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 .
Specification
The disclosure is objected to because of the following informalities:
The terminology for “geofenced area” is not consistent throughout the specification.
¶ [0004]-¶ [0006], and ¶ [0008] uses “geofenced area”
¶ [0009]-¶ [0012], ¶ [0015]-¶ [0017], ¶ [0020], ¶ [0023], ¶ [0032]-¶ [0034], ¶ [0037], ¶ [0038], ¶ [0042], ¶ [0044], and ¶ [0045] uses “geofence area”
¶ [0012] uses “geo-fence area”
It is noted that the claims use the terminology “geofenced” and thus it is recommended to retain that terminology throughout the specifications.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Objections
Claim 5 is objected to because of the following informality:
Claim 5 states: “The system according to claim 4, wherein: the first control unit is configured to … extract the four points in response to receiving a notification …” In comparison, claim 4 states: “… the first control unit is configured to extract four points … in response to the occurrence of the event …”
Claim 5 adds additional steps to the system of claim 4, and thus should start with the preamble: “… wherein: the first control unit is further configured to …”
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 2, 4 and 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 2 states, “The information processing device according to claim 1, wherein the control unit is further configured to transmit a notification as to whether the geofenced area is present in a mesh including a current position of the vehicle to the vehicle.”
The current text of claim 2, using “… in a mesh including …” makes it appear as though “… a current position of the vehicle …” and “… to the vehicle” are two nodes linked in the mesh. However, since those are the same points, a mesh including two of the same points is illogical. Another reading of the claim that would be in line with text typical in the art would be that the mesh includes a current position of the vehicle, relative to the vehicle, which is also illogical. Therefore, claim 2 is rejected as being indefinite.
It is assumed that “… to the vehicle” is meant to be the destination of the notification. This would properly match the statement in the provided specifications, ¶ [0032]: “The control unit 11 of the vehicle 10 requests information (hereinafter, also referred to as mesh information) related to the mesh from the server 30 (S01) … Upon receiving the request for the mesh information from the vehicle 10, the control unit 31 of the server 30 determines whether the geofence area A2 exists in the mesh A1 including the present position of the vehicle 10 (S02) … The control unit 31 of the server 30 transmits a notification related to the determination result to the vehicle 10 (S03).”
Therefore, for the purposes of compact prosecution, claim 2 will be evaluated as if it were written: “The information processing device according to claim 1, wherein the control unit is further configured to transmit a notification to the vehicle as to whether the geofenced area is present in a mesh including the current position of the vehicle.” Should the applicant choose to amend the claim in this manner, then this rejection would be withdrawn.
Claim 4 recites the limitation "a request" in line 15. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. Should the claim be amended to read “the request,” this rejection would be withdrawn. For the purposes of compact prosecution, claim 4 will be evaluated as if it were amended as such.
Claim 5 recites the limitation "a request" in line 9. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. Should the claim be amended to read “the request,” this rejection would be withdrawn. For the purposes of compact prosecution, claim 5 will be evaluated as if it were amended as such.
Note that claim 5 is dependent on claim 4, and thus is further rejected for being dependent on an indefinite claim, and this rejection would similarly be withdrawn should claim 4 be amended as mentioned above.
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.
Claims 1, 2, 4 and 5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US Pub US-20160335814-A1 (hereinafter referred to as "Tamari et al.") in view of US Pub US-20200396644-A1 (hereinafter referred to as "Matsumoto et al.") and US Pub US-20230375345-A1 (hereinafter referred to as "Ganesan et al.") (the union of all three hereinafter referred to as Tamari-Matsumoto-Ganesan).
