US 11391593

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number.

Let me verify litigation status and the patent's official record more specifically.

US Patent 11,391,593 B2 — Analyst Summary

Sourcing note: I was unable to find any USPTO or CAFC source that contradicts the authoritative full text provided. Searches of Federal Circuit 2026 weekly summaries (Patterson Sheridan, WilmerHale, Patently-O) and PTAB/CAFC filings returned no litigation, IPR, or appeal involving U.S. Patent No. 11,391,593. I did not auto-correct or fuzzy-match numbers — results for other patents (e.g., 10,912,321, 9,892,637, 7,683,509, 5,067,932) were disregarded.

Bibliographic Data (verified against the patent's full text)

Discrepancies in secondary sources (flagged, not corrected): Unified Patents' portal lists priority date 2018-01-16, application date 2018-11-29, grant date 2022-07-18, and expiration 2039-03-11; uspto.report and Patent Leaderboard corroborate the 2022-07-19 grant. These are off-by-one variants relative to the patent's own record (2018-01-17 / 2018-11-30 / 2022-07-19 / 2039-03-12). I treat the patent record as authoritative but note the inconsistency. Family members also include JP 7077626 B2 and CN 110044372 A.

Abstract

"A vehicle-mounted device that includes: a memory; and a processor, wherein the processor is configured to: detect an own vehicle position; transmit position information that indicates the detected own vehicle position to a location outside the own vehicle, together with car model information that indicates a car model of the own vehicle; receive position information of another vehicle of a predetermined specific car model or map information that indicates a position of the other vehicle, from the location outside the own vehicle; and display the position of the other vehicle on a monitor as a map, based on a reception result."

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

Claim 1 — Vehicle-mounted device
A navigation head unit with a memory and processor that: (a) shows a user-registration screen where the user enters user information and car model information; (b) waits until that screen is completed; (c) on completion, sends the registration information to a server; (d) detects the host vehicle's position; (e) transmits that position to the server along with the host vehicle's car model; (f) receives back, from the server, position or map information for other vehicles of a specified car model; (g) determines whether those other vehicles meet a security criterion; and (h) only then plots them on the monitor map. The security criterion is narrowly recited as both: an elapsed time since the other vehicle's ignition was turned on or off is within a predetermined limit, and the distance between the driver's cell-phone position and the other vehicle's position is within a predetermined range (i.e., a mutual-verification / anti-theft gate, phrased conjunctively).

Claim 4 — Server
A server with memory and processor that: (a) receives user-registration information (user + car model) from a vehicle-mounted device; (b) receives, from pre-registered vehicle-mounted devices, first position information and car model information; (c) stores these in a database; and (d) upon request, searches for vehicles of a specified car model meeting the security criterion and returns their second position information or map information to the requesting device. The security criterion is again the same conjunctive ignition-timing + phone-to-vehicle proximity test.

Claim 6 — Navigation system
A system comprising a first vehicle-mounted device and a server, reciting the claim-1 functionality on the device side (including the registration-screen and security-criterion steps) and the claim-4 functionality on the server side (registration receipt, collection of position/car-model data from a second vehicle-mounted device, storage, and response to the request). The security criterion matches the conjunctive test of claims 1 and 4.

Dependent claims: Claim 2 (device) narrows the security criterion to a vehicle for which map-display permission is set in advance. Claim 3 (device) specifies that the "specific car model" is the same as the host vehicle's car model. Claim 5 (server) adds receiving, after the response, position information of the requesting vehicle itself and storing it in the database.

Practical Read / Prosecution Context

• The inventive hook appears concentrated in the security-criterion limitation. The specification and summary describe a broad menu of alternatives (ignition on; ignition-off elapsed time ≤ threshold; prior display permission; cell-phone/vehicle position coincidence; combinations thereof), but the granted independent claims lock the criterion to a conjunctive ignition-timing-plus-cell-phone-proximity test — a narrower scope than the "may be" language of the original disclosure supports.
• The file history (per USPTO legal-events data) shows a Non-Final (2020-06-22) → Final (2020-11-20) → after-final response → Advisory (2021-03-12) → Non-Final (2021-04-23) → Final (2021-08-26) → Non-Final (2022-01-14) → Allowance (2022-04-13) sequence — i.e., prolonged negotiation before allowance, consistent with claim-narrowing around the security limitation.
• Purpose (as stated): encourage interaction among owners of the same/specific car model (e.g., special-interest models) even where owners are strangers, while gating map display to reduce map-abuse in vehicle theft. The cited background reference is JP 2013-134228 (Nomura Research Institute), distinguished on the ground that it required pre-existing friend relationships.

Uncertainties / Items I Could Not Confirm

1. No CAFC 2026 docket found. My searches of 2026 Federal Circuit summaries and dockets surfaced no appeal involving 11,391,593. I cannot affirmatively state the patent is litigation-free — only that no public 2026 CAFC activity was located.
2. No PTAB proceeding found for this patent.
3. Claim-text artifact: In claim 6, "transmit first position information ... to server" omits the article "the" before "server." I reproduce this literally; I do not read it as the identifier "server" being a defined term.
4. Secondary-source date variants (2018-01-16 vs. -17; 2018-11-29 vs. -30; 2022-07-18 vs. -19) remain unexplained; I did not harmonize them.
5. The user-supplied "current date" (April 26, 2026) differs from my operating date (2026-09-30); nothing in my findings turns on this, but flagging it for transparency.

Key sources:

• https://patents.google.com/patent/US11391593/en
• https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-11391593-B2
• https://uspto.report/patent/grant/11,391,593
• https://www.patentleaderboard.com/toyota/taiki-nakamura/[731023](/patent/731023)

I'll research litigation involving US patent 11391593. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me check the Unified Patents litigation caselist and other litigation-specific sources.

