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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 1/2/2025 was filed. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
Claim elements in this application that use the word “means” (or “step for”) are presumed to invoke 35 U.S.C. 112(f) except as otherwise indicated in an Office action. Similarly, claim elements that do not use the word “means” (or “step for”) are presumed not to invoke 35 U.S.C. 112(f) except as otherwise indicated in an Office action.
Claim limitation “a traffic light determination unit configured to”, “other-vehicle behavior determination unit configured to”, and “passableness determination unit configured to” has/have been interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because it uses/they use a generic placeholder “unit” with a descriptor label coupled with functional language “configured for” without reciting sufficient structure to achieve the function. Furthermore, the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier (the modifiers are just labels without structure).
Since the claim limitation(s) invokes 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, claim(s) 1-3 has/have been interpreted to cover the corresponding structure described in the specification that achieves the claimed function, and equivalents thereof.
A review of the specification shows that the following appears to be the corresponding structure described in the specification for the 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph limitation: “a traffic light determination unit configured to”, “other-vehicle behavior determination unit configured to”, and “passableness determination unit configured to” are interpreted to included in the process (applicant’s specification 0025) the wording makes it so the units may be merely software and are rejected in a separate 101 based on this interpretation.
If applicant wishes to provide further explanation or dispute the examiner’s interpretation of the corresponding structure, applicant must identify the corresponding structure with reference to the specification by page and line number, and to the drawing, if any, by reference characters in response to this Office action.
If applicant does not intend to have the claim limitation(s) treated under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112 , sixth paragraph, applicant may amend the claim(s) so that it/they will clearly not invoke 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, or present a sufficient showing that the claim recites/recite sufficient structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function to preclude application of 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph.
For more information, see MPEP § 2173 et seq. and Supplementary Examination Guidelines for Determining Compliance With 35 U.S.C. 112 and for Treatment of Related Issues in Patent Applications, 76 FR 7162, 7167 (Feb. 9, 2011).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 1-3 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 1-3 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being incomplete for omitting essential structural cooperative relationships of elements, such omission amounting to a gap between the necessary structural connections. See MPEP § 2172.01. The omitted structural cooperative relationships are: no structure is give see claim interpretation section for why this is the case.
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.
As to claims 1-3, the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because they maybe directed to software per se. See claim interpretation regarding units. Software is not patent eligible.
MPEP 2106 “As the courts' definitions of machines, manufactures and compositions of matter indicate, a product must have a physical or tangible form in order to fall within one of these statutory categories. Digitech, 758 F.3d at 1348, 111 USPQ2d at 1719. Thus, the Federal Circuit has held that a product claim to an intangible collection of information, even if created by human effort, does not fall within any statutory category. Digitech, 758 F.3d at 1350, 111 USPQ2d at 1720 (claimed “device profile” comprising two sets of data did not meet any of the categories because it was neither a process nor a tangible product). Similarly, software expressed as code or a set of instructions detached from any medium is an idea without physical embodiment. See Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp., 550 U.S. 437, 449, 82 USPQ2d 1400, 1407 (2007); see also Benson, 409 U.S. 67, 175 USPQ2d 675 (An "idea" is not patent eligible). Thus, a product claim to a software program that does not also contain at least one structural limitation (such as a “means plus function” limitation) has no physical or tangible form, and thus does not fall within any statutory category.”
Alice type rejection – Abstract Idea Mental Process
As to claim 1-3 the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
101 Analysis – Step 1
Claim(s) 1-3 is/are directed to a mental process of determining a motion trajectory (apparatus for claim 1-3).
101 Analysis – Step 2A, Prong 1
Regarding Prong I of the Step 2A analysis in the 2019 PEG, the claims are to be analyzed to determine whether they recite subject matter that falls within one of the follow groups of abstract ideas: a) mathematical concepts, b) certain methods of organizing human activity, and/or c) mental processes.
