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 .
DETAIL ACTION
Notice to Applicant(s)
This application has been examined. Claims 1-20 are pending.
The prior arts submitted on January 14, 2025 and August 25, 2026 have been considered.
Receipt is acknowledged of papers submitted under 35 U.S.C. § 119, which have been placed of record in the file.
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, 5, 10, 11, 15 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Park (2020/0201323).
As per claim 1, Park discloses an autonomous driving vehicle (see the abstract) which includes at least one sensor configured to sense surrounding environment of the vehicle to generate surrounding environment information (see figure 1, item 110) ; a processor configured to monitor state of the vehicle to generate vehicle state information and to control autonomous driving of the vehicle (see the abstract; figure 1, item 130); and a controller configured to control operation of the vehicle according to control of the processor (see at least figure 1, item 170), wherein the processor is configured to sense whether minimal risk maneuver is needed based on at least one among the surrounding environment information and the vehicle state information during autonomous driving of the vehicle (see at least figure 2, item 150a; paragraphs 0042, 0053, 0066, 0072); and control at least one function of the vehicle such that the vehicle is stopped on a road shoulder when the minimal risk maneuver is needed (see at least figure 4; paragraphs 0017, 0018, 0065-0070).
As per claim 5, Park discloses that the processor is configured to obtain information on the size of the shoulder of a road from map data (see at least figure 5, step S330; paragraphs 0043, 0079).
As per claim 10, Park discloses that the at least one function comprises at least one lane detection, or steering control in at least paragraphs 0018, 0029, 0030, 0054 and 0074.
With respect to claims 11 and 20, the limitations of these claims have been noted in the rejections above. They are therefore considered rejected as set forth above.
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) A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, nowwitstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 2-5 and 12-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Park as applied to the claims above, and further in view of Oh et al. (2014/0111369).
As per claim 2, Park discloses the claimed invention as discussed above except for the processor is configured to determine a road shoulder stop type to be a type of the minimal risk maneuver when the minimal risk maneuver is needed, and perform, based on a size of the shoulder of a road, full-shoulder stop by which the vehicle stops in a state in which the vehicle as a whole is positioned on the shoulder of a road, or perform half-shoulder stop by which the vehicle stops in a state in which only some of the vehicle is positioned on the shoulder of a road. However, such limitations are taught in at least the abstract, figure 3, paragraphs 0006, 0007, 0012, 0015, 0019, 0041, 0053 and 0054 of the Oh et al. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the invention to incorporate the teaching of Oh et al. into the system of Park with a reasonable expectation of success in order to provide the system with the enhanced capacity of making the emergency stop depends on the size of the should or safe zone.
As per claim 3, Oh et al. disclose that the processor is configured to compare a size of the shoulder of a road with a specified size, control the vehicle to perform the full-shoulder stop when the size of the shoulder of a road is equal to or greater than the specified size, and control the vehicle to perform the half-shoulder stop when the size of the shoulder of a road is equal to or smaller than the specified size, and wherein the specified size is a predetermined size according to a size of the vehicle or a type of the vehicle (see at least paragraphs 0013, 0052-0054).
As per claim 4, Oh et al. disclose that the processor is configured to control the vehicle to be moved to an outer-most lane after the road shoulder stop type is determined to be the type of the minimal risk maneuver, and measure the size of the shoulder of a road based on data collected from at least one sensor in a state in which the vehicle is positioned in the outermost lane (see at least figures 3 and 4).
With respect to claims 12-14, the limitations of these claims have been noted in the rejections above. They are therefore considered rejected as set forth above.
Claims 6-9 and 16-19 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
All claims are rejected.
The following references are cited as being of general interest: Tay et al. (2019/0196481), Kato et al. (2020/0307646), Jeon et al. (2020/0369294), Kim et al. (2021/0064041), Motoyama (2022/0340130).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TAN QUANG NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571) 272-6966. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday to Thursday from 7:00am to 5:30pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Peter Nolan, can be reached at 570-270-7016.
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September 16, 2026
/TAN Q NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3661
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