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 Amendment
This action is responsive to applicant amendments/remarks received 05/21/2026. Claims 1 and 11 amended and claims 4 and 14 cancelled. Claims 1-3, 5-13 and 15-20 remain pending.
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 1-3, 5-13 and 15-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Smith (US Patent No. 12408004 B2), in view of Qin (CN Patent No. 113612824A).
In re claim 1, Smith teaches A vehicle control system comprising:
a server configured to store a positioning pattern for positioning a relative position of a user terminal with respect to a vehicle (Col 6, lines 49-56: “It is noted that in one embodiment the parameters for the adapter locator may be stored separately from the object or object control, and may be provided to the object or object control based on information about the type of device being located. The object or object control 12 may retrieve the parameters for the adapter locator (e.g., offsets for the device) from the cloud or external server device based on the type of device being located.” and cols 6-7, lines 64-67 and 1-11: “In one embodiment, in a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) PaaK system that uses RSSI measurements, a calibration process is provided for a remote device 20 (e.g., a phone) to determine an average RSSI offset, which may be a value that compensates for the remote device's antenna gain and other construction factors, as averaged across common phone postures (e.g., in hand, in front pocket, in back pocket, in purse, etc.), that contribute to the transmission of signals to/from the object (e.g., a vehicle), relative to a “golden device” also described as a reference device (from which the vehicle's algorithm calibrations can be based). In other words, the result of the calibration process in one embodiment is an offset that is applied to RSSI measurements for each remote device 20 within a vehicle-based RSSI measurement system.”);
the user terminal configured to receive the positioning pattern corresponding to model identification information (Col 16, lines 37-53: “In one embodiment, the reference locator 210 may be tuned such that one or more inputs from each sensor 40 of the system 100 may be associated with an offset for the reference device 200, or for each type of remote device 20 (e.g., each type of phone, at the cost of maintaining offsets for each type of phone). In one embodiment, because antenna performance may vary by frequency (channel), the system 100 may include a reference model (e.g., a reference locator 210) with an offset for each sensor 40 at each frequency with each type of remote device 20. For purposes of disclosure, however, an offset described herein is a global offset, but it should be understood the present disclosure is not so limited and that several offsets or tuning parameters may be utilized in conjunction with inputs obtained from the parts of the system 100, such as one or more sensors 40 and obtained under various circumstances, such as at different reception or transmission frequencies.”) and user identification information from the server (Col 9, lines 13-18: “For purposes of disclosure, being secure is generally considered being confidential (encrypted), authenticated, and integrity-verified. It should be understood, however, that the present disclosure is not so limited, and that the term “secure” may be a subset of these aspects or may include additional aspects related to data security.”) and transmit the positioning pattern to the vehicle (Col 6, lines 56-63: “Alternatively, the device, itself, may provide this information, adapter parameters, to the object or object control 12. The device may have obtained this information from the cloud beforehand or in response to a request from the object 10 or object control 12. In yet another alternative, the actual device may be calibrated to work with the object 10, determine and store adapter parameters, and provide such parameters to the object 10.”); and
the vehicle configured to compare a strength of a wireless communication signal, received signal strength indicator (RSSI) (Col 10, lines 39-50: “The remote device 20 may communicate wirelessly with the object device 50 via a communication link 140. The plurality of sensors 40 may be configured to sniff the communications of the communication link 140 between the remote device 20 and the object device 50 to determine one or more signal characteristics of the communications, such as signal strength or angle of arrival, or both. The determined signal characteristics may be communicated or analyzed and then communicated to the object device 50 via a communication link 130 separate from the communication link 140 between the remote devices 20 and the object device 50.”), received from the user terminal with the positioning pattern to determine the position of the user terminal and control an operation according to a result of the position determination (Cols 9-10, lines 53-67 and 1-13: “The system 100 in the illustrated embodiment may be configured to determine location information in real-time with respect to the remote device 20. In the illustrated embodiments of FIGS. 1 and 2, the user 60 may carry the remote device 20 (e.g., portable device such as a smartphone). The system 100 may facilitate locating the remote device 20 with respect to the object 10 (e.g., a vehicle) in real-time with sufficient precision to determine whether the user 60 is located at a position at which access to the object 10 or permission for an object command should be granted. For instance, in an embodiment where the object 10 is a vehicle, the system 100 may facilitate determining whether the remote device 20 is outside the vehicle but in close proximity, such as within 5 feet, 3 feet, or 2 feet or less, to the driver-side door 14. This determination may form the basis for identifying whether the system 100 should unlock the vehicle. On the other hand, if the system 100 determines the remote device 20 is outside the vehicle and not in close proximity to the driver-side door (e.g., outside the range of 2 feet, 3 feet, or 5 feet), the system 100 may determine to lock the driver-side door. As another example, if the system 100 determines the remote device 20 is in close proximity to the driver-side seat but not in proximity to the passenger seat or the rear seat, the system 100 may determine to enable mobilization of the vehicle. Conversely, if the remote device 20 is determined to be outside close proximity to the driver-side seat, the system 100 may determine to immobilize or maintain immobilization of the vehicle.”).