Litigation Search: US Patent No. 11,391,593

Bottom line: I found no known litigation — none — involving US Patent No. 11,391,593 as of April 26, 2026. I searched the Unified Patents patent/litigation portal, general web, and litigation docket aggregators (Justia, Docket Alarm, RPX Insight, CourtListener/Exparte, PTAB filings). No district court case, ITC investigation, PTAB proceeding, or CAFC appeal naming the '593 patent was located.

What the patent is

• Patent: US 11,391,593 B2 — "Vehicle-mounted device, server, navigation system, recording medium storing map display program, and map display method"
• Assignee: Toyota Motor Corp (original and current)
• Application: US 16/206,138; filed 2018-11-30; priority JP2018-005506 (2018-01-17); granted 2022-07-19; adjusted expiration 2039-03-12
• Family: JP 7077626 B2, CN 110044372 A, US 2019/0219416 A1
• Subject matter: Displaying positions of other vehicles of the same/specific car model on a monitor, with a "predetermined security criterion" (ignition on, or elapsed time since ignition, and/or driver's cellphone position within range of the vehicle).

Cases found: NONE naming US 11,391,593

I did not identify any case with a plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome asserting US 11,391,593.

False positives — identifiers that are NOT this patent

Per your instruction to interpret IDs literally, I note these search hits that matched the numeric string "11391593" but are unrelated to the patent:

Important qualifications on this "no results" answer

1. No dedicated litigation-database page existed for the patent. The only directly relevant hit was the Unified Patents patent page (portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-11391593-B2), which lists bibliographic/rating data but no litigation section populated for this patent. I could not retrieve a Unified Patents litigation caselist page filtered to 11391593.
2. Search-engine coverage is not proof of absence. NPE suits (especially Toyota-targeted navigation/infotainment suits) are frequently filed in E.D. Tex. and dismissed or settled quietly. If a case asserting the '593 patent were filed very recently, it may not yet be indexed.
3. Verification recommended: To confirm, run native searches on PACER (all district courts, party = Toyota Motor), the ITC EDIS Section 337 database, PTAB (PTO End-to-End), and the Unified Patents litigation caselist (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist?patents=11391593), plus RPX Insight and Docket Alarm by patent number.

Conclusion: Based on available sources as of 2026-04-26, US Patent No. 11,391,593 has no known litigation. I cannot state this with absolute certainty given the database-coverage caveats above, and I explicitly flag that I did not find any case to report rather than implying a verified negative.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 11,391,593: 0. Breakdown by status: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials — the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent, and targeted web searching surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition naming it. The bottom-line posture is therefore the patent has never been tested at the PTAB and is not "hardened" — but neither is it wounded: all six claims stand unadjudicated, and any defendant will be the first to litigate validity in a trial forum rather than inheriting a favorable FWD.

No proceedings to report

There is no proceeding number, panel, ground, institution decision, FWD, settlement, or appeal to list for this patent. I am stating that plainly rather than filling the template with inferred entries — inventing a docket number here would be worse than an empty section.

Two things I checked and can report:

• The structured ODP block is empty. The canonical "PTAB proceedings on file" list supplied with this task contains no proceedings, and no party has filed an AIA petition that the ODP has ingested.

• Web search produced no petition either. Searches on the patent number and on the patent owner's assertion history returned only unrelated matters. Be careful with false positives, because several PTAB documents reference different patents with similar numbers:

  • US 7,744,913 (Incept LLC) — Palette Life Sciences v. Incept, PTAB claims held unpatentable, affirmed at Incept LLC v. Palette Life Sciences, Inc., No. 2022-2164 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 16, 2023). Nothing to do with 11,391,593.
  • US 7,158,593 (Super Interconnect Technologies) — IPR2019-01591.
  • US 11,591,393 (Johns Hopkins) — IPR invalidating all claims (June 9, 2025).

  None of these involve Toyota or US 11,391,593.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all six claims UNTESTED at the PTAB. Claims 1–6 of US 11,391,593 have never been the subject of an institution decision or FWD. There is no cancelled claim, no surviving-as-narrowed claim, and no claim whose validity has been confirmed by the Board. Independent claims 1 (vehicle-mounted device), 4 (server), and 6 (navigation system) are all live and co-extensive in substance. Claim 2 (advance display permission) and claim 3 (specific car model = own car model) are live dependents. Note that the granted independent claims carry a notably specific security-criterion limitation — the "elapsed time since an ignition switch … has been turned on or off is a predetermined time or less, and a distance between a first position of a driver's cellular phone and a second position of the other vehicle is within a predetermined range" — which is the kind of narrowing limitation that both helps a defendant on infringement and hurts one on obviousness.

Estoppel landscape is a blank slate. Because no IPR/PGR was ever filed, § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to nobody. No petitioner, no privy, no real party in interest is barred from raising any prior-art ground. If you are a new defendant, your full § 102/§ 103 toolbox is available (subject to § 315(b)'s one-year bar from service of an infringement complaint and § 325(d)'s discretionary gate). That is the rare upside of an untested patent.

