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 .
Status of the Claims
Claims 1-5 were previously pending. Claims 1 and 4-5 were amended, and new claims 6-8 were added in the reply filed November 6, 2025. Claims 1-9 are currently pending.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's amendments overcome the objection to the Title and it is withdrawn.
Applicant's arguments filed with respect to the rejection made under § 101 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Applicant argues that the claims do not recite an abstract idea at Step 2A – Prong One. "These recitations are improvements in facilitating dispatch of a suitable vehicle for a degree of discomfort which a user may induce." Remarks, 11. Even under Applicant's characterization, this fits into the category of certain methods of organizing human activities because it is improving the fulfillment of a service for a person (i.e., in the terminology of the 2019 Revised Guidance, commercial interactions (including business relations); managing personal behavior) rather than an improvement to the computer itself or any other technology. "Specifically, the amended claims as a whole do not fall into any of fundamental economic principles or practices; commercial or legal interactions; managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions." Remarks, 11. The claims are evaluated as a whole at Steps 2A – Prong Two and 2B. "Prong One asks does the claim recite an abstract idea, law of nature, or natural phenomenon?" MPEP 2106.04 II. A. 1.
Applicant's arguments regarding Steps 2A – Prong Two and 2B (Remarks, 13-15) are not persuasive because they only set forth restatements of the claims and a conclusion that they are eligible. As such, they only amount to a general allegation of eligibility without rebutting the findings made in the rejection. Accordingly, the rejection is maintained.
Applicant's amendments overcome the rejections made under § 102. The closest prior art of record, cited both before and below, does not teach or fairly suggest the specific combination of limitations in any reasonable way.
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 1-9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter (abstract idea without significantly more). Claims are eligible for patent protection under § 101 if they are in one of the four statutory categories and not directed to a judicial exception to patentability. Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 573 U.S. 208 (2014). Claims 1-9, each considered as a whole and as an ordered combination, are directed to a judicial exception (i.e., an abstract idea) without significantly more.
MPEP 2106 Step 2A – Prong 1:
The claims recite an abstract idea reflected in the representative functions of the independent claims—including:
determining, among a plurality of candidate vehicles that can be dispatched and that are each autonomously controlled vehicles, a candidate vehicle whose discomfort tolerance indicating an allowable degree of discomfort for the candidate vehicle is higher than a discomfort influence degree indicating a degree of influence on discomfort which a user may induce while the user gets on any one of the plurality of candidate vehicles as a vehicle to be dispatched to the user;
dispatching the vehicle to a pick-up location of the user via a pickup instruction; and
in response to receiving the pickup instruction, the dispatched vehicle moves to the pickup location along a traveling route,
wherein the discomfort tolerance is determined at least by determining whether the user has performed a smoking behavior or a eating and drinking behavior by inputting a series of in-vehicle images captured in chronological order so as to detect the smoking behavior and the eating and drinking behavior, and transmit an influence information including an odor index value as the discomfort influence degree.
These limitations taken together qualify as a certain method of organizing human activities because they recite collecting, analyzing, and outputting information for coordinating the matching of candidate vehicles to people requesting them based on their discomfort-inducing level (i.e., in the terminology of the 2019 Revised Guidance, commercial interactions (including business relations); managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities). Additionally, it covers purely mental processes (e.g., a person observing vehicle usage history and user discomfort-inducing degrees, evaluating them, and arriving at a judgment on a vehicle to dispatch to the user).
MPEP 2106 Step 2A – Prong 2:
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because there are no meaningful limitations that transform the exception into a patent eligible application. The elements merely serve to provide a general link to a particular technological environment (e.g., computers and the Internet) in which to carry out the judicial exception (memory, processor, non-transitory recording medium that stores a dispatch management computer program for causing a computer to execute a process, electronic control unit, in-vehicle camera, classifier trained in advance, neural network including a recursive structure, dispatch management device, wireless communication, executing autonomous driving control of the vehicle—all recited at a high level of generality). Although they have and execute instructions to perform the abstract idea itself (e.g., modules, program code, etc. to automate the abstract idea), this also does not serve to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application as it merely amounts to instructions to "apply it."
Aside from such instructions to implement the abstract idea, they are solely used for generic computer operations (e.g., receiving, storing, retrieving, transmitting data), employing the computer as a tool. See FairWarning IP, LLC v. Iatric Sys., Inc., 839 F.3d 1089, 1096 (Fed. Cir. 2016) ("[T]he use of generic computer elements like a microprocessor or user interface do not alone transform an otherwise abstract idea into patent-eligible subject matter.") (citing DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P., 773 F.3d 1245,1256 (Fed. Cir. 2014)) (emphasis added). That the claimed system is dispatching autonomous vehicles to perform a commercial service can also be viewed as a field-of-use of the invention. An autonomous vehicle executing autonomous driving control of the vehicle is a generic ability of any of those machines. Additionally, the in-vehicle camera can be viewed as performing extra-solution data gathering activities (i.e., capturing images used to make the evaluations on what vehicle to dispatch to a person). See MPEP 2106.05(g).