Per claim 1, Tamari et al. teaches, “An information processing device comprising a control unit (remote server 112) configured to … captured image data corresponding to an event to a vehicle (¶ [0028]: “In various embodiments, drive event detector 104 is configured to upload the drive event data (e.g., sensor data and/or analysis data) to remote server 112 that is communicatively linked to the drive event detector for analysis, processing, and/or storage.”) in response to there not being an overlap between a rectangular travel area and a geofenced area, (Claim 1: “… in the event that the geolocation data corresponds to the geolocation with the non-event profile … assign the driving data as a non-event …”; ¶ [0062]: “In some embodiments, geolocation based criteria are applied to reject detected drive event as invalid drive event or non-event. … Therefore, if such captured drive events can be removed automatically, it will minimize … transmitting … unnecessarily data. So, the system is able to match a non-event and eliminate the event before transmitting.” [Comment: Blocking a transmission due to overlap is functionally identical to continuing the transmission if there is no overlap.]) the travel area including … time-series position information for a predetermined time before and after occurrence of the event in the vehicle (¶ [0024]: “When a potential drive event or actual drive event is detected, drive event detector 104 is configured to cause the drive event data to be captured … This may involve storing or uploading certain amount of pre-event data, during-event data, and certain amount of post-event data to local or remote data storage. … In some embodiments, the data from different sensors may be time-synchronized so that data from different sensors and/or sources for a single drive event data are correlated according to a time scale.”; ¶ [0053]: “In 506, onboard vehicle sensors are instructed to capture drive event data. … In some embodiments, capturing drive event data comprises instructing one or more sensors to capture certain amount of pre-event data, during-event data, and post-event data.”; ¶ [0054]: “In 508, the captured drive event data is received from one or more onboard vehicle sensors. For example, the captured data of the event (e.g., a portion of pre-event sensor or driving data, a portion of during-event sensor or driving data, and a portion of post-event sensor or driving data) are transferred from the sensor to the event detector so that the entire event data can be packaged, stored, and/or transmitted to a remote server.”; ¶ [0056]: “…For example, a real-time geolocation data of the moving vehicle is received (e.g., GPS data) … In some embodiments, the geolocation data track the trajectory of the moving vehicle over time …”).”
Tamari et al. fails to teach, (1) “An information processing device comprising a control unit configured to transmit a notification to permit upload …” and (2) “…the travel area including a minimum longitude value, a maximum longitude value, a minimum latitude value, and a maximum latitude value …”
Regarding part (1), Matsumoto et al. teaches, “An information processing device comprising a control unit configured to transmit a notification to permit upload (Abstract: “Upon receiving from a vehicle in the target cell an inquiry regarding whether or not data transmission is permitted, the MEC node determines whether or not to permit data transmission by the vehicle … In accordance with a result of the determination, the MEC node transmits, to the vehicle that has transmitted the inquiry, a response indicating whether or not to permit data transmission.” [Comment: MEC stands for multi-access edge computing, and is a network architecture concept to allow cloud computing, making it functionally identical to a remote server in this context.]) …”
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the of the claimed invention to combine the upload permission step of Matsumoto et al. to the geofenced area protocol of Tamari et al.. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to so because Tamari et al. taught the idea that a remote server should have the ability control the uploading of the event data (¶ [0028]: “Uploading can be carried automatically by drive event detector 104 based on predefined criteria or upon requests by, for example, remote server 112.”). The shift from a server requesting an upload, as taught by Tamari et al., to the vehicle control unit initiating the upload request, as taught by Matsumoto et al., would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art as there are clear advantages to have the device collecting the data deciding when the data should be uploaded.
Therefore, it would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Tamari et al. to include the teachings of Matsumoto et al., as there existed teachings, suggestions, and/or motivations in the arts that would have led one of ordinary skill to modify the parts to combine them together to arrive at the claimed invention (KSR(G), TSM, MPEP 2143).
Additionally, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so because this is a simple substitution of one known element for another to obtain predictable results. Specifically, as noted above, Tamari et al. already taught the upload request step, and it would have been a simple and obvious substitution to swap the request coming from the server to the request coming the vehicle as stated in Matsumoto et al., obtaining predictable results. (KSR(B), MPEP 2143).
