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 1-4 are pending.
The prior art submitted on June 03, 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 and 2 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Hatanaka et al. (2019/0346365).
As per claim 1, Hatanaka et al. disclose a control device which includes an acquisition unit configured to acquire a detection result of a sensor that includes a transmitter configured to irradiate a road surface of a road on which a host vehicle is traveling with terahertz waves, and a receiver configured to receive terahertz waves reflected from the road surface (see at least the abstract; figures 1, 4, 5; paragraphs 0027, 0028, 0030); and a determination unit configured to determine a frozen state of the road surface based on the acquired detection result (see at least figure 2; paragraphs 0024, 0025).
As per claim 2, Hatanaka et al. disclose that the transmitter is configured to irradiate the road surface with a first terahertz wave having a first frequency and a second terahertz wave having a second frequency different from the first frequency (see at least paragraphs 0025-0028, 0048).
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.
Claim 4 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hatanaka et al. as applied to the claims above, and further in view of Breed (2008/0294315).
Hatanaka et al. disclose the claimed invention as discussed above except for a notification unit configured to notify a user of the host vehicle that the road surface is frozen when the determination unit determines that the road surface is frozen. However such notification is well known and taught in the at least paragraphs 0432 and 0584 of the Breed reference. 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 Breed into the system of Hatanaka et al. with a reasonable expectation of success in order to provide the system with the enhanced capacity of notifying a user the condition of the road surface.
Claim 3 is 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, 2 and 4 are rejected. Claim 3 is objected.
The following references are cited as being of general interest: Alsenz (4,578,959), Rahman et al. (2015/0316475), Abe et al. (2025/0222933) and Ishida et al. (2025/0283855).
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July 3, 2026
/TAN Q NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3661
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