Smith fails to teach wherein, when the positioning patterns corresponding to the model identification information and the user identification information are not retrieved, the server searches for a default positioning pattern corresponding to the model identification information and transmits the default positioning pattern to the user terminal.
However, Qin teaches wherein, when the positioning patterns corresponding to the model identification information and the user identification information are not retrieved, the server searches for a default positioning pattern corresponding to the model identification information and transmits the default positioning pattern to the user terminal (Abstract: “The invention claims a management method of calibration data, system, medium and device, comprising: using N different types of mobile phone device for vehicle end locating calibration, obtaining the corresponding N sets of positioning calibration data; calculating and obtaining the basic positioning calibration data of the current vehicle according to the N sets of positioning calibration data; the cloud server stores the mobile phone type, vehicle type, positioning calibration data and hash value of the positioning calibration data in the database; after the application program logs in, the application program sends request to the cloud server according to the current mobile phone model number and the vehicle type of the user vehicle; the cloud server judges whether the current mobile phone device terminal performs the vehicle end location calibration according to the current mobile phone type; when the mobile phone device terminal has the vehicle end location calibration; obtaining the positioning calibration data as the issued calibration data; when the mobile phone device end does not perform the vehicle end positioning calibration, then obtaining the basic calibration data as sending calibration data; and sending the calibration data to the mobile phone device end.”; examiner notes the new limitation of "retrieving" changes the original scope causing new grounds of rejection. ).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Smith to incorporate the teachings of Qin to provide wherein, when the positioning patterns corresponding to the model identification information and the user identification information are not retrieved, the server searches for a default positioning pattern corresponding to the model identification information and transmits the default positioning pattern to the user terminal with the System And Method Of Calibration For Establishing Real-time Location of Smith. Doing so enables adapting different mobile phone to obtain better positioning performance, as recognized by Qin (Page 2, para [0003]).
Method claim 11 is rejected for the same reasons as system claim 1 for having similar limitations and being similar in scope.
In re claim 2, Smith and Qin teach all of the limitations of claim 1 stated above where Smith further teaches wherein the positioning pattern includes a strength range of the wireless communication signal at front, rear, left, and right sides of the vehicle (Col 4, lines 33-41: “The table may also include truth information or truth data for each sample. The truth information may correspond to one or more outputs, which may include an expected output, an observed position, or an observed parameter, or a combination thereof. For example, the observed position may pertain to an actual position, or being in a particular zone (e.g., inside, outside, left, right, front or rear of a vehicle), orientation, or environment (e.g., in a purse or a person's hand), or any combination thereof.”).
Method claim 12 is rejected for the same reasons as system claim 2 for having similar limitations and being similar in scope.
In re claim 3, Smith and Qin teach all of the limitations of claim 1 stated above where Smith further teaches wherein the server searches for the positioning patterns corresponding to the model identification information and the user identification information and transmits the positioning patterns to the user terminal upon request from the user terminal (Col 6, lines 49-63: “It is noted that in one embodiment the parameters for the adapter locator may be stored separately from the object or object control, and may be provided to the object or object control based on information about the type of device being located. The object or object control 12 may retrieve the parameters for the adapter locator (e.g., offsets for the device) from the cloud or external server device based on the type of device being located. Alternatively, the device, itself, may provide this information, adapter parameters, to the object or object control 12. The device may have obtained this information from the cloud beforehand or in response to a request from the object 10 or object control 12. In yet another alternative, the actual device may be calibrated to work with the object 10, determine and store adapter parameters, and provide such parameters to the object 10.” and col 9, lines 13-18: “For purposes of disclosure, being secure is generally considered being confidential (encrypted), authenticated, and integrity-verified. It should be understood, however, that the present disclosure is not so limited, and that the term “secure” may be a subset of these aspects or may include additional aspects related to data security.”).