Regarding part (2), Ganesan et al. teaches, “the travel area including a minimum longitude value, a maximum longitude value, a minimum latitude value, and a maximum latitude value (¶ [0006]: “Initially a quadrilateral corresponding to each route among set of routes within the segment is determined, wherein the quadrilateral has (i) minimum latitude, (ii) minimum longitude, (iii) maximum latitude, and (iv) maximum longitude, as four corner points, identified based on geocoordinates of nodes in the route.” [Comment: in this context, the “nodes in the route” are identical to the position points throughout the driving path.]) …”
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the of the claimed invention to combine the principle of using maximum and minimum longitude and latitude of Ganesan et al. to the geofenced area protocol of Tamari et al.. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to so because Tamari et al. taught the driving data including latitude and longitude points (¶ [0027]: “The driving environment context may be defined by various environmental parameters such as geolocation (e.g., as defined by a set of longitude, latitude …) …”). One of ordinary skill in the art would know that handling a set of location points comes with several computational difficulties, the depth of which can depend on countless factors (ex: if the time-step between samples is too large, accurate determination of the path between steps becomes impossible). Therefore, it would be obvious to simplify the set of points to a simple quadrilateral as taught by Ganesan et al., as this would, within most ordinary use cases, be a fair estimation of the travel path, erring on the side of overestimation. Note that the accuracy of the path determination would increase with the number of samples taken, but the increase in samples means an increase in computational workload to verify if the samples are or are not within the geofenced area. Using the quadrilateral estimation would simplify computation and be fairly simple to determine from a sample set.
Therefore, it would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Tamari et al. to include the teachings of Ganesan et al., as there existed teachings, suggestions, and/or motivations in the arts that would have led one of ordinary skill to modify the parts to combine them together to arrive at the claimed invention (KSR(G), TSM, MPEP 2143).
Additionally, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so because this is applying a known technique to a method ready for improvement to yield predictable results. Specifically, as noted above, Tamari et al. was ready for computational simplification and thus improvement, and Ganesan et al. was a known technique to estimate the data set to a quadrilateral, and the implementation of which would yield predictable decrease in computational work. (KSR(D), MPEP 2143).
Per claim 2 (rewritten as stated in the 35 U.S.C. 112(b) rejection above), the combination of Tamari et al., Matsumoto et al., and Ganesan et al. teaches the information processing device of claim 1.
Tamari et al. further teaches “…in a mesh (¶ [0057]: “Geo-fenced zones are areas defined by geo-boundaries.” [Comment: Tamari et al. uses the term “geo-fenced zone” in a manner functionally identical to “mesh” of the claims, while as seen previously “geolocations” is used in a manner functionally identical to “geofenced” of the claims.]) including the current position of the vehicle (¶ [0056]: “In some embodiments, the geolocation data are data used to determine a geo-fenced zone within which the moving vehicle is located.”).”
Tamari et al. fails to teach “The information processing device according to claim 1, wherein the control unit is further configured to transmit a notification to the vehicle as to whether the geofenced area is present…” Instead, it teaches the control unit transmitting the mesh directly for the vehicle to make that determination itself (¶ [0058]: In 604, the geolocation based criteria for capturing drive event are determined based on the geolocation. In various embodiments, this involves looking up a database that has stored criteria for capturing drive events based on … geo-fenced zones. In some embodiments, the database includes a digital map such as a digital safety map. In some embodiments, the digital map includes various geo-fenced zones.). Therefore, Tamari et al. teaches the server sending the map and having the vehicle handle the map determination locally, rather than the server making the determination and send the notification of the results.
Matsumoto et al. further teaches “The information processing device according to claim 1, wherein the control unit is further configured to transmit a notification to the vehicle as to whether the geofenced area is present (Abstract: “Upon receiving from a vehicle in the target cell an inquiry regarding whether or not data transmission is permitted, the MEC node determines whether or not to permit data transmission by the vehicle … In accordance with a result of the determination, the MEC node transmits, to the vehicle that has transmitted the inquiry, a response indicating whether or not to permit data transmission.”) … ”
Please note that this is the same Matsumoto et al. teaching as stated for claim 1 above, and thus the same motivations apply (KSR(B); KSR(G), TSM, MPEP 2143).
