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 .
Response to Arguments
The Applicants have filed this Continuation application without providing any comments or arguments for why Baumgartner (US 2018/0290561) should not apply to the pending claims. The Examiner notes that the pending claims are similar to those treated during prosecution of the parent and grand-parent applications.
The Examiner also notes the broadening of claim 1 (as compared to language allowed in the parent application): The method proceeds straight to the energy receiving and there is no original/first step of determining if an amount of energy can even be transferred. What this means is that “the amount of energy” has no patentable weight. It is not a target of power transfer to be split between two transport interactions, but rather just an inherent sum of received energies. The terms a first/second portion and a first/second period of time also have minimal patentable weight – they refer to quantities that have happened during power transfer – not a purposeful target/limit to be reached during wireless power transfer.
Claim Objections
Claim 20 is objected to because it is duplicate of claim 18.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-3, 5, 8-10, 12, 15-17 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Baumgartner (US 2018/0290561).
With respect to claim 1, Baumgartner discloses a method (fig 5a-b; par 62-68, 77-79, 81-84), performed by an energy-receiving transport (4), comprising:
receiving control commands from an energy-providing transport (2a) that control a position and speed of the energy-receiving transport (par 64, 67-68);
receiving a first portion of an amount of energy from the energy-providing transport while the two transports are in motion along a route for a first period of time (par 81);
moving into alignment with a second energy-providing transport (2b; par 64, 67-68); and
receiving a second portion of the amount of energy from the second energy-providing transport for a second period of time (par 82).
Baumgartner discloses an autonomous electric vehicle that is controlled to align with a first transport (2a) and a second transport (2b) to receive wireless power. Claim 1 only broadly refers to two wireless power transfer interactions. There is no requirement in the claim that these two interactions are supposed to occur during the same trip, day, week, etc, or that they are intended to occur in rapid succession (i.e. the transport moves immediately from the first energy providing transport to the second).
With respect to claim 2, Baumgartner discloses determining that a transfer of energy between the energy-providing and energy-receiving transports will occur while moving along the route based on determining that an estimated period of time that the energy-providing and energy-receiving transports will be aligned is sufficient to transfer a certain amount of energy (par 62, 67, 81).
Baumgartner discloses that the energy receiving transport requests (par 81) that the energy providing transport meet it along the road for energy transfer. The two vehicles communicate (par 67) to determine relative positions. This is interpreted as a determination that wireless power transfer will occur, because Baumgartner discloses that the power transfer is successfully completed.
With respect to claim 3, Baumgartner discloses routing the energy-receiving transport along the route at a particular speed (par 64, 67-68). The vehicle is autonomous – everything it does is at a “particular speed”.
With respect to claim 5, Baumgartner discloses the first and second portions of the amount of energy are transferred based on a current (par 17) or future amount of traffic on the route. Baumgartner discloses the method is used on a public road. Thus, there will inherently be other vehicles (traffic) present. Autonomously driving along a public route will inherently be “based on” current traffic.
With respect to claims 8-10 and 12, Baumgartner discloses the transport and its “processor” (the entire vehicle is autonomous and inherently uses a “processor” to control the vehicle) to carry out the method steps of the claims, as discussed above in the art rejections of claims 1-3 and 5, respectively.
With respect to claims 15-17 and 19, Baumgartner discloses the non-transitory computer readable storage medium configured to store instructions, that when executed by a processor, perform the method steps of the claims (the entire vehicle is autonomous and inherently uses a “processor” and memory to store the autonomous driving program), as discussed above in the art rejections of claims 1-3 and 5, respectively.
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 4, 11, 18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Baumgartner in view of Yoshida (US 2012/0299373).
Baumgartner discloses receiving the first and second portions of the energy transfer at a first location (see fig 10, item 10) of the transport body for the first/second period of time. Baumgartner does not expressly disclose the second portion of the energy transfer is received at a second location. Yoshida (fig 1-2; par 37-52) discloses a vehicle-to-vehicle charging system wherein the receiving transport can be charged from one of four differently located antennas (fig 2, items 22a1-22a4 or 22b1-22b4; par 59). When combined, Baumgartner’s repeated charging events could be carried out at any of the four locations.
Baumgartner and Yoshida are analogous because they are from the same field of endeavor, namely vehicle-to-vehicle charging. At the time of the earliest priority date of the application, it would have been obvious to one skilled in the art to modify the Baumgartner receiving transport to include a plurality of receiving locations, as taught by Yoshida. The motivation for doing so would have been to enable the two vehicles to move relative to each other. This freedom of movement would enable more efficient charging, since it could be possible that the two vehicles couldn’t be aligned with the charging transport in front, as required by Baumgartner.
Claims 6-7 and 13-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Baumgartner in view of Mondello (US 2020/0307401).
With respect to claims 6 and 13, Baumgartner does not expressly disclose receiving validation. Mondello discloses that peer-to-peer communication between a vehicle and its charging station is known to take the form of a blockchain consensus (par 2-4, 17, 40, 48). Thus, the combination teaches a validation of the energy transfer from at least one component, wherein the validation comprises a blockchain consensus between a peer group consisting of the transport and the at least one component.
Baumgartner and Mondello are analogous because they are from the same field of endeavor, namely peer-to-peer communication. At the time of the earliest priority date of the application, it would have been obvious to one skilled in the art to modify Baumgartner’s vehicle to vehicle communication to use blockchain consensus. The motivation for doing so would have been to provide better security. Blockchain is wildly known in the art and the skilled artisan would have been motivated to consider it. The skilled artisan would have known that it is an encrypted communication protocol that provides a high degree of safety from data theft.
With respect to claims 7 and 14, Mondello discloses executing a smart contract, by the transport, to record the validation on the blockchain based on the blockchain consensus (step 760). The command to being energy transfer is interpreted as the “smart contract”. Mondello discloses that all communication between the Baumgartner vehicles is based on a blockchain consensus.
Conclusion
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/ADI AMRANY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2836