Method claim 13 is rejected for the same reasons as system claim 3 for having similar limitations and being similar in scope.
In re claim 5, Smith and Qin teach all of the limitations of claim 1 stated above where Smith further teaches wherein, when the result of position determination is valid, the vehicle performs a passive-entry-passive-start (PEPS) control operation (Cols 9-10, lines 63-67 and 1-13: “For instance, in an embodiment where the object 10 is a vehicle, the system 100 may facilitate determining whether the remote device 20 is outside the vehicle but in close proximity, such as within 5 feet, 3 feet, or 2 feet or less, to the driver-side door 14. This determination may form the basis for identifying whether the system 100 should unlock the vehicle. On the other hand, if the system 100 determines the remote device 20 is outside the vehicle and not in close proximity to the driver-side door (e.g., outside the range of 2 feet, 3 feet, or 5 feet), the system 100 may determine to lock the driver-side door. As another example, if the system 100 determines the remote device 20 is in close proximity to the driver-side seat but not in proximity to the passenger seat or the rear seat, the system 100 may determine to enable mobilization of the vehicle. Conversely, if the remote device 20 is determined to be outside close proximity to the driver-side seat, the system 100 may determine to immobilize or maintain immobilization of the vehicle.”).
Method claim 15 is rejected for the same reasons as system claim 5 for having similar limitations and being similar in scope.
In re claim 6, Smith and Qin teach all of the limitations of claim 1 stated above where Smith further teaches wherein, when the result of position determination is invalid, the vehicle transmits a first update request of the positioning pattern to the user terminal (Col 17, lines 41-58: “When the reference locator 210 is calibrated or trained for a vehicle using the “golden device” (the “vehicle calibration”), the calibration of the reference locator 210 may be tested using a procedure and scored—i.e., the reference locator 210 after training may be validated to determine it operates to yield one or more outputs substantially similar to the truth data under a variety of conditions within an separable degree of confidence. If the score is determined to be inadequate during validation, training or calibration of the reference locator 210 may be updated until the reference locator 210 is acceptably scored. Given this framework, the method in one embodiment may be conducted in a manner: a) That the vehicle calibration test environment is controlled in some way; b) That the vehicle calibration test procedure is repeatable; and c) That a scoring system or validation system exists for the vehicle calibration test results.”).
Method claim 16 is rejected for the same reasons as system claim 6 for having similar limitations and being similar in scope.
In re claim 7, Smith and Qin teach all of the limitations of claim 6 stated above where Smith further teaches wherein, when the result of position determination is invalid, the vehicle generates a new positioning pattern using strengths of signals measured in the position determination process and transmits the new positioning pattern to the user terminal (Cols 17-18, lines 51-67 and 1-8: “Given this framework, the method in one embodiment may be conducted in a manner: a) That the vehicle calibration test environment is controlled in some way; b) That the vehicle calibration test procedure is repeatable; and c) That a scoring system or validation system exists for the vehicle calibration test results. With regard to (a), in the illustrated embodiment, it is not necessary for the test environment to be a vacuum, rather, the test environment may be configured to be consistent for each procedure that is executed (e.g., an open field, in a particular lab, in a parking lot in a particular configuration, etc.) to yield one or more samples. With regard to (b), repeatable in this sense means not just the steps, but also in the way the steps are performed and the positions and orientations in which the device is held. Humans have a tendency to introduce variation in these conditions, even in a simple back-to-back test where the intention is to hold the phone in a static location and orientation, let alone across the spectrum of positions used to test an entire vehicle, in tests that are performed days or weeks apart. For this reason, the test conditions may be recorded and implemented in conjunction with a fixture to facilitate repeatability.”).
Method claim 17 is rejected for the same reasons as system claim 7 for having similar limitations and being similar in scope.