Per claim 4 (rewritten as stated in the 35 U.S.C. 112(b) rejection above), Tamari et al. teaches “A system comprising: a vehicle including a first control unit (¶ [0018]: “FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an embodiment of a system for assessing performance of a driver. In the example shown, vehicle 102 is equipped with an onboard drive event detector 104 for detecting vehicle drive events.”); and a server including a second control unit (¶ [0019]: “Drive event detector 104 further includes one or more communication interfaces for communicating … with remote server 112 via network 114.”), wherein: the first control unit is configured to extract … time-series position information for a predetermined time before and after occurrence of an event, in response to the occurrence of the event (¶ [0024]: “When a potential drive event or actual drive event is detected, drive event detector 104 is configured to cause the drive event data to be captured … This may involve storing or uploading certain amount of pre-event data, during-event data, and certain amount of post-event data to local or remote data storage. … In some embodiments, the data from different sensors may be time-synchronized so that data from different sensors and/or sources for a single drive event data are correlated according to a time scale.”; ¶ [0053]: “In 506, onboard vehicle sensors are instructed to capture drive event data. … In some embodiments, capturing drive event data comprises instructing one or more sensors to capture certain amount of pre-event data, during-event data, and post-event data.”; ¶ [0054]: “In 508, the captured drive event data is received from one or more onboard vehicle sensors. For example, the captured data of the event (e.g., a portion of pre-event sensor or driving data, a portion of during-event sensor or driving data, and a portion of post-event sensor or driving data) are transferred from the sensor to the event detector so that the entire event data can be packaged, stored, and/or transmitted to a remote server.”; ¶ [0056]: “…For example, a real-time geolocation data of the moving vehicle is received (e.g., GPS data) and used to determine the location of the vehicle … In some embodiments, the geolocation data track the trajectory of the moving vehicle over time …”), … upload the captured image data to the server (¶ [0028]: “In various embodiments, drive event detector 104 is configured to upload the drive event data (e.g., sensor data and/or analysis data) to remote server 112 that is communicatively linked to the drive event detector for analysis, processing, and/or storage.”) … and upload the captured image data to the server (¶ [0028]: “In various embodiments, drive event detector 104 is configured to upload the drive event data (e.g., sensor data and/or analysis data) to remote server 112 that is communicatively linked to the drive event detector for analysis, processing, and/or storage.”)…; and the second control unit is configured to determine whether there is an overlap between a rectangular travel area including the four points and a geofenced area (Claim 1: “… in the event that the geolocation data corresponds to the geolocation with the non-event profile … assign the driving data as a non-event …”; ¶ [0062]: “In some embodiments, geolocation based criteria are applied to reject detected drive event as invalid drive event or non-event. … Therefore, if such captured drive events can be removed automatically, it will minimize … transmitting … unnecessarily data. So, the system is able to match a non-event and eliminate the event before transmitting.”; ¶ [0025]: “In some embodiments, drive event detector 104 is configured to perform various other types of analyses of the captured drive event data. Since the computation capacity of drive event detector 104 may be limited, such analyses may be preliminary analyses and less robust or complex than those that can be performed on remote server 112 that has more computation power.” [Comment: Tamari et al. primarily teaches the vehicle handling the computational work, but also teaches that the server is better equipped to handle those computations, thus making it inherent that the server (second control unit) is also configured to handle the overlap computation.]) … and … upload the captured image data corresponding to the event to the vehicle in response to an absence of the overlap (Claim 1: “… in the event that the geolocation data corresponds to the geolocation with the non-event profile … assign the driving data as a non-event …”; ¶ [0062]: “In some embodiments, geolocation based criteria are applied to reject detected drive event as invalid drive event or non-event. … Therefore, if such captured drive events can be removed automatically, it will minimize … transmitting … unnecessarily data. So, the system is able to match a non-event and eliminate the event before transmitting.” [Comment: Blocking a transmission due to overlap is functionally identical to continuing the transmission if there is no overlap.]).”