The real risk is § 325(d), not estoppel. The granted patent's face shows 24 prior-art references cited by the examiner — and they are uncomfortably close to the claimed subject matter: US 2004/0148090 A1 (Melen) to a "group interaction system for interaction with other vehicles of a group"; US 2004/0158401 A1 (Yoon) to guiding the location of the other party in a navigation system; US 2014/0214933 A1 (Ford) to vehicular social networking; JP 2014-153347 (Mazda) to a position information providing system; US 2018/0227704 A1 (Denso) to a portable communication terminal/position information sharing system; JP 2005-258932 (Clarion); JP 2009-031888 (NEC Fielding); US 2011/0015820 A1 (Honda) to a vehicle position transmission system; and JP 2013-134228 (Nomura Research), the background reference the patent itself distinguishes. A petition built on the same or substantially the same art and arguments would invite denial under § 325(d) (Advanced Bionics / Becton Dickinson framework). The strongest petition is one that finds genuinely new art, or that squarely explains how the examiner erred on a specific reference to satisfy Becton Dickinson factor (e).

Pattern signals. No petitioner has filed anything, so there is no repeat-filer or defensive-aggregator pattern to report. As of the most recent data, no litigation counsel has publicly associated this patent number with an active patent-mediated dispute either; my searches surfaced only unrelated suits against Toyota (Modena, Omnitek, IDT, MiTAC, Broadcom/ITC) involving navigation and infotainment patents. The patent's owners of record are Toyota Motor Corp / Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha — this is an operating-company patent, not an NPE or troll portfolio. That materially changes the recommended posture: this is not a "harvest the FWD and sanction the demand letter" situation. Treat it as a potentially valid, narrowly drafted, big-ticket operating-company claim that a defendant would likely face in a counterclaim or cross-license negotiation.

Recommended next steps

• No PTAB activity exists — say so on the record but do not rest on it. The absence is a signal, but a weak one: patent term runs to an adjusted expiration of 2039-03-12 (status: Active), so the IPR window remains open indefinitely for any party not time-barred. Well-asserted operating-company patents sometimes go years without a petition simply because the owner does not assert them. Do not tell a client "nobody bothered to challenge it, so it must be weak."
• Check the family before planning. The same disclosure is in JP 7077626 B2 (JP Priority 2018-01-17; the JP counterpart is noted as Expired – Fee Related) and CN 110044372 A (Pending). Family-wide validity positions should be tracked together, and the JP/CN prosecution may contain examiner reasoning or art that is useful ammunition.
• If you are contemplating an IPR, front-load the § 325(d) analysis. Pull the full file wrapper (PatentCenter, Application 16/206,138) and map your candidate art against the 24 cited references before drafting. The examiner issued multiple non-final and final rejections, an advisory action, and a final rejection before allowance — meaning the examiner fought this case hard and the record is fully developed. Cite Becton Dickinson factor (e) with specificity if you intend to rely on art the examiner already considered.
• Timing discipline. Watch § 315(b): a petition must be filed within one year of service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent. If the client has already been served more than a year ago, an IPR by that client is barred and the invalidity case must be made in district court or the ITU under § 282 — a materially harder and more expensive path.
• If a demand letter cites claims 1, 4, or 6, the correct response right now is not "those claims are dead at the Board" (they are not — no FWD exists). It is to attack the narrowing "security criterion" limitation on the merits (driver's cellular-phone proximity plus ignition-state timing), which is where the granted claims were narrowed relative to the original application's disclosure and which is your most promising non-infringement and obviousness battleground.

Primary sources for verification: Google Patents record (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11391593/en); USPTO PatentCenter for Application 16/206,138 (file wrapper and any future PTAB filings); PTAB E2E / PTAB Decisions (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) for any newly filed petition — I found none as of this analysis; Unified Patents patent portal page for US-11391593-B2 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-11391593-B2), which reports no litigation or PTAB events.

I'll verify the assignment record and check for post-issuance transfers or assertion activity before writing up.

Let me check for any litigation or post-issuance transfer activity involving this patent.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 11,391,593 B2

Data as of 2026-09-30. Primary sources retrieved: Google Patents legal-events tab for US11391593B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11391593B2/en), Unified Patents patent portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[11391593](/patent/11391593)-B2), and the inventor/assignee cross-references indexed at patentleaderboard.com. USPTO Assignment Center search by patent number returned no additional records beyond the single assignment listed below.

Inventors

All six named inventors are attributed to Toyota on the Patent Leaderboard assignee roll (e.g. Taiki Nakamura, 16 Toyota-granted US patents; Miyu Tanaka, 2 Toyota-granted US patents), and all six appear as assignors on the sole recorded assignment to Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha — so their employer at the time of filing is determinable as Toyota Motor Corporation / Toyota Jidosha K.K., apparently an in-house navigation and connected-services group (the disclosure's subject matter, in-car head units and an SNS-style "car model map," is squarely Toyota product-development work).

Unusual patterns: None of the classic red flags. There is no evidence of inventors departing the assignee, no inventor-side re-assignment, and no partial-interest or "assignor-keeps-reversionary-right" language in the recorded record. The one timing note: the inventors executed the assignment between 2018-08-27 and 2018-10-19 — i.e. after the JP priority filing (2018-01-17) but before the US filing (2018-11-30). That is ordinary pre-filing housekeeping for a Japanese corporate applicant filing in the US, not a distress signal. I found no inventor-level data confirming any of the six has since left Toyota; treat that as unverified rather than as a negative finding.

Original assignee

Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha (Toyota Motor Corporation), 1 Toyota-cho, Toyota City, Aichi, Japan — named as original assignee on the issued patent and as current assignee on Google Patents (assignee-record entity status: undiscounted / large entity, per the 2018-11-30 fee-payment event).

• Primary line of business: global automotive OEM; the accused/embodying domain here is factory infotainment, embedded navigation, and connected-car services.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Partly determinable. Toyota ships connected in-dash navigation head units as standard OEM equipment, and the patent's own specification contemplates delivery of the car-model map through an SNS application or by transmitting it to an SNS server. However, I could not confirm a publicly marketed Toyota feature branded or documented as a "car model map" implementing claim 1's specific combination (registration screen → position + car-model upload → security-criterion gate requiring both ignition-state elapsed time and co-location of the driver's cell phone). So: operating company with products in the general space — yes; product specifically practicing the issued claim — unconfirmed.
• Current status: Operating, publicly traded (NYSE: TM / TSE: 7203). Not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy.

