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 amendment filed on 07/10/2026 has been entered. Claims 1-8, 11-15 remain pending in the application.
Priority
Acknowledgement is made of applicants claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d) and (f). The certified copy has been filed in parent application EP23215305 filed on 12/08/2023.
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, 13, 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
On January 7, 2019, the USPTO released new examination guidelines setting forth a two-step inquiry for determining whether a claim is directed to non-statutory subject matter. According to the guidelines, a claim is directed to non-statutory subject matter if:
STEP 1: the claim does not fall within one of the four statutory categories of invention (process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter), or
STEP 2: the claim recites a judicial exception, e.g. an abstract idea, without reciting additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception, as determined using the following analysis:
STEP 2A (PRONG 1): Does the claim recite an abstract idea, law of nature, or natural phenomenon?
STEP 2A (PRONG 2): Does the claim recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application?
STEP 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception?
Using the two-step inquiry, it is clear that claim 1 is directed toward non-statutory subject matter, as shown below:
STEP 1: Do the claims fall within one of the statutory categories?
Yes claims 1, 13 and 15 are directed towards a method, system and a non-transitory computer-readable medium respectively.
STEP 2A (PRONG 1): Is the claim directed to a law of nature, a natural phenomenon or an abstract idea?
Yes, the claims are directed to an abstract idea.
With regard to STEP 2A (PRONG 1), the guidelines provide three groupings of subject matter that are considered abstract ideas:
Mathematical concepts – mathematical relationships, mathematical formulas or equations, mathematical calculations;
Certain methods of organizing human activity – fundamental economic principles or practices (including hedging, insurance, mitigating risk); commercial or legal interactions (including agreements in the form of contracts; legal obligations; advertising, marketing or sales activities or behaviors; business relations); managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions); and
Mental processes – concepts that are practicably performed in the human mind (including an observation, evaluation, judgment, opinion).
The process in claims 1, 13 and 15 is a mental process that can be practicably performed in the human mind, or with the aid of pen and paper and as such is directed toward and abstract idea. The claim consists of predicting a likelihood of collision which is similar to a human predicting there is no collision based on the data or 100% collision based on the data including a passenger sleeping or vehicle speeding over a limit and objects ahead. The determination of a vehicle and passenger status based at least on 3 dimensional pose estimation is similar to a human determining that a passenger was sitting in an initial image or sleeping and that a window was near the passenger head. Notably, the claim does not positively recite any limitations regarding actual determination of the attitude of the vehicle.
STEP 2A (PRONG 2): Does the claim recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application?
No, the claims do not recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application.
With regard to STEP 2A (prong 2), whether the claim recites additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application, the guidelines provide the following exemplary considerations that are indicative that an additional element (or combination of elements) may have integrated the judicial exception into a practical application:
an additional element reflects an improvement in the functioning of a computer, or an improvement to other technology or technical field;
an additional element that applies or uses a judicial exception to effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis for a disease or medical condition;
an additional element implements a judicial exception with, or uses a judicial exception in conjunction with, a particular machine or manufacture that is integral to the claim;
an additional element effects a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing; and
an additional element applies or uses the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception.
While the guidelines further state that the exemplary considerations are not an exhaustive list and that there may be other examples of integrating the exception into a practical application, the guidelines also list examples in which a judicial exception has not been integrated into a practical application:
an additional element merely recites the words “apply it” (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or merely includes instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea;
an additional element adds insignificant extra-solution activity to the judicial exception; and
An additional element does no more than generally link the use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use.
Claims 1, 13 and 15 do not recite any of the exemplary considerations that are indicative of an abstract idea having been integrated into a practical application. The additional limitations include receiving sensor data and transmitting a signal. The receiving and transmitting are is recited at a high level of generality and amounts to mere data gathering which is a form of insignificant extra-solution activity. The processor and the communication device are considered at the apply it level technology. The sensors are considered generic linking.
Thus, it is clear that the abstract idea is merely implemented on a computer at the “apply it level”, which is indicative of the abstract solution having not been integrated into a practical application.
STEP 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception?
No, the claims do not recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
With regard to STEP 2B, whether the claims recite additional elements that provide significantly more than the recited judicial exception, the guidelines specify that the pre-guideline procedure is still in effect. Specifically, that examiners should continue to consider whether an additional element or combination of elements:
adds a specific limitation or combination of limitations that are not well-understood, routine, conventional activity in the field, which is indicative that an inventive concept may be present; or
simply appends well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception, which is indicative that an inventive concept may not be present.
