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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103(a) 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1, and 3-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Mimar (US 9,491,420 B2) and in view of Cowper et al. (GB 2506365 A).
Mimar discloses and suggests a system/method for detecting a vehicle accident and notifying emergency services in case an accident is detected, comprising: three acceleration values Ax, Ay, and Az are provided by the X-Y-Z accelerometer for X, Y, and Z axis (see at least column 22, lines 24-36), wherein the accelerometer is coupled to a processor such as the processor and the accelerometer shown in Fig. 5. In response to a collision/acceleration event, the system packages additional data such as audio-video recordings and uploads the data to a remote cloud server/site (see Fig. 34, column 24, lines 34-52).
Mimar is merely missing to disclose the features of “setting a time period based on a time the acceleration event is detected.”
Cowper discloses a vehicle incident detection system using an accelerometer, in which the time period between time Ts and Te is defined as the time period where the acceleration occurs (see Fig. 3; page 10, lines 8-21).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the system/method as taught by Mimar with the teachings as taught by Cowper to arrive at the claimed invention. A person of ordinary skill, ordinary creativity would have been motivated to do so, with a reasonable expectation of success, for the purpose of capturing event data without false positives.
Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Mimar (US 9,491,420 B2), Cowper (GB 2506365 A), and in view of Amigo et al. (hereinafter referred to as “Amigo”) (US 2011/0153367 A1).
Neither Mimar nor Cowper discloses or even suggests the features of “communicating with a portable electronic device associated with the driver, wherein: sending the additional data to the remote site comprises sending the additional data via the portable electronic device associated with the driver; and sending the driver identification to the remote site comprises sending a phone number for the driver via the portable electronic device associated with the driver.”
Amigo discloses a system and method for linking vehicles to telematics-enabled portable devices, comprising: a smart phone (200) associated with a user of the vehicle (see at least paragraphs 0072, and 0080), wherein the smart phone (200) is utilized in sending data regarding the vehicle and the vehicle’s user to a remote server.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Mimar Cowper with the teachings as taught by Amigo to arrive at the claimed invention. A person of ordinary skill, ordinary creativity would have been motivated to do so, with a reasonable expectation of success, for the purpose of automatically detecting collisions and transmitting location where the incident occurs as well as the vehicle user’s identification.
Citation of Relevant Prior Art
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant disclosure. The following patent documents are cited in the PTO-892 to further show the state of the art in general: US-8373147-B2, US-6023664-A, US-6741168-B2, GB-2390208-A, EP-1320004-A1.
Allowable Subject Matter
None of the cited prior art of record discloses or even suggests the features of “setting the time period based on the time the acceleration event is detected comprises setting the time period extending before and after the time the acceleration event is detected.”
Claim 2 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.
Conclusions
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Tuan C To whose telephone number is (571) 272-6985. The examiner can normally be reached on from 6:00AM to 2:30PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, Ramya P Burgess, can be reached on (571) 272-6011.
The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/TUAN C TO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3661
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