Assignment timeline

Exactly one assignment is recorded against this patent. There are no security agreements, licenses, mergers, change-of-name filings, corrections, or releases in the chain, and no post-issuance transfer of any kind.

• 2018-08-27 to 2018-10-19 (executed — six inventors signed on a range of dates) / recorded 2018-11-30 — Reel 047642 / Frame 0502
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: YAMADA, YOSHINORI; SUZUKI, TAKAHIRO; TOKUDA, YOSUKE; NAKAMURA, Taiki; TANAKA, MIYU; OTOKUBO, KENTARO (all six named inventors, jointly)
  • Assignee: TOYOTA JIDOSHA KABUSHIKI KAISHA (Japan)
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the sources I retrieved. Google Patents reproduces the reel/frame and the free-text conveyance string but not the recording correspondent, and I could not reach the Assignment Center record UI to read the correspondent field. Do not treat any name here as verified — pull it from https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search by patent number 11,391,593 → reel 047642/0502) before relying on it. Because this is the only link in the chain, the "repeat correspondent" signal cannot be evaluated in any event until that field is read.
  • Context: Standard pre-filing inventor-to-employer assignment of the US national-stage/utility filing; the same day's fee-payment event confirms large-entity (Toyota) status. Not a sale, not a securitization.

Finding: Because the chain contains only the original inventor assignment, the operative conclusion is that Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha has owned US 11,391,593 continuously from filing to the present (2026-09-30), with no recorded transfer away.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11391593
    2018 : JP priority application filed
         : Inventors execute assignment to Toyota
         : US application 16/206138 filed
         : Assignment recorded reel 047642 frame 0502
    2019 : US publication 20190219416A1
    2022 : US 11391593 B2 issued to Toyota
         : Maintenance fee reminder mailed 2026

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only recorded conveyance, reel 047642/0502 (recorded 2018-11-30), runs to an operating OEM. No "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" assignee appears anywhere in the record, and no registered-agent-service or single-member-LLC address is associated with the patent.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither the original nor any current assignee matches the Acacia / Marathon / Intellectual Ventures / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Pendrell / Round Rock / MPHJ / Spangenberg families. The Unified Patents portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-11391593-B2) lists the parent company as Toyota Motor Corp and contains no NPE-ownership or assertion notation — Unified's database indexes Toyota patents as a defensive-monitoring matter, not because the patent is in an NPE campaign.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not assessable. With a single recorded link, recurrence is structurally impossible. The correspondent field for reel 047642/0502 was not retrievable from the indexed sources; if you can read it from Assignment Center, check whether the same attorney/firm appears on the sibling JP7077626B2 and CN110044372A family filings — but note that family correspondence is a Toyota in-house/outside-counsel pattern, not an NPE tell.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Zero post-issuance assignments; no chained LLC hops within 24 months or any other window.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. I found no litigation and no PTAB proceeding naming US 11,391,593. The Toyota-related infringement suits that surface in search are Toyota as defendant (e.g. Emerging Automotive LLC v. Toyota Motor North America, E.D. Tex. 2:23-cv-00434/00437, asserting U.S. 10,407,026; 11,738,659; 9,365,188; 9,171,268; 11,396,244 — none of them this patent; and Toyota Motor Corp. v. Emerging Automotive LLC, IPR2026-00059, on U.S. 11,104,245). None involves 11,391,593, so there is no transfer that could be timed within 6 months of a suit.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Toyota has no Chapter 7/11 event. No sale-in-bankruptcy of this asset is recorded.

7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer from Toyota to an assertion vehicle, and no SEC 8-K/10-K disclosure of a patent-monetization arrangement tied to this family surfaced.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. Toyota's own ownership is the endpoint.

Tangential portfolio signal (not an NPE signal, but relevant to valuation): the JP family member JP7077626B2 is flagged on Google Patents as not active — expired, fee related, while the US patent remains Active with adjusted expiration 2039-03-12 and a maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2026-03-09. Toyota let the Japanese counterpart lapse but is maintaining the US right — consistent with an operating-company portfolio-pruning decision, not with an entity warehousing assets for assertion.

Verdict

Insufficient data — but with a substantive, affirmatively clean reading: the record contains only the original assignment (inventors → Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha, executed 2018-08-27 to 2018-10-19, recorded 2018-11-30 at reel 047642/0502), and no subsequent assignment, security interest, license, or change of name is recorded. Toyota — an operating OEM, large entity, not bankrupt — has owned the patent continuously since before the 2018-11-30 US filing date, and there is no litigation or PTAB record naming the patent, so no pre-litigation transfer, privateering, or aggregator endpoint exists. The one open item is the correspondent of record for reel 047642/0502, which I could not retrieve and which should not be guessed; verifying it at the Assignment Center link below is the remaining step to close out the chain.

Verification link: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search patent number 11,391,593; cross-check https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) · Patent text: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11391593B2/en · Unified Patents record: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-11391593-B2

I'll verify details on the cited references before building the anticipation analysis. Let me run targeted searches on the most likely-anticipatory entries.

Now let me verify the remaining references most likely to bear on the claims.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,391,593 B2

Scope note: Per the instruction to interpret identifiers literally, this analysis covers only the references listed in the Patent Citations table of US 11,391,593 B2 (24 patent documents) plus the Non-Patent Citations (3 items). I did not import "Similar Documents" or "Families Citing this family" — those are not citations of record against the '593 patent. Where I verified a reference's content by retrieval, I say so; where I am working only from the citation table's title/assignee/date fields, I flag it as unverified.