Claims 1,13, 15 do not recite any specific limitation or combination of limitations that are not well-understood, routine, conventional activity in the field. The processor and communication device are considered at the apply it level technology. The sensors is considered generic linking. The receiving and transmitting steps referred to above are insignificant extra-solution activity, are not considered significantly more because acquiring step is mere data gathering or transmission of data over a network, which has been held to be routine and conventional activity. See Receiving or transmitting data over a network, e.g., using the Internet to gather data, Symantec, 838 F.3d at 1321, 120 USPQ2d at 1362 (utilizing an intermediary computer to forward information); TLI Communications LLC v. AV Auto. LLC, 823 F.3d 607, 610, 118 USPQ2d 1744, 1745 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (using a telephone for image transmission); OIP Techs., Inc., v. Amazon.com, Inc., 788 F.3d 1359, 1363, 115 USPQ2d 1090, 1093 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (sending messages over a network); buySAFE, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 765 F.3d 1350, 1355, 112 USPQ2d 1093, 1096 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (computer receives and sends information over a network); but see DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P., 773 F.3d 1245, 1258, 113 USPQ2d 1097, 1106 (Fed. Cir. 2014) ("Unlike the claims in Ultramercial, the claims at issue here specify how interactions with the Internet are manipulated to yield a desired result‐‐a result that overrides the routine and conventional sequence of events ordinarily triggered by the click of a hyperlink." (emphasis added)). MPEP 2106.05(d)(II)
CONCLUSION
Thus, since claims 1,13 and 15: (a) directed toward an abstract idea, (b) does not recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application, and (c) does not recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception, it is clear that the claims are directed towards non-statutory subject matter.
Claim 2: determining a severity is similar to a human determining the accident is low severity based on only a bumper accident and a high accident severity based on the door deforming. The transmitting is data gathering of claim 1.
Claim 3, 5: the transmitting is data gathering. The triggering a deletion is recited with high level of generality and is considered intended use of the data gathering not controlled by the vehicle.
Claim 4, 6: issuing a no sever accident is considered data gathering transmitting information.
Claim 7-8 only indicate data gathered information.
Claim 11, 12, just indicate data gathered information.
14: the vehicle is apply it level to apply the abstract idea.
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, 5, 6, 7, 11, 13-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable by Ruehl (DE19922730, from IDS) in view of Mueller (US20150140947) and Omi (US20240067054) and Lee (US20210403009) and Raz (US20220067410).
Regarding claim 1, Ruehl teaches a computerized method of emergency notification for a vehicle including external sensors and internal sensors (abstract disclosing the use of radar “external sensors” and further sensors “airbag sensors, i.e., internal sensor”, see [7] and notifying an emergency notification), the method comprising:
predicting a likelihood of an occurrence of an accident of the vehicle
based on vehicle data and data received from one or more of the external sensors (abstract, [6]-[16] and [23]-[27] disclosing predicting an imminent collision is likely to happen based on the relative speed exceeding a threshold and data from radar “external sensor”);
and
in response to the likelihood of the occurrence of the accident being higher than an accident threshold, transmitting a pre-accident signal to a relay station ([4] disclosing when the probability of an accident is over a threshold. [6]-[16] and [23]-[27] disclosing the transmitting of a pre-accident signal to an emergency station),
wherein the pre-accident signal includes vehicle status generated based on vehicle data before the accident, data received from one or more of the external sensors before the accident, ([6]-[16], [23]-[27] disclosing the pre-accident signals include the vehicle information such as location generated from data received from at least a GPS “vehicle data received before the accident” and generated based on the radar sensor information determining an accident is imminent);
Ruehl does not teach wherein the pre-accident signal includes passenger status information data generated from data received from one or more of the internal sensors before the accident.;
Mueller teaches wherein the pre-accident signal includes passenger status information data generated based on data received from one or more of the internal sensors before the accident ([0006]-[0012] disclosing a camera to determine the status of a passenger to estimate collision about to happen “pre-accident signal” and triggering an emergency call based on that).
The data received from one or more internal sensors before the accidents includes images captured by at least one cabin camera capturing a cabin of the vehicle (Mueller [0006]-[0012] disclosing a camera to determine the status of a passenger to estimate collision about to happen “pre-accident signal” and triggering an emergency call based on that).
Ruehl teaches estimating a pre-accident occurrence, thus it is obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the teaching of Ruel to combine the teaching of Mueller to incorporate internal sensors to determine a pre-accident based on the status of a passenger yielding predictable results in order to validate the pre-crash occurrence and for redundancy and to determine crashes based on the status of occupants improving pre-crash determination and notification thereof.