Tamari et al. fails to teach (1) “… the first control unit is configured to extract four points with a minimum longitude value, a maximum longitude value, a minimum latitude value, and a maximum latitude value …” and (2) “… transmit a request for permission to upload … together with information about the extracted four points, and upload {the data} in response to receiving a notification of permission to upload the captured image data from the server; and the second control unit is configured to … {run determination computation} in response to receiving the request for permission to upload the captured image data from the vehicle, … and transmit a notification of permission to upload {the data} to the vehicle …”
Regarding part (1), Ganesan et al. teaches, “… the first control unit is configured to extract four points with a minimum longitude value, a maximum longitude value, a minimum latitude value, and a maximum latitude value (¶ [0006]: “Initially a quadrilateral corresponding to each route among set of routes within the segment is determined, wherein the quadrilateral has (i) minimum latitude, (ii) minimum longitude, (iii) maximum latitude, and (iv) maximum longitude, as four corner points, identified based on geocoordinates of nodes in the route.” [Comment: in this context, the “nodes in the route” are identical to the position points throughout the driving path.]) …”
Please note that this is the same Ganesan et al. teaching as stated for claim 1 above, and thus the same motivations apply (KSR(D); KSR(G), TSM, MPEP 2143).
Regarding part (2), Matsumoto et al. teaches, “… the first control unit is configured to … transmit a request for permission to upload {the data} (Abstract: “Upon receiving from a vehicle in the target cell an inquiry regarding whether or not data transmission is permitted …”), together with information about the extracted four points (¶ [0025]: “… each of the vehicles … can transmit (upload) generated data (e.g. … dynamic map data, … etc.) to the data center …”) … and upload {the data} to the server in response to receiving a notification of permission to upload the captured image data from the server (¶ [0065]: “In step S6, the communication control unit 14 transmits a response that includes a permission notification indicating that transmission is permitted, to the vehicle 30 that has transmitted the inquiry … The vehicle 30 in the target cell that has received the response that includes the permission notification starts data transmission …”); and the second control unit is configured to … {run determination computation} in response to receiving the request for permission to upload the captured image data from the vehicle (Abstract: “Upon receiving from a vehicle in the target cell an inquiry regarding whether or not data transmission is permitted, the MEC node determines whether or not to permit data transmission by the vehicle … ”), and transmit a notification of permission to upload {the data} to the vehicle … (Abstract: “In accordance with a result of the determination, the MEC node transmits, to the vehicle that has transmitted the inquiry, a response indicating whether or not to permit data transmission.”)”
Please note that these are the same concepts taught by Matsumoto et al. as stated for claim 1 above, and thus the same motivations apply (KSR(B); KSR(G), TSM, MPEP 2143).
Per claim 5 (rewritten as stated in the 35 U.S.C. 112(b) rejection above), the combination of Tamari et al., Matsumoto et al., and Ganesan et al. teaches the system of claim 4.