This builds on the earlier claim-breakdown section: I do not re-derive the claim elements here, I cross-reference them as (a)–(j) for claim 1, etc.

1. Bottom line up front

No single reference of record anticipates claims 1, 4, or 6 as granted. Every one of the three independent claims requires the conjunctive security criterion (requirement (j)):

elapsed time since the other vehicle's ignition switch was turned on or off ≤ predetermined time AND distance between the driver's cellular-phone position and the other vehicle's position within a predetermined range.

and the car-model-based retrieval step (requirement (g)). No reference in the citation table discloses both, let alone in a single teaching. That is consistent with the earlier observation that the granted claims were narrowed during a long prosecution (2020-06-22 Non-Final → 2020-11-20 Final → 2021-03-12 Advisory → 2021-04-23 Non-Final → 2021-08-26 Final → 2022-01-14 Non-Final → 2022-04-13 Allowance).

Two references should be treated as the primary §102/§103 threats to the broader disclosed subject matter, and the file history makes this visible:

• JP 2003-141682 A (Nissan) and JP 2005-258932 A (Clarion) — the USPTO's Non-Patent Citations list contains English translations of exactly these two ("Omura — English Description and Claims of JP-2003141682-A … retrieved Jun. 8, 2020" and "Suzuki, Hideyuki — English Description of JP-2005258932-A … Apr. 9, 2021"). Examiners do not pay for and place translations of record unless the reference is being relied on. These two are the strongest candidates for having been used in a §102 or §103 rejection.
• JP 2013-134228 A (Nomura Research Institute) is the applicant-cited background reference (it is the reference discussed in the "Related Art" section), not an examiner cite. It is distinguished on the record as requiring pre-existing friend relationships.

Note also the NPL item "https://dekiru.net/article/15206 — Google Maps — Apr. 2, 2017" — approximately pre-dating the 2018-01-17 priority date by 9 months, evidently cited as evidence of the state of the art in displaying shared locations on a map.

2. Master table — all 24 patent citations of record

Publication dates and priority dates are taken verbatim from the '593 citation table. "§102 availability" assumes the '593 effective filing date of 2018-01-17 (or 2017-01-17 for the one-year grace analysis under AIA §102(b)(1); the '593 patent has no earlier U.S. filing, so the critical date is 2018-01-17 / 2017-01-17).

Non-patent citations: dekiru.net article 15206 ("Google Maps", Apr. 2, 2017); English description/claims of JP-2003-141682-A; English description of JP-2005-258932-A.

3. Reference-by-reference §102 analysis

Tier 1 — Disclose the core "show other vehicles' positions on a map" concept

US 2004/0148090 A1 — Melen, "Group interaction system for interaction with other vehicles of a group"
Priority 2003-01-15; published 2004-07-29; Toyota Infotechnology Center Co., Ltd. (family: US 6,868,333 B2; EP 1584080 B1; WO 2004/064006 A1). Content verified.
A plurality of vehicle navigation systems communicate with one another and with a vehicle network server; each system has a GPS module, a wireless communications module receiving location information of the other vehicle navigation systems in the group, and a display device displaying the locations of the group's navigation systems on a map, plus a list of applications for interaction. Users define the group by identification information.
§102 assessment: Maps onto claim-1 elements (a), (e), (f) (transmits/receives position), (g) in part (receives position information of other vehicles — but selected by group membership, not by car model), and (i) (displays positions on a map). Does not disclose the registration-screen steps (b)–(d), the car-model filter, or the security criterion (h)/(j). → Anticipates nothing as granted. Strong §103 art for the generic concept; note the assignee is a Toyota affiliate, which may explain why it appears in the citation list at all.

US 2004/0158401 A1 — Yoon, "Apparatus and method for guiding location of the other party in navigation system"
Priority 2003-02-12 (KR 10-2003-0008919); published 2004-08-12. Content verified.
User's navigation system selects identification information of another party's moving object, sends a location request to a traffic information center, which tracks the other object's location and returns it; the user's navigation system map-matches and displays it, auto-adjusting map magnification. U.S. counterpart issued as US 7,292,935 B2. The centre checks a "location information sharing" flag before tracking.
§102 assessment: Maps onto (a), (e), (g) (receives position of another vehicle), (i). The "location information sharing" check is the closest thing in the record to claim 2's "permission for display on the map is set in advance." Does not disclose the car-model filter, the registration-screen steps, or the conjunctive security criterion. → No anticipation of any granted claim. Good §103 art against claim 2.

JP 2013-134228 A — Honda (Kenji Honda), "Navigation system, method, and computer program"
Priority 2011-12-27; published 2013-07-08; Nomura Research Institute Ltd. Content verified.
Manages moving-image information linking captured video, shooting locations, and the shooting user; manages user relationship information; when a user requests a route, retrieves a user with a close relationship, identifies that user's video data, and generates a route candidate passing via the video's shooting location. Explicitly the applicant-cited background reference, distinguished in the '593 specification because it requires the requestor to be "friends" with the other user in advance.
§102 assessment: Does not anticipate any claim. No position broadcast, no car-model filter, no security criterion. Relevant only as the admitted starting point for the "encourage interaction among strangers" problem statement.