Ruehl as modified by Mueller does not teach at specified time intervals.
Omi teaches at specified time intervals ([0064] disclosing capturing driver images at specified intervals of time).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teaching of Omi to acquire images at specific time intervals to the image capturing of Mueller thus to continuously obtain pictures and store images and identifying a driver state as taught by Omi [0073].
Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Omi does not teach the vehicle and passenger status information is determined from the images captured by the cabin camera using at least one of semantic segmentation of the images, depth information analysis of the images and 3-dimensional pose estimation.
Raz teaches the vehicle and passenger status information is determined from the images captured by the cabin camera using at least one of semantic segmentation of the images, depth information analysis of the images and 3-dimensional pose estimation ([0061]-[0091], [0113]-[0129], [0160], [0200]-[0220] disclosing the pre-crash images of the cabin with segmentation to identify objects and humans in the vehicle, and to identify a pose of the people in the vehicle before the accident).
It would have been obvious to combine the teaching of Raz of the capturing of cabin images using semantics and analyzing poses in order to allow to determine a more precise injury of the passenger based on the status such as pose before and after the images thus improving the notification alert where medicals know what to expect as taught by Raz.
Lee teaches the vehicle status before and after the accident based on images captured by the cabin camera using ([0315]-[0351] disclosing the cabin camera detects the vehicle status before and after the accidents using algorithm to detect compartments of vehicle, i.e., segmentation of images).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teaching of Lee of the vehicle status before and after the accident based on images captured by the cabin camera yielding predictable results in order to determine the states of the vehicle before and after accident thus determine if an accident has occurred improving the accuracy of accident detection.
Regarding claim 5, Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Omi and Lee and Raz teaches the method of claim 1 further comprising:
in response to the accident not having occurred, transmitting a no-accident signal to the relay station to indicate that no accident has occurred and to trigger a deletion of the pre-accident signal received at the relay station (Ruehl [6]-[27] discloses making another call cancelling the emergency if it is determined that an accident did not occur and to delete the pre-accident signal).
Regarding claim 6, Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Omi and Lee and Raz teaches the method of claim 5 wherein the no-accident signal is issued manually by a passenger of the vehicle via a user interface on a display of the vehicle or automatically by an on-board computing system of the vehicle in response to detecting based on data from at least one of the external sensors and internal sensors that the accident has not occurred (Ruehl [6]-[27] discloses making another call cancelling the emergency if it is determined that an accident did not occur and to delete the pre-accident signal based on the on vehicle sensor including the airbag sensor).
Regarding claim 7, Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Omi and Lee and Raz teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the vehicle data includes at least one of speed, acceleration, steering direction, tire orientation, and geographic position of the vehicle (Ruehl [6]-[16] disclosing the speed).
Regarding claim 11, Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Omi and Lee and Raz teaches the method of claim 1 wherein the vehicle and passenger status information before the accident includes at least one of an estimated severity level of the accident, a vehicle location, an estimated number of vehicles involved, an estimated type of vehicles involved, object movement prediction, a number of passengers in the vehicle, vital signs of passengers in the vehicle, a position of the passengers in the vehicle, and a seatbelt status of the passengers in the vehicle (Ruehl [6]-[13] disclosing the vehicle information includes a location, Ruehl further discloses the number of passengers as the passenger status).
Claims 13, 15 are rejected for similar reasons as claim 1. Ruehl discloses storage medium and computer and vehicle system [6]-[27].
Regarding claim 14, Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Omi and Lee and Raz teaches a vehicle comprising the system of claim 13 ([6]-[27] disclosing the system including the vehicle and notification center and sensors).
Claims 2-4, 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable by Ruehl (DE19922730, from IDS) in view of Mueller (US20150140947) and Omi (US20240067054) and Lee (US20210403009) and Raz (US20220067410) and Nanao (US20160096499) and Pohlenz (US20200098200).
Regarding claim 2, Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Omi and Lee and Raz teaches the method of claim 1 further comprising:
Mueller further teaches in response to the accident having occurred, determining a severity level of the accident based on vehicle data, ([0006]-[0013] disclosing when determining an accident has occurred, a severity is determined based on one or more vehicle data including speed and acceleration);
, wherein the post-accident signal indicates a confirmation of the accident and includes
vehicle and passenger status information generated based on vehicle data after the
accident, and data received from one or more of the internal sensors after the
accident; and data received from one or more external sensors after the accident ([0006]-[0018] disclosing determining a confirmation that an accident has occurred by sending a post accident signal including information about passenger vitals “status” and vehicle location “vehicle data” which are data after the accident. The signal also includes acceleration and speed values from internal sensors of the vehicle and as disclosed [0011]-[0013] data characterizing the environment is transmitted which is acquired from external sensors).