The claims do not set forth improvements to another technological field or the functioning of the computer itself and instead use computer elements as tools to improve the functioning of the abstract idea identified above. Looking at the additional limitations and abstract idea as an ordered combination and as a whole adds nothing that is not already present when looking at the elements taken individually. There is no indication that the combination of elements improves the functioning of a computer or improves any other technology. Rather than any meaningful limits, their collective functions merely provide generic computer implementation of the abstract idea identified in Prong One. None of the additional elements recited "offers a meaningful limitation beyond generally linking 'the use of the [method] to a particular technological environment,' that is, implementation via computers." Alice Corp., slip op. at 16 (citing Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 610, 611 (U.S. 2010)). See also Recentive Analytics, Inc. v. Fox. Corp., Fed Cir. No. 2023-2437 (Apr. 18, 2025) (slip op. at 18) ("patents that do no more than claim the application of generic machine learning to new data environments, without disclosing improvements to the machine learning models to be applied, are patent ineligible under § 101.").
At the levels of abstraction described above, the claims do not readily lend themselves to a finding that they are directed to a nonabstract idea. Therefore, the analysis proceeds to step 2B. See BASCOM Global Internet v. AT&T Mobility LLC, 827 F.3d 1341, 1349 (Fed. Cir. 2016) ("The Enfish claims, understood in light of their specific limitations, were unambiguously directed to an improvement in computer capabilities. Here, in contrast, the claims and their specific limitations do not readily lend themselves to a step-one finding that they are directed to a nonabstract idea. We therefore defer our consideration of the specific claim limitations’ narrowing effect for step two.") (citations omitted).
MPEP 2106 Step 2B:
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception for the same reasons as presented in Step 2A Prong 2 (i.e., they amount to nothing more than a general link to a particular technological environment and instructions to apply it there). Moreover, the additional elements recited are known and conventional computing elements (memory, processor, non-transitory recording medium that stores a dispatch management computer program for causing a computer to execute a process, electronic control unit, in-vehicle camera, classifier trained in advance, neural network including a recursive structure, dispatch management device, wireless communication, executing autonomous driving control of the vehicle—see published Specification ¶¶ 0021, 23, 26, 34-35, 58 describing these at a high level of generality and in a manner that indicates that the additional elements are sufficiently well-known that the specification does not need to describe the particulars of such additional elements to satisfy the statutory disclosure requirements).
The Federal Circuit has recognized that "an invocation of already-available computers that are not themselves plausibly asserted to be an advance, for use in carrying out improved mathematical calculations, amounts to a recitation of what is 'well-understood, routine, [and] conventional.'" SAP Am., Inc. v. InvestPic, LLC, 890 F.3d 1016, 1023 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (alteration in original) (citing Mayo v. Prometheus, 566 U.S. 66, 73 (2012)). Apart from the instructions to implement the abstract idea, they only serve to perform well-understood functions (e.g., receiving, storing, retrieving, transmitting data—see Specification above as well as Alice Corp.; Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Symantec Corp., 838 F.3d 1307 (Fed. Cir. 2016); and Versata Dev. Group, Inc. v. SAP Am., Inc., 793 F.3d 1306, 1334 (Fed. Cir. 2015) covering the well-known nature of these basic computer functions).
"The use and arrangement of conventional and generic computer components recited in the claims—such as a database, user terminal, and server— do not transform the claim, as a whole, into 'significantly more' than a claim to the abstract idea itself. We have repeatedly held that such invocations of computers and networks that are not even arguably inventive are insufficient to pass the test of an inventive concept in the application of an abstract idea." Credit Acceptance Corp. v. Westlake Services, 859 F.3d 1044, 1056 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (citations and quotation marks omitted). Looking at the limitations as an ordered combination adds nothing that is not already present when looking at the elements taken individually. There is no indication that the combination of elements improves the functioning of a computer or improves any other technology. Their collective functions merely provide conventional computer implementation.
Dependent Claims Step 2A:
The limitations of the dependent claims merely set forth further refinements of the abstract idea without changing the analysis already presented (i.e., they merely narrow the abstract idea without adding any new additional elements beyond it). Additionally, for the same reasons as above, the limitations fail to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they use the same general technological environment and instructions to implement the abstract idea as the independent claims (e.g., generic processor).
Dependent Claims Step 2B:
The dependent claims merely use the same general technological environment and instructions to implement the abstract idea. They do not add any new additional elements to be analyzed here. Accordingly, they are not directed to significantly more than the exception itself, and are not eligible subject matter under § 101.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Wunche, III, et al., U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2020/0151476 (Reference A of the attached PTO-892) relates to discomfort-based vehicle dispatch.
Mishra, et al., In-cabin monitoring system for autonomous vehicles, Sensors, Vol. 22, No. 12, 2022 (Reference U of the attached PTO-892) relates to discomfort-based vehicle dispatch.
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DANIEL VETTER whose telephone number is (571)270-1366. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00-6:00.
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/DANIEL VETTER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3628