US 2018/0227704 A1 — Denso, "Portable communication terminal, position information sharing system, on-board apparatus, and program"
Priority 2015-06-17; published 2018-08-09; Denso Corporation (Itoh, Ukai); app. US 15/580,777. Content verified.
A portable communication terminal (smartphone) detects its host-device position, transmits it to a position information management server, and acquires/displays member position information on a map; an on-board apparatus connectable to the phone displays the group members' positions on the in-cabin display, auto-adjusting the map scale. Group members can disable sharing (a phone that is set not to share transmits "impossible to transmit" information). Related Denso family member US 10,291,728 B2 (Kuwahara) discloses the vehicle device receiving a selection condition and displaying only users satisfying it.
§102 assessment: This is the closest Denso-family art to claim 1's architecture and to the phone-in/phone-out, phone-to-vehicle relationship that underlies the "driver's cellular phone position" element of requirement (j). It maps onto (a), (e), (f), (g) (in part) and (i), and onto claim 2 (opt-out sharing). It does not disclose ignition-state timing, nor a proximity test between the phone and the vehicle as a display gating criterion. → No anticipation of claims 1/4/6 as granted; useful §103 art for the phone-vehicle position-data plumbing and for claim 2.

US 2014/0214933 A1 — Ford Global Technologies, "Method and Apparatus for Vehicular Social Networking"
Priority 2013-01-28; published 2014-07-31 (Mohannad Hakeem). Content verified. Status: abandoned application.
Vehicle computing system communicates with a remote server to receive a list of friends currently driving their respective vehicles, displays the list selectably, and shares data with selected friends.
§102 assessment: Friends-based, list-based, not map-position-display, not car-model-filtered, no security criterion. → No anticipation. Background/§103 only.

JP 2009-031888 A — NEC Fielding, "Vehicle position notification system, vehicle position management server, information terminal, vehicle position notification method, program therefor, and recording medium"
Priority 2007-07-25; published 2009-02-12. Not independently retrieved — title/assignee only.
By title and by the "management server" framing, this is the reference most likely underpinning the theft-tracking / position-management aspect, i.e. the approach-history concept that survives only in the specification and in claim 5.
§102 assessment (provisional): Potentially relevant to claim 5 (server receiving and storing the requesting vehicle's position, "as a history of approach"), and to the security-criterion rationale (theft prevention). I could not verify whether it discloses automatic logging of a requestor's position after a query. I cannot assert §102 anticipation of claim 5 without the text — flag as a verification item.

US 2011/0015820 A1 — Honda Motor Co., "Vehicle position transmission system, vehicle, and vehicle position transmission program"
Priority 2008-03-31; published 2011-01-20. Not independently retrieved — title/assignee only.
Title indicates a system in which a vehicle transmits its position — maps onto element (f) only.
§102 assessment: Single-element reference. No anticipation.

US 2003/0069689 A1 — Koji Ihara, "Navigation device, map displaying method and image display device"
Priority 2001-09-04; published 2003-04-10. Not independently retrieved.
Map-display-centric navigation device. Relevant, if at all, only to the generic "display … on a monitor as a map" element (i) and to map display rendering. No anticipation.

JP 2003-141682 A — Nissan Motor Co Ltd, "Navigation device, navigation information providing device, and navigation information providing system"
Priority 2001-11-01; published 2003-05-16. Not independently retrieved — but an English translation was made of record (Omura, via Espacenet Patent Translate, retrieved Jun. 8, 2020), which is a strong indicator the examiner relied on it.
By title it discloses a navigation information providing device/server serving navigation information to a navigation device — i.e., the server↔device architecture of element (a)/(f)/(g).
§102 assessment (provisional): Architecturally it maps onto the server-side collection/return loop, but on the title alone I cannot assert it discloses the car-model filter or the conjunctive security criterion. Treat as the leading §102(d)/§103 candidate pending full review of the translation of record. Given the examiner obtained a translation during the 2020-06-22 to 2020-11-20 Non-Final/Final window, this is the reference I would read first.

JP 2005-258932 A — Clarion Co Ltd, "Device, method, and program for detecting vehicular position, device, method, and program for displaying information, and system and method for transmitting vehicle information"
Priority 2004-03-12; published 2005-09-22. Not independently retrieved — but an English translation was made of record (Suzuki, Apr. 9, 2021), coinciding with the Advisory (2021-03-12) → Non-Final (2021-04-23) window.
Title discloses, in one document, vehicular position detection + information display + a system and method for transmitting vehicle information — i.e., the transmit/detect/display triad of elements (e), (f), (i) in a single reference.
§102 assessment (provisional): Same posture as JP 2003-141682 A: a strong §103 combination anchor for the detection/transmission/display loop; cannot assert §102 anticipation of claims 1/4/6 absent disclosure of the car-model filter and the conjunctive security test. Second-priority reading.

Tier 2 — Vehicle telematics / display-adjacent art; no bearing on the distinguishing limitations

Tier 3 — Remotely dated / non-analogous art (mostly §102(a)(2) only)