Ruehl as modified by Mueller teaches estimating a pre-accident occurrence and post-accident occurrence and notification calls to emergency services, thus it is obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the teaching of Ruel to combine the teaching of Mueller to incorporate the severity level and data received from sensors in order to determine corresponding rescue measures may be initiated and better coordinated as taught by Mueller.
Ruehl as modified by Mueller does not teach severity level based on data received from one or more of the external sensors and data received from one or more of the internal sensors; in response to the severity level of the accident being higher than a severity threshold, transmitting a post-accident signal to the relay station.
Nanao teaches severity level based on data received from one or more of the internal sensors (at least [0020] disclosing the degree of crash is based on the data received from internal sensors of the vehicle);
in response to the severity level of the accident being higher than a severity threshold ([0013] disclosing in response to a degree of crash greater than a threshold, to send post-accident data to an emergency center).
Ruehl as modified by Mueller teaches the severity of the accident, thus it is obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teaching of Nanao of alarming when a severity threshold is exceeded and incorporate the severity determined by internal sensors thus effectively warning when the possibility of collision is high avoiding false alarms and improving collision warning systems
Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Nanao does not teach severity level based on data received from one or more of the external sensors.
Pohlenz teaches severity level based on data received from one or more of the external sensors ([0035]-[0038] disclosing determining a severity of an accident based on external sensors of the vehicle installed on a roof module, and based on the categorized accident with a class of vehicles such as a truck acquired via external sensors to determine severity of accident and injury).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teaching of Pohlenz with the accident determination and severity as taught by Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Nanao is obvious yielding predictable results, allowing the determination of damage occurring to a roof of the vehicle and categorizing the severity of an accident based on the class of vehicles having the accident thus allowing for a better coordination of medical assistance to the occupants when injured based on severity of injury.
Regarding claim 3, Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Omi and Lee and Raz and Nanao teaches the method of claim 2 further comprising:
transmitting a no-severe-accident signal to the relay station to indicate that no severe accident has occurred and to trigger a deletion of the pre-accident signal received at the relay station (Ruehl [6]-[27] discloses making another call cancelling the emergency if it is determined that an accident did not occur and to delete the pre-accident signal).
Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Nanao does not yet teach in response to the severity level of the accident being lower than the severity threshold.
However, Nanao further teaches when severity of an accident is less than a threshold ([0013] disclosing in response to a degree of crash greater than a threshold, to send post-accident data to an emergency center and thus to not send a signal to a center when the severity is less than the threshold).
Ruehl teaches a need to cancel the call to a center when an accident does not occur, and Nanao teaches not sending a signal when not necessary due to a low severity of an accident, it is thus obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teaching of Nanao of in response to determining the severity less than a threshold, to the cancelation of the call to an emergency service yielding predictable results in order to avoid false calling the emergency services for a bumper accident when they can be somewhere else helping someone in need thus improving safety.
Regarding claim 4, Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Omi and Lee and Raz and Nanao teaches the method of claim 3 wherein the no-severe-accident signal is issued manually by a passenger of the vehicle via a user interface on a display of the vehicle or automatically by an on-board computing system of the vehicle (Ruehl [6]-[27] disclosing the issuing of a cancellation of the call automatically).
Nanao teaches in response to determining that the severity level is lower than the severity threshold ([0013] disclosing in response to a degree of crash greater than a threshold, to send post-accident data to an emergency center and thus to not send a signal to a center when the severity is less than the threshold).
Ruehl undteaches a need to cancel the call to a center when an accident does not occur, and Nanao teaches not sending a signal when not necessary due to a low severity of an accident, it is thus obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teaching of Nanao of in response to determining the severity less than a threshold, to the cancelation of the call to an emergency service yielding predictable results in order to avoid false calling the emergency services for a bumper accident when they can be somewhere else helping someone in need thus improving safety.
Regarding claim 12, Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Omi and Lee and Raz and Nanao the method of claim 2 wherein the vehicle and passenger status information after the accident includes at least one of a severity level of the accident, a vehicle location, a number of vehicles involved, a type of vehicles involved, vehicle deformation information, an accident location at the vehicle, object movement information, environment hazard information, a number of passengers in the vehicle, vital signs of passengers in the vehicle, a position of the passengers in the vehicle, injury severity information of the passengers in the vehicle, and a seatbelt status of the passengers in the vehicle (Mueller disclosing the passenger vitals as the passenger status, and vehicle location, speed, acceleration as the post accident information).
