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 statement (IDS) submitted on 08/08/2024 has been considered by the examiner.
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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
In particular, claims are directed to a judicial exception (abstract idea) without significantly more.
Re Claim 1:
Claim 1 recites:
An electric vehicle (EV) comprising:
a battery that supplies electrical energy to an electric motor of the electric vehicle;
one or more processors; and memory storing machine-readable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the EV to:
join a first vehicular micro cloud (VMC) comprising a group of connected vehicles that share resources to complete a task;
predict performance of one or more sub-tasks assigned to the EV by the first VMC will deplete a state-of-charge of the battery over a threshold amount;
and based on the prediction indicating that the performance of the one or more sub-tasks will deplete the state-of-charge of the battery over the threshold amount:
withhold performance of the one or more sub-tasks, become leader of a second VMC, and as the leader of the second VMC, assign the one or more sub-tasks to one or more vehicles of the second VMC.
Under Step 1 Claim 1 is a system/processor claim same as claims 2-11.
Under Step 2A -Prong 1:
The identified claim limitations that recite an abstract idea fall within the enumerated groupings of abstract ideas in Section 1 of the 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance published in the Federal Register (84 FR 50) on January 7, 2019. These fall under mental process.
Claim 1 recites “An electric vehicle (EV) comprising: a battery that supplies electrical energy to an electric motor of the electric vehicle; processes. As a person/driver, could observe if the own vehicle’s battery will deplete if the driver complete the task or reach a destination and then determine if there is another vehicle adjacent to the driver that could perform that task after determining that the other vehicle state of charge will be efficient to perform the task easily. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation as a concept performed in the human mind, then it falls within the “Mental Processes” grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea. Claims 1-20 are also abstract for similar reasons.
Under Step 2A - Prong 2; the claims recite the additional elements of “one or more processors; and memory storing machine-readable instructions that, when executed by the one or more” and “join a first vehicular micro cloud (VMC) comprising a group of connected vehicles that share resources to complete a task” steps is not more than adding the words “apply it” (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or mere instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea - see MPEP 2106.05(f). Accordingly, these additional elements, when considered separately and as an ordered combination, do not integrate the abstract idea without a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea and are at a high level of generality. Therefore, claim 1 is directed to an abstract idea without a practical application.
Under Step 2B:
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more that the judicial exception because, when considered separately and as an ordered combination, they do not add significantly more (also known as an “inventive concept”) to the exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional element of using a computer hardware amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. Accordingly, these additional elements, do not change the outcome of the analysis, when considered separately and as an ordered combination. Thus, claims 1-20 are not patent eligible.
Therefore, the method claims 12 and 20 are rejected under the same rationales used in the rejections of claim 1 outlined above.
Dependent claims 2-11 and 13-19 Dependent claims further define the abstract idea that is present in their respective independent claim 1 and thus correspond to Mental Processes and hence are abstract for the reasons presented above. The dependent claims do not include any additional elements that integrate the abstract idea into a practical application or are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception when considered both individually and as an ordered combination. Therefore, the dependent claims are directed to an abstract idea. Thus, the claims 1-20 are not patent-eligible.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to HOSSAM M ABD EL LATIF whose telephone number is (571)272-5869. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8 am-5 pm EST.
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/HOSSAM M ABD EL LATIF/Examiner, Art Unit 3664