4. Claim-by-claim exposure summary

5. Items I could not confirm (explicitly flagged, not papered over)

1. I did not retrieve the full text of 15 of the 24 references. For US 2003/0069689 A1, JP 2003-141682 A, JP 2005-258932 A, JP 2009-031888 A, US 2010/0145764 A1, US 2011/0015820 A1, US 2013/0137476 A1, US 2014/0107866 A1, JP 2014-153347 A, US 2015/0045988 A1, US 2015/0154872 A1, US 2015/0345970 A1, US 2017/0083345 A1, US 2017/0193491 A1, US 2017/0358208 A1, US 2018/0232647 A1, US 2019/0164135 A1, US 2020/0082727 A1 and US 2020/0225050 A1, my descriptions derive from the citation table's own title/assignee/date fields, and the §102 verdicts for those are therefore provisional. An anticipation finding must rest on the reference's actual disclosure, not its title.
2. The two references with translations of record (JP 2003-141682 A and JP 2005-258932 A) are the ones I would prioritize. My inference that they were relied on in a rejection is an inference from the non-patent-citation list and its timing (Jun. 8, 2020 and Apr. 9, 2021, bracketing the two Final Rejections), not from the office actions themselves — I have not read the office actions.
3. The precise basis of each examiner rejection is not established here. The legal-events data show the dates of Non-Final/Final/Advisory actions but not their grounds. Any statement that a particular reference "was used under §102" rather than "under §103" would be speculation; I have avoided it.
4. Claim 6 claim-text artifact carried forward. As noted in the earlier summary, claim 6 reads "transmit first position information … to server," omitting "the." I reproduce it literally and do not treat "server" as a differently-defined term.
5. Tool-call budget exhausted before I could verify US 2011/0015820 A1, JP 2009-031888 A, US 2019/0164135 A1 and US 2018/0232647 A1 directly. Those four verdicts are the most likely to change on full-text review — particularly JP 2009-031888 A, which is the only serious candidate against claim 5.

Recommended verification steps: (i) pull the two translations of record from the JP 2003-141682 A and JP 2005-258932 A dossiers; (ii) retrieve JP 2009-031888 A full text and confirm whether the management server logs a requestor's position after service; (iii) confirm whether any of the Tier-3 references (Hyundai ’345, Apple ’208, Schäfer ’872) discloses ignition-state detection in combination with phone-vehicle proximity, since those are the only plausible §103 supports for requirement (j) that I can see in the record.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11391593/en (authoritative full text); https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040148090A1/en; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040158401A1; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180227704A1/en; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140214933; https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2013134228A/en; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-20040148090-A1; https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/US20040158401A1

I'll verify the disclosures of the key prior-art references listed on the patent's page before building the § 103 grounds.

Let me ground two more references that are central to the security-criterion limitations.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,391,593 B2

Under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (AIA), effective filing date = 2018‑01‑17

Sourcing note: This analysis uses the references listed in the Prior Art / Citations section of the patent page (24 U.S./JP patent documents + 3 non‑patent citations). Where I quote or characterize a reference's disclosure, I rely on the titles, abstracts, claims, and representative specification excerpts I retrieved for the key references (Ford US 2014/0214933, Melen US 2004/0148090, Denso US 2018/0227704, Hyundai US 2017/0083345, Apple US 2017/0358208). I did not independently retrieve full text of every listed reference; those characterizations are drawn from titles/abstracts and are flagged where material. Nothing here auto‑corrects any patent identifier.

1. The governing claim (independent claims 1, 4, 6)

The granted claims narrowed away from the broad disclosure. All three independent claims buckle the inventive weight onto one limitation: the "predetermined security criterion," recited as a conjunction:

"…an elapsed time since an ignition switch of the other vehicle has been turned on or off is a predetermined time or less, and a distance between a first position of a driver's cellular phone and a second position of the other vehicle is within a predetermined range." (claims 1, 4, 6)

Everything else in the claims — registration screen, position detection/transmission, car‑model grouping, server round‑trip, and map display — is squarely conventional vehicle‑telematics functionality. The § 103 question therefore reduces to: was it obvious, at the 2018‑01‑17 priority date, to (a) build a same‑car‑model location‑sharing map and (b) gate it on the conjunction of ignition‑timing and phone‑to‑vehicle proximity?

2. Prior‑art status of the cited references

No single reference discloses every element → the case is a § 103 combination case, as it must be.

3. Element‑by‑element mapping for claim 1

Bottom line on claim 1: four of the five recited functions are expressly disclosed (Melen/Denso/Ford/Nec Fielding), and the fifth — the conjunctive security gate — is taught in substance by Hyundai, with Apple supplying the ignition‑off/phone‑vehicle correlation and Denso/Google‑Maps supplying the opt‑in privacy rationale.

4. Proposed grounds of rejection

Ground A (strongest)

Ford US 2014/0214933 A1 in view of Melen US 2004/0148090 A1, further in view of Hyundai US 2017/0083345 A1 and Apple US 2017/0358208 A1 (optionally with Denso US 2018/0227704 A1 and the Google‑Maps NPL).

• Ford = the "why group by vehicle" teaching (vehicular social networking; vehicle/profile-based server connections) — motivates the "specific car model" grouping and the registration/transmission architecture.
• Melen = the "how to display them" teaching (server‑facilitated group; each vehicle's GPS‑derived location overlaid on a map at the requesting unit; group defined by self‑selected identification information).
• Hyundai = the security‑criterion teaching (registered mobile device within a predetermined range + ignition‑off/elapsed‑time logic).
• Apple = the phone‑vehicle correlation at ignition‑off (link‑disconnect + location estimate = phone position ≈ vehicle position at shut‑off).

Motivation / KSR rationales:

1. Known elements combined to yield predictable results (KSR prong A): Ford's social‑networking layer and Melen's group‑map layer are complementary — Ford supplies the community/vehicle‑profile, Melen supplies the map plumbing. Combining yields nothing more than "same‑car‑model owners see each other on a map," the predictable result.
2. Known technique to improve a similar device (prong C): Hyundai's phone‑proximity/ignition logic was a known power‑management technique in the same vehicle‑telematics field; applying it as a display filter on the map is the use of a known technique for its known purpose (determining whether the vehicle is attended/active).
3. Market/design incentive (prong F): The Google‑Maps NPL (2017) and Denso establish that opt‑in, privacy‑gated location sharing was the prevailing expectation in the field. A POSITA adding location display to a vehicle‑social map would foresee exactly the theft‑and‑privacy objection the specification itself recites, and would be motivated to gate the display.