Tamari et al. further teaches “The system according to claim 4, wherein: … in a mesh (¶ [0057]: “Geo-fenced zones are areas defined by geo-boundaries.” [Comment: Tamari et al. uses the term “geo-fenced zone” in a manner functionally identical to “mesh” of the claims, while as seen previously “geolocations” is used in a manner functionally identical to “geofenced” of the claims.]) including a current position of the vehicle (¶ [0056]: “In some embodiments, the geolocation data are data used to determine a geo-fenced zone within which the moving vehicle is located.”), and extract the four points in response to a notification (¶ [0020]: “For examples, a sensor on/off circuitry is included to turn on/off the sensor, a data capture circuitry is included to capture sensor data, … In various embodiments, the function(s) of a sensor is … carried out in response to external commands issued …”) that the geofenced area is present in the mesh including the current position of the vehicle (¶ [0058]: In 604, the geolocation based criteria for capturing drive event are determined based on the geolocation. In various embodiments, this involves looking up a database that has stored criteria for capturing drive events based on … geo-fenced zones. In some embodiments, the database includes a digital map such as a digital safety map. In some embodiments, the digital map includes various geo-fenced zones.) from the server (Claim 1: “… in the event that the geolocation data corresponds to the geolocation with the non-event profile … assign the driving data as a non-event …”; ¶ [0062]: “In some embodiments, geolocation based criteria are applied to reject detected drive event as invalid drive event or non-event. … Therefore, if such captured drive events can be removed automatically, it will minimize … transmitting … unnecessarily data. So, the system is able to match a non-event and eliminate the event before transmitting.”; ¶ [0025]: “In some embodiments, drive event detector 104 is configured to perform various other types of analyses of the captured drive event data. Since the computation capacity of drive event detector 104 may be limited, such analyses may be preliminary analyses and less robust or complex than those that can be performed on remote server 112 that has more computation power.” [Comment: Tamari et al. primarily teaches the vehicle handling the computational work, but also teaches that the server is better equipped to handle those computations, thus making it inherent that the server (second control unit) is also configured to handle the overlap computation.]); and the second control unit is configured to determine whether the geofenced area is present in the mesh including the current position of the vehicle (Claim 1: “… in the event that the geolocation data corresponds to the geolocation with the non-event profile … assign the driving data as a non-event …”; ¶ [0062]: “In some embodiments, geolocation based criteria are applied to reject detected drive event as invalid drive event or non-event. … Therefore, if such captured drive events can be removed automatically, it will minimize … transmitting … unnecessarily data. So, the system is able to match a non-event and eliminate the event before transmitting.”; ¶ [0025]: “In some embodiments, drive event detector 104 is configured to perform various other types of analyses of the captured drive event data. Since the computation capacity of drive event detector 104 may be limited, such analyses may be preliminary analyses and less robust or complex than those that can be performed on remote server 112 that has more computation power.” [Comment: Tamari et al. primarily teaches the vehicle handling the computational work, but also teaches that the server is better equipped to handle those computations, thus making it inherent that the server (second control unit) is also configured to handle the overlap computation.]) ….”
Tamari et al. fails to teach, “The system according to claim 4, wherein: the first control unit is configured to request the server for information as to whether the geofenced area is present …; and the second control unit is configured to {compute determination} in response to receiving the request for information as to whether the geofenced area is present in the mesh from the vehicle, and transmit a notification that the geofenced area is present to the vehicle in response to determining that the geofenced area is present in the mesh.” However, while Tamari et al. does not teach the vehicle requesting information as to whether the geofenced area is present, it instead teaches the vehicle obtaining information from the server to make that determination itself (¶ [0058]: In 604, the geolocation based criteria for capturing drive event are determined based on the geolocation. In various embodiments, this involves looking up a database that has stored criteria for capturing drive events based on … geo-fenced zones. In some embodiments, the database includes a digital map such as a digital safety map. In some embodiments, the digital map includes various geo-fenced zones.). It also does teach that the server should have the ability to request data upload from the vehicle (¶ [0028]: “Uploading can be carried automatically by drive event detector 104 based on predefined criteria or upon requests by, for example, remote server 112.”) and that the server is capable of handling the same computation as the vehicle, with more computational power (¶ [0025]: “In some embodiments, drive event detector 104 is configured to perform various other types of analyses of the captured drive event data. Since the computation capacity of drive event detector 104 may be limited, such analyses may be preliminary analyses and less robust or complex than those that can be performed on remote server 112 that has more computation power.”)
Matsumoto et al. teaches, “The system according to claim 4, wherein: the first control unit is configured to request the server for information as to whether the geofenced area is present …; and the second control unit is configured to {compute determination} in response to receiving the request for information as to whether the geofenced area is present in the mesh from the vehicle, and transmit a notification that the geofenced area is present to the vehicle in response to determining that the geofenced area is present in the mesh (Abstract: “Upon receiving from a vehicle in the target cell an inquiry regarding whether or not data transmission is permitted, the MEC node determines whether or not to permit data transmission by the vehicle … In accordance with a result of the determination, the MEC node transmits, to the vehicle that has transmitted the inquiry, a response indicating whether or not to permit data transmission.”).”
