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 1-12 are pending.
The prior art submitted on May 15, 2025 has 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, 11 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Suzuki et al. (2020/0339081).
As per claim 1, Suzuki et al. disclose a vehicle control apparatus (see figure 1 item CU) mounted on a vehicle, the vehicle including a frictional braking apparatus (see figure 1, item 90) configured to generate a frictional braking force on the vehicle and a driving apparatus (see figure 1, item 1) configured to generate a driving force on the vehicle, the vehicle control apparatus includes a control portion configured to output a result calculated based on input information (see at least paragraphs 0016, 0019), the control portion being configured to acquire a physical quantity relating to a speed of the vehicle (see at least figure 1, item 14; paragraph 0018), acquire a physical quantity relating to a total braking force for decelerating the vehicle (see at least paragraph 0019), and change the physical quantity relating to the speed of the vehicle at which a control instruction intervenes based on the physical quantity relating to the total braking force, when outputting the control instruction for generating the driving force by the driving apparatus in a state that the frictional braking force is generated at the time of deceleration of the vehicle based on the physical quantity relating to the total braking force (see at least figures 2, 6; paragraphs 0021, 0022, 0040-0043).
With respect to claims 11 and 12, the limitations of these claims have been noted in the rejections above. They are therefore considered rejected as set forth above.
Claims 2-10 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
Claims 1, 11 and 12 are rejected. Claims 2-10 are objected.
The following references are cited as being of general interest: Suzuki et al. (8,573,709), Matsumoto et al. (2001/0029419), Yasui et al. (2002/0013652), Kokubo et al. (2007/0018499), Miyazaki et al. (2012/0136547) and Yokoyama et al. (2013/0211644).
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.
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September 1, 2026
/TAN Q NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3661