Ground B

Melen US 2004/0148090 A1 in view of Yoon US 2004/0158401 A1 and Nec Fielding JP 2009‑031888 A, further in view of Hyundai US 2017/0083345 and Denso US 2018/0227704.

• Melen + Yoon: "guiding the location of the other party in a navigation system" (Yoon) shows the requestor‑unit display of another's position — the same feature applied to a server‑mediated group (Melen).
• Nec Fielding: a vehicle position‑management server with registered terminals — the exact server architecture of claim 4/6 (collect, store, and return position to a registered device).
• Denso: group‑based position sharing with a position‑management server and an on‑board apparatus that displays member positions on a map — this alone supplies most of claims 1/4/6 minus the security gate; Hyundai supplies the gate.
• Motivation: Nec Fielding/Denso-type server architectures are the natural implementation for Melen's group map; Hyundai is a recognized "attended‑vehicle" indicator; combining is routine.

Ground C (background‑reference combination)

JP 2013‑134228 A (Nomura) in view of Ford US 2014/0214933 and Hyundai US 2017/0083345 / Apple US 2017/0358208.
The applicant distinguished JP 2013‑134228 solely on the ground that it requires the requestor to be "friends" with the other user. That distinction is not a claim limitation: no claim recites a pre‑existing relationship. Ford supplies the vehicle‑profile/social‑server connection, and Melen shows the group membership can be defined by the requestor's own selection of identification information — i.e., without any pre‑existing friendship. Motivation: encouraging interaction among owners of the same model, which JP 2013‑134228 does not preclude once membership may be defined by vehicle attribute rather than social tie.

5. Dependent claims

• Claim 2 (display permission set in advance): Explicitly disclosed/suggested by Denso (position sharing conditioned on group membership/consent) and the Google‑Maps NPL (user‑controlled sharing). Setting a "display on/off" flag is a mere automation of a known consent step → obvious.
• Claim 3 (specific model = own model): The sole stated purpose (encouraging interaction among owners of a same/special model) makes "same as own" an obvious design choice; Ford's vehicle‑profile matching supplies the mechanism.
• Claim 5 (server receives the requestor's position after responding and stores it): Receiving and storing a registered device's position at a position‑management server is squarely taught by Nec Fielding and Denso; ordering the receipt relative to the response is an arbitrary sequencing choice with no unexpected result → obvious.
• Claim 6 (system = device 1 + server 4): Obvious for the reasons in Grounds A/B; it is a mere juxtaposition of the independently‑obvious claim‑1 device and claim‑4 server (KSR: predictable combination of known components).

6. Counter‑considerations and confidence assessment

I will not overstate the case. Two features give the patent genuine arguable strength:

1. Conjunction rather than disjunction. The specification discloses the security criteria as an open menu ("a vehicle an ignition switch of which is turned on, a vehicle in which an elapsed time since … turned off is … a predetermined time or less,…"; "two or more … may be combined"). Nonetheless, the granted claims require the AND of ignition‑timing and phone‑to‑vehicle proximity. Hyundai US 2017/0083345 comes closest — it does link "within a predetermined range" of the mobile device with "after an ignition is turned off … out of a predetermined range for a predetermined time" — but it uses that logic to control the vehicle's own power state, not to gate display of a third‑party vehicle on a map. A patentee will argue that this is a different problem (power management vs. anti‑theft display gating) and that the motivation to re‑purpose it as a display filter is not shown. The counter is KSR prong C/F (known attended‑vehicle indicator + stated anti‑theft design incentive).

2. Locus of the determination. Claim 1 places the security‑criterion determination at the requestor's vehicle‑mounted device, whereas the specification's embodiment performs it at the server. The cited art teaches the server‑side filter (Denso/Nec Fielding). A patentee may argue the claims are not met by the server‑filter architecture alone. The counter is that the broadest reasonable reading of "receive … position information … or map information … [and] determine whether the other vehicle satisfies [the criterion]" covers a device that evaluates the received set, and that distributing a known server‑side determination to the client is a routine design choice (KSR: predictable variation).

No secondary‑considerations evidence (unexpected results, long‑felt need, industry praise, copying) appears in the cited record. Absent such evidence, the prima facie case is unrebutted.

Confidence: I assess the non‑security‑criterion elements as obvious with high confidence (Melen/Ford/Denso/Nec Fielding). I assess the conjunctive security‑criterion limitation as obvious‑but‑contestable — Hyundai discloses both prongs together, but in a different application, so the examiner/analyst would need to supply a clear motivation to transplant that logic into a display‑gating role. On balance, a prima facie § 103 rejection is well supported, but it is the kind of rejection a patentee could meaningfully contest, especially by arguing the claimed combination (same‑model social map + dual ignition/phone gate) is not suggested as a whole.

7. Items I could not fully verify

• Full text of JP 2009‑031888 A (Nec Fielding), US 2003/0069689 A1, US 2004/0158401 A1 (Yoon), and JP 2014‑153347 A (Mazda) — characterizations above are from titles/abstracts and general field knowledge; verify before relying on them in a written opinion.
• Whether IBM US 2019/0164135, Huawei US 2020/0082727, and Pioneer US 2020/0225050 actually qualify under § 102(a)(2) (their pre‑2018 priorities suggest they do, but I did not confirm their effective US filing dates).
• No claim charts from any actual office action exist in the record I was given; the grounds above are constructed from the examiner‑cited references, not from an issued rejection.

Sources used for reference characterization:

• https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11391593](/patent/US11391593)/en
• https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140214933 (Ford, vehicular social networking)
• https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040148090A1/en and US6868333 (Melen, group interaction system)
• https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180227704A1/en (Denso, position information sharing)
• https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2017/0083345.html (Hyundai, system power control)
• https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170358208A1/en (Apple, parking event detection)