DETAILED ACTION
Status of Case
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This Office Action is in response to the claims filed on 10/11/2024.
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) filed on 8/13/2025 has been considered by Examiner.
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 6-7 and 16 are 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 pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claims 6 and 16 each recite an equation that has the term “C2” in it, but C2 is not defined or explained in the equation, leaving the Examiner unable to ascertain the meaning of the equation, and thereby rendering the claims indefinite.
Claim 7 is rejected by virtue of being dependent on claim 6.
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, 11, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mueck (WO 2018/004681) in view of Parikh (USPAN 2007/0027610).
Consider claims 1, 11, and 20, Mueck discloses a system for controlling communication with clustered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the system comprising: a server; and a plurality of drone clusters configured to establish communication channels with the server and communicate with each other (see figure 4, reproduced below for convenience, wherein disclosed is said system for controlling clustered UAVs, comprising a plurality of drone clusters), and a corresponding device comprising: a memory; and a processor (see figures 9 and 10, wherein disclosed is said device comprising said memory and processor), and a corresponding non-transitory computer-readable storage medium on which a program including at least one instruction is recorded (see figures 14 and 15, wherein disclosed is a machine readable medium), wherein each of the plurality of drone clusters includes: a master drone; and slave drones configured to form a cluster with the master drone (see paragraph 1: “the present technique relate to IoT devices that self-assemble as a cluster or swarm”; see paragraph 34: “The initial communications may be established between the master drone 204 and a base station 21 2. Once the initial communications have been established, the master drone 204 may initiate communications with the slave drones 202. The 3D mesh network may be formed by the drones 202 and 204 distributing signals that invite neighboring drones 202 and 204 to establish a connection. Once the connections are established, the data on surrounding drones 202 or 204 may be included into a mesh drone list.”), a certain number of drone clusters are formed as the plurality of drone clusters with a master drone and a certain number of slave drones in each drone cluster (see paragraphs 1 and 34, and figures 1-5, wherein disclosed is said drone clusters formed with said master drone and a plurality of slave drones in each cluster; also, see paragraph 44).
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Mueck does not specifically disclose forming a cluster to minimize a number of communication channels.
Parikh discloses forming a cluster to minimize a number of communication channels (see paragraph 15: “the system and method allow for forming a cluster of probe vehicles, aggregating and processing (e.g., averaging) data generated by the members of the cluster, and reporting only the processed data to a receiving center, such as a Traffic Management Center, thereby reducing the number of simultaneous communication channels required to report the data to the receiving center and reducing the amount of data which must be processed in real-time at the receiving center. Broadly, each cluster identifies one member to which all other members report. The identified member receives the individual reports, aggregates and processes the data, and then transmits it to the receiving center for further processing”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Mueck and combine it with the noted teachings of Parikh. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method for collecting traffic data using probe vehicles to thereby reduce the number of simultaneous communication channels required to report data and thereby providing a more efficient communication system (see paragraph 1 of Parikh).
Claims 4 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mueck (WO 2018/004681) in view of Parikh (USPAN 2007/0027610) and Dorin (GB 2492128 A).
Consider claims 4 and 14, Mueck in view of Parikh disclose a plurality of drone clusters (see above), but do not disclose that each cluster has the same number of drones.
Dorin discloses a plurality of clusters and that each cluster has the same number nodes (see paragraph 12: the clustering means is operable to determine clusters each having the same number of sensor nodes).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Mueck and combine it with the noted teachings of Dorin. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method for a cognitive radio system and to eliminate the danger of harmful interference without leaving the majority of the allocated block of spectrum from being underused (see page 1 lines 1-10 of Dorin).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-3, 5, 8-10, 12-13, 15, and 17-19 are 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
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jamal Javaid whose telephone number is 571-270-5137 and email address is Jamal.Javaid@uspto.gov.
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/JAMAL JAVAID/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2412
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