Independent claim 1 includes limitations that recite an abstract idea – mental process (emphasized below) and will be used as a representative claim for the remainder of the 101 rejection. Claim 1 recites:
A vehicle determination device comprising:
a traffic light determination unit configured to determine whether a traffic light ahead of a vehicle indicates that the vehicle is passable through the traffic light;
an other-vehicle behavior determination unit configured to determine behavior of another vehicle present around the vehicle; and
a passableness determination unit configured to, when determination is made that the traffic light indicates that the vehicle is passable through the traffic light, determine whether the vehicle is passable through the traffic light based on the behavior of the other vehicle present around the vehicle. (where the underlined portions are the “additional limitations” while the bolded portions continue to represent the “abstract idea”)
The examiner submits that the foregoing bolded limitation(s) constitute a “mental process” because under its broadest reasonable interpretation, the claim covers performance of the limitation in the human mind. For example, “determining…” in the context of this claim encompasses a person (navigator) looking at data collected and forming a simple judgement. Accordingly, the claim recites at least one abstract idea – mental process.
101 Analysis – Step 2A, Prong 2
Regarding Prong II of the Step 2A analysis in the 2019 PEG, the claims are to be analyzed to determine whether the claim, as a whole, integrates the abstract into a practical application. As noted in the 2019 PEG, it must be determined whether any additional elements in the claim beyond the abstract idea integrate the exception into a practical application in a manner that imposes a meaningful limit on the judicial exception. The courts have indicated that additional elements merely using a computer to implement an abstract idea, adding insignificant extra solution activity, or generally linking use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use do not integrate a judicial exception into a “practical application.”
In the present case, the additional limitations beyond the above-noted abstract idea are as follows (where the underlined portions are the “additional limitations” while the bolded portions continue to represent the “abstract idea”) See above.
For the following reason(s), the examiner submits that the above identified additional limitations do not integrate the above-noted abstract idea into a practical application. For argument if claim 1 included a processing apparatus that “processor” would merely describes how to generally “apply” the otherwise mental judgements in a generic or general-purpose processing environment. The processing is recited at a high level of generality and merely automates the determining process steps.
101 Analysis – Step 2B
Regarding Step 2B of the 2019 PEG, representative independent claim 1 does not include additional elements (considered both individually and as an ordered combination) that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception for the same reasons to those discussed above with respect to determining that the claim does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. As discussed above with respect to integration of the mental process into a practical application, the additional element of using a processor to perform the determining amounts to nothing more than applying the exception using a generic computer component. Generally applying an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept.
Further, a conclusion that an additional element is insignificant extra-solution activity in Step 2A should be re-evaluated in Step 2B to determine if they are more than what is well understood, routine, conventional activity in the field. The additional limitations of processing with a processing apparatus are well-understood, routine, and conventional activities because the specification does not provide any indication that the processing apparatus is anything other than a conventional computer. MPEP 2106.05(d)(II), and the cases cited therein, including Intellectual Ventures I, LLC v. Symantec Corp., 838 F.3d 1307, 1321 (Fed. Cir. 2016), TLI Communications LLC v. AV Auto. LLC, 823 F.3d 607, 610 (Fed. Cir. 2016), and OIP Techs., Inc., v. Amazon.com, Inc., 788 F.3d 1359, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2015), indicate that mere collection or receipt of data over a network is a well‐understood, routine, and conventional function when it is claimed in a merely generic manner.
Dependent claim(s) 2-3 do not recite any further limitations that cause the claim(s) to be patent eligible. Rather, the limitations of dependent claims are directed toward additional aspects of the judicial exception and/or well-understood, routine and conventional additional elements that do not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application because they merely add to the mental processing. Therefore, dependent claims 2-3 are not patent eligible under the same rationale as provided for in the rejection of independent claims 1.
Therefore, claim(s) 1-3 is/are ineligible under 35 USC §101. Examiner recommends a controlling step.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1)/102(a)(2) as being anticipated by US 20130110371 A1 hereinafter Ogawa.
