, audio, vibration and other sensors are utilized with available filter and digital signal processing as inputs to a machine learning model. Subsets of the sensors, filters, signal processing and neural networks diagnose vehicle faults or other developing problems by building unique machine learning models for each vehicle.” (Anthony: Summary – 6th paragraph)
Regarding Claim 26:
Abdelmoula in view of Roberts in further view of Anthony in even further view of Murata, as shown in the rejection above, discloses the limitations of claim 14. Abdelmoula further teaches:
The method of claim 14, wherein the operations further comprise: receiving, via the network transceiver and the network, diagnostic result information from the remote service center server; and displaying, on a display of the vehicle, the diagnostic result information., (See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 3rd, 8th, and 13th-18th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 39th-40th, 54th, and 58th-61st paragraphs))
Response to Arguments
The 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection set forth in the Non-Final Rejection mailed on September 23rd, 2025 has been withdrawn as the “Amendments” and “Remarks” filed by the Applicant on December 16th, 2025 satisfactorily overcome this rejection.
Applicant’s arguments filed on December 16th, 2025 with regard to the 35 U.S.C. 103 rejection have been fully considered but are not persuasive.
With regard to the 35 U.S.C. 103 rejection, the limitations are taught in the combination of Anthony, Abdelmoula, and Murata as has been set forth above, contrary to the Applicant’s assertions. Therefore, the Applicant’s amendments and arguments are insufficient to overcome these prior art rejections.
More specifically, Anthony mentions “The technology also allows […] and other remote processors.” Furthermore, Anthony states “FIG. 1 illustrates […] before it enters the ML model.” Anthony further states “It should be understood that […] or an email, etc.” Anthony mentions “Audio/vibration/EM characterization enables […] in the quality of diagnostics.” See (Anthony: Summary – 6th-10th paragraphs and Detailed Description of Preferred Embodiments – 26th-27th, 32nd-42nd, and 97th paragraphs, FIG. 1-3) In doing so, Anthony addresses the Applicant’s limitation of “wherein the vehicle electronic control unit is further configured to: perform, using a natural language processing unit” as set forth in claim 1 and similarly in claim 14.
Moreover, Abdelmoula mentions “the capturing the context data may […] as the context data.” Furthermore, Abdelmoula states “The computer executable instructions may […] as the context data.” Abdelmoula further states “The storage 103 is configured to […] that provides occupant feedback 100.” Abdelmoula mentions “The controller 101 of the apparatus that provides […] of the occupant as the context data.” Furthermore, Abdelmoula states “In operation 315, […] by the backend server 320.” See (Abdelmoula: Summary – 5th and 20th paragraphs and Detailed Description –37th, 48th, and 57th paragraphs) In doing so, Abdelmoula addresses the Applicant’s limitation of “sentiment analysis on the transcription of the utterance to” as set forth in claim 1 and similarly in claim 14.
Finally, Murata mentions “It is an object of the present disclosure to […] without increasing the amount of transmission data.” Furthermore, Murata states “With reference to FIG. 1, […] or the interval becomes longer for data with a lower priority.” Murata further states “The process performed by […] based on priority.” Murata mentions “In the present embodiment, […] as a readjustment parameter is performed first.” See (Murata: Summary – 6th-8th paragraphs and Detailed Description – 20th-29th, 35th-41st, and 57th-67th paragraphs) In doing so, Murata addresses the Applicant’s limitation of “determine a priority of the diagnostic mode session; and determine, based on the priority of the diagnostic mode session, when to communicate the diagnostic data to the remote service center server” as set forth in claim 1 and similarly in claim 14.
As a result, the combination of Anthony, Abdelmoula, and Murata addresses performing, using a natural language processing unit, sentiment analysis on the transcription of the utterance to determine a priority of the diagnostic mode session as set forth by the Applicant in claim 1 and similarly in claim 14.
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 extension fee 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 Jeffrey Chalhoub whose telephone number is (571) 272-9754. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 8:30-5:30. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Vivek Koppikar can be reached on (571) 272-5109. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/J.R.C./Examiner, Art Unit 3667
/VIVEK D KOPPIKAR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3667
January 24, 2026