Please note that this is the same Matsumoto et al. teaching as stated for claim 2 above, and thus the same motivations apply (KSR(B); KSR(G), TSM, MPEP 2143).
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tamari-Matsumoto-Ganesan as applied to claims 1, 2, 4, and 5 above, and further in view of Wiki OpenStreetMap "Bounding Box, Revision as of 21:47, 4 September 2022" (hereinafter referred to as "OSM").
Per claim 3, Tamari-Matsumoto-Ganesan fails to teach “The information processing device according to claim 1, wherein the control unit is further configured to generate the travel area as an area defined by a longitude line passing through the minimum longitude value, a longitude line passing through the maximum longitude value, a latitude line passing through the minimum latitude value, and a latitude line passing through the maximum latitude value.”
OPM teaches “The information processing device according to claim 1, wherein the control unit is further configured to generate the travel area as an area defined by a longitude line passing through the minimum longitude value, a longitude line passing through the maximum longitude value, a latitude line passing through the minimum latitude value, and a latitude line passing through the maximum latitude value (“A bounding box (usually shortened to bbox) is an area defined by two longitudes and two latitudes …” [Comment: the two longitudes and latitudes serving as the two longitude and latitude lines of the claim]; “They usually follow the standard format of: … bbox = min Longitude , min Latitude , max Longitude , max Latitude”).”
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the geographic bounding technique of OPM to the geofenced area protocol of Tamari-Matsumoto-Ganesan. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so because a typical travel path of a vehicle will be complex and will not neatly fall into simple computational techniques. By estimating the travel path to a rectangular area as OPM teaches, the geographic analysis of Tamari-Matsumoto-Ganesan is heavily simplified. This is further proven by the fact that this technique heavily resembles polygon simplification, where computation is reduced by lowering the number of vertices of a given polygon.
Therefore, it would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Tamari-Matsumoto-Ganesan to include the teachings of OPM, as there existed teachings, suggestions, and/or motivations in the arts that would have led one of ordinary skill to modify the parts to combine them together to arrive at the claimed invention (KSR(G), TSM, MPEP 2143).
Additionally, one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so because this is a applying a known technique to a known method ready for improvement to yield predictable results. Specifically, as stated above, OPM is a known technique that lowers the computational work of Tamari-Matsumoto-Ganesan, and it would be an obvious improvement to yield predictable results (KSR(D), MPEP 2143).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to the applicant’s disclosure:
Jones (US-9906609-B2) teaches receiving a request with a coordinate point, identifying potential geofences that overlap with the point, and creating a response to the request with information describing the geofences.
Li et al. (US-20160119748-A1) teaches obtaining information regarding geographic location and a list of geo-fence locations based off of the client’s current location, and includes the longitude and latitude calculations.
Tran et al. (US-20250119714-A1) teaches the wireless connection to authorized networks and avoiding uploading when linked to unauthorized networks.
Berkobin et al. (US-20150002281-A1) teaches having a TCU receive and store geographic boundaries to inform a user when they have entered restricted or sensitive areas.
Hicks et al. (US-11051125-B2) teaches detecting when a user has entered a geofenced area to determine whether or not to transmit a notification.
Bonhomme (US-9341487-B2) teaches the designation of perimeters as geofences based on numerous trips of a vehicle.
Branscomb (US-11910185-B2) teaches location-based services to enforce privacy policies.
Rana et al. (US-20140274154-A1) teaches detecting when a device has entered a region of interest.
Humphries et al. (US-7164986-B2) teaches detecting whether a tracked device has entered a boundary area.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALEXANDRE PAUL JEAN DIXNEUF whose telephone number is (571)270-5794. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday, 8:30am - 5pm.
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/ALEXANDRE PAUL JEAN DIXNEUF/Examiner, Art Unit 2631 /SAM K AHN/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2633
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