As to claim 1, Ogawa discloses a vehicle determination device comprising:
a traffic light determination unit configured to determine whether a traffic light ahead of a vehicle indicates that the vehicle is passable through the traffic light [Ogawa: Fig. 4 S12-18, 0043, traffic light information is transmitted 0043 and then the calculations in fig 4 are performed.];
an other-vehicle behavior determination unit configured to determine behavior of another vehicle present around the vehicle [Ogawa: 0054 “The ECU 20 analyzes the image, acquired by the in-vehicle camera 34, to acquire information on the state in front of the vehicle 10, that is, information whether another vehicle 10 is ahead of the vehicle,”, 0083 “For example, the driving assisting apparatus 19 may use the in-vehicle camera 34 or a millimeter radar to determine whether there is another vehicle ahead of the host vehicle and exchange the order of the processing based on the result; that is, the driving assisting apparatus 19 may execute the processing in step S22 before the processing in step S18 if there is another vehicle close to and ahead of the host vehicle, and the processing in step S18 before the processing in step S22 if there is no such vehicle.”; 0040 “The driving assist information is information obtained by detecting the relation between the vehicle 10, in which the driving assisting apparatus 19 is mounted, and another vehicle 10” the vehicle behavior contemplated includes a location and the relation between the vehicles. So relative dynamics is contemplated i.e. Relative acceleration/speed/position/jerk] and
a passableness determination unit configured to, when determination is made that the traffic light indicates that the vehicle is passable through the traffic light [Ogawa: 0064-0066, S20 and S24], determine whether the vehicle is passable through the traffic light based on the behavior of the other vehicle present around the vehicle [Ogawa: 0083 determines passability based on the other vehicle as the other vehicle determination is included in the making and order of the steps in Fig. 4].
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As to claim 2, Ogawa discloses wherein the passableness determination unit is configured to determine that the vehicle is startable when the vehicle is stopped at the traffic light [Ogawa: Fig. 5 the rejoin between 74b and 76b, determination is made that the traffic light indicates that the vehicle is passable through the traffic light [Ogawa: Fi. 4 S18-S26], and determination is made that another vehicle that travels in the same direction as or in an opposite direction to a direction of the vehicle has started [Ogawa: 0083 ahead is same direction].
As to claim 3, Ogawa discloses wherein the passableness determination unit is configured to determine that the vehicle is passable through the traffic light when the vehicle attempts to pass through the traffic light during traveling [Ogawa: Fig. 4], determination is made that the traffic light indicates that the vehicle is passable through the traffic light [Ogawa: S18 and S22], and determination is made that another vehicle that travels in the same direction as a direction of the vehicle does not decelerate by a predetermined value or more [Ogawa: 0040 detecting the relation between the vehicle would include the relation of dynamics.].
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
JP 5088349 B2 specifically teaches the interaction between to vehicles. Here, if it is determined that the vehicle does not enter the main road at the junction or does not turn right from the main road, the routine exits without doing anything. On the other hand, if it is determined that the vehicle enters the main road at the junction or turns right from the main road, priority is given in step S103 by communication with the navigation system 18 or a camera provided at the junction or intersection. Acquire the running status of other vehicles and oncoming vehicles on the track (main track). In step S104, based on the acquired traveling conditions of the other vehicle and the oncoming vehicle, the existence establishment of the other vehicle (oncoming vehicle) at the junction or intersection is estimated on the assumption of constant speed continuation. In step S105, it is assumed that the host vehicle maintains the current speed, and the time at which the host vehicle reaches the junction or intersection is estimated. Then, in step S106, as shown in FIG. 12, first, the existence establishment A of the other vehicle (oncoming vehicle) with respect to the time when the own vehicle reaches the junction or intersection is extracted, and then the own vehicle is the junction. Or the existence establishment B of the other vehicle (oncoming vehicle) immediately before the time when the vehicle reaches the intersection (for example, 1 second before), and finally, immediately after the time when the vehicle reaches the junction or the intersection (for example, 1 The existence establishment C of another vehicle (oncoming vehicle) is extracted.
The examiner has pointed out particular references contained in the prior art of record in the body of this action for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. Applicant should consider the entire prior art as applicable as to the limitations of the claims. It is respectfully requested from the applicant, in preparing the response, to consider fully the entire references as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the examiner.
Inquiry
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to FREDERICK M BRUSHABER whose telephone number is (313)446-4839. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8am-5pm.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Hunter Lonsberry can be reached at (571) 272-7298. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/FREDERICK M BRUSHABER/
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 3665
/FREDERICK M BRUSHABER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3665