The combination of the teaching of Mueller is obvious in order to determine the location of the vehicle aiding the emergency workers and determining the passenger status to bring required medical equipment.
Claims 8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable by Ruehl (DE19922730, from IDS) in view of Mueller (US20150140947) and Omi (US20240067054) and Lee (US20210403009) and Raz (US20220067410) and Hoshikawa (US20190092343).
Regarding claim 8, Ruehl as modified by Mueller and Omi and Lee and Raz teaches the method of claim 1 wherein the external sensors include at least one of a radar sensor, a camera, and a lidar sensor capturing a surrounding of the vehicle ([Ruehl [6]-[16] disclosing the radar to capture surrounding of the vehicle).
Ruehl as modified by Tsunemichi and Mueller does not teach at specified time intervals.
Hoshikawa teaches at specified time intervals ([0097] disclosing the pre-collision control ECU receives data from the radar about objects every predetermined time).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the collection of capturing external information about the environment every predetermined time as taught by Hoshikawa to the pre-accident determination of Ruehl as modified by Mueller yielding predictable results in order to continuously determine when a pre-crash condition exists and control the signals accordingly thus improving the pre-crash detection.
Response to Arguments
101 rejection: with respect to applicant’s arguments regarding prong 2A, the claim requires predicting likelihood of a collision, this is similar to a human predicting that there is a 100 percent an accident will happen based on observing an image sensor information of the vehicle almost hitting a wall. The other limitations are not part of the mental process and are considered extra solution.
Specifically, with respect to applicant argument that a human cannot capture images at time intervals, these image capturing are considered data gathering, the human can only analyze them after they are taken, a human is capable of looking at an image every 1 minute and analyzing a situation, in fact a human analyzes and observes their surrounding while driving each second. The argument about the combination of the analysis is moot since the claim does not require that combination, nevertheless, a human is able of looking at an image of a cabin before an accident and image after an accident and determining the difference in damage is due to an accident. The threshold for an autonomous system is just a trigger to send the post solution data gathering such as notification alert, in an alternative, the threshold is an organization of a human activity wherein the system performs the human activity of sending the alert after the threshold is met.
The argument that the conventional emergency calls typically occur after an accident or provide limited information is not persuasive, at least a plurality of prior art cited determine pre-crash conditions to send accurate information to emergency lines, the claim limitations are apply it level on a computer of mental process using data gathering extra solutions and in an alternative organizing human activities.
With respect to applicant’s arguments that the determination of the status in image is based on image processing, the determination as stated in the claim can be determined by pose which is similar to a human determining if a human was sitting and then fell in an image of pose of a window before and after breaking.
103 rejection: with respect to applicant’s arguments that the amended claim limitation is not taught by Ruehl, the argument is moot since the amended limitations are not rejected by Ruehl.
with respect to applicant’s arguments that the amended claim limitation is not taught by Mueller, the argument is moot since the amended limitations are not rejected by Mueller. However, Mueller teaches the internal cabin imaging of the passenger to determine the state of a passenger as cited in the rejection of claim 1.
The determination of the passenger status based on image segmentation and or the 3 dimensional pose is taught by a new reference Raz, see full rejection above, Raz teaches determining a pose of a passenger prior to a crash and after to determine the intensity of damage based on comparison.
Lee teaches the determination of the vehicle status based on image segmentation, Lee in [0315]-[0352] discloses determining the status of different identified “segmentation” compartments by imaging algorithm to determine an amount of damage after an accident.
The combination of Mueller, Lee, Ruehl, Raz are obvious since all the prior arts are directed to determining the status of a compartment or a passenger of a vehicle thus improving the notification to an emergency with details of injuries, in addition, the combination of Lee is obvious to determine which part is broken after an accident which makes the passenger responsible for in case of insurance or rental processes after an accident. Herein the claim requires a relay station to receive the message thus the combination is obvious to relay a state of a passenger or vehicle without a restriction by the claim limitations, in addition all of the prior art solves a solution of taking images to determine the state of a vehicle and or passenger during accident thus the combination to solve the problem and or substitution is obvious yielding predictable results.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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 nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) 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.
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to
applicant's disclosure. The prior art cited in PTO-892 and not mentioned above disclose related devices and methods.
US20220270180 discloses images before and after an accident to determine a driver was drowsy or drunk.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MOHAMAD O EL SAYAH whose telephone number is (571)270-7734. The examiner can normally be reached on M-Th 6:30-4:30.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ramon Mercado can be reached on (571) 270-5744. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MOHAMAD O EL SAYAH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3658B
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