In re claim 8, Smith and Qin teach all of the limitations of claim 7 stated above where Smith further teaches wherein the vehicle applies a strength of a signal having the smallest value among the strengths of the signals measured in the position determination process to generate the new positioning pattern (Cols 25-26, lines 64-67 and 1-20: “Although aspects of the present disclosure directed to training the adapter locator 310 are described primarily in conjunction with doing so in a controlled environment using a test or device 300 representative of a type of device provided to a user, the present disclosure is not so limited. The adapter locator 310 may be trained in conjunction with a user's actual remote device 20. The user may be provided a set of conditions and instructions to facilitate executing the method 3000 of training the adapter locator 310. Alternatively, the system 100 may be configured to train the adapter locator 310 based on one or more samples and truth information obtained with respect to actions or events that occur with respect to the object 10. For instance, in the context of a vehicle, if the door is opened, the system 100 may assume that the remote device 20 is in close proximity to the vehicle (e.g., as truth information), and develop an offset or affect parameters by training the adapter locator 310 to facilitate correlation between the one or more signal characteristics obtained at the time the door was opened. Likewise, ignition of the vehicle, or proximity detection of a driver in the vehicle seat, may be used as a basis for determining truth information with respect to the remote device 20 and allow training of the adapter locator 310 based on one or more samples obtained at the same time.”).
Method claim 18 is rejected for the same reasons as system claim 8 for having similar limitations and being similar in scope.
In re claim 9, Smith and Qin teach all of the limitations of claim 7 stated above where Smith further teaches wherein the user terminal transmits a second update request including the model identification information, the user identification information, and the new positioning pattern to the server (Col 26, lines 28-46: “With such a device calibration approach (i.e a user-performed calibration), the system 100 may be configured to compute the offset, either in real-time or at the end of the test procedure, based on the “golden device” calibration data or reference locator 210, in addition to providing the user interfaces on the user's phone and communications modes to perform said calibration procedure. It should also be noted that with such an approach, millions of users may be duplicating the effort of determining calibrations for remote devices 10. In one embodiment, the calibration data may be provided via a network to a central or distributed database of calibration information, thereby enabling training of an adapter locator 310 or a reference locator 210, or both, using data obtained under a variety of conditions for a variety of remote devices 20 and for a variety of objects 10. In other words, a significant amount of calibration data may be provided by potentially millions of users to the database for analysis and tuning of the reference locator 210 or the adapter locator 310, or both.”).
Method claim 19 is rejected for the same reasons as system claim 9 for having similar limitations and being similar in scope.
In re claim 10, Smith and Qin teach all of the limitations of claim 9 stated above where Smith further teaches wherein the server updates the stored positioning patterns using the information included in the second update request (Col 26, lines 37-41: “In one embodiment, the calibration data may be provided via a network to a central or distributed database of calibration information, thereby enabling training of an adapter locator 310 or a reference locator 210, or both, using data obtained under a variety of conditions for a variety of remote devices 20 and for a variety of objects 10. In other words, a significant amount of calibration data may be provided by potentially millions of users to the database for analysis and tuning of the reference locator 210 or the adapter locator 310, or both.”).
Method claim 20 is rejected for the same reasons as system claim 10 for having similar limitations and being similar in scope.
Response to Arguments
Applicant arguments received 05/21/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
On page 9 of applicant remarks, applicant argues the rejection of claim 4 now amended into claim 1:
“Amended claim 1 is directed to a configuration wherein the user terminal receives a positioning pattern corresponding to model identification information and user identification information from the server; however, when the corresponding pattern is not retrieved, the server searches for a default positioning pattern corresponding to the model identification information and transmits it to the user terminal. Claim 11 is amended to include a similar recitation.
In comparison, Smith discloses acquiring parameters for an adapter locator based on the type of device whose location is to be determined from a cloud or external server (paragraph [0047]), and that user calibration data is provided to a database and used for updates (paragraph [0162]). Smith merely teaches a uniform parameter application method based purely on the terminal device type. However, Smith neither teaches nor suggests the claimed hierarchical and organic fallback mechanism. Smith fails to disclose prioritizing the search for a customized pattern using a combination of both user identification information and model identification information, and, if that search fails, switching to provide a default pattern utilizing only the model identification information.
By implementing this conditional, hierarchical pattern search and default pattern provision, the present invention provides stable positioning and vehicle control even in situations where no user-customized data exists (e.g., during an initial pairing process). This is not disclosed in Smith, nor could it have been easily derived from Smith's simple device-type-based parameter acquisition.”
Examiner notes the new limitation of "retrieved" (vs “searched”) changes the original scope of claim 4, now incorporated into claim 1, causing new grounds of rejection. “Searched” refers to the process of looking for information. A search may or may not find the information. “Retrieved” refers to obtaining or accessing information after it has been found or otherwise identified. Therefore, applicant arguments are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection as necessitated by amendment.
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.
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/JAMES E MUNION/Examiner, Art Unit 2688 07/24/2026
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