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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed 23 December 2025, have been fully considered. Claims 1-19 are pending. Claims 1, 6-9, 12-15, and 18 have been amended. Claim 19 has been added.
Applicant’s efforts to address the 112(b) rejection have been considered and are satisfactory.
Applicant’s efforts to amend the claims to address the 103 rejections have been considered. The examiner agrees that neither Choi, Zhu, nor Meddings alone explicitly discloses the amendments to the independent claims. However, new grounds for rejection are given in light of the amendments. See the 103 rejections below.
Claim Objections
Claim 7 is objected to because of the following informalities: “comparing the correlation the inspection target battery cell” should be amended to read “comparing the correlation to the inspection target battery cell.” Appropriate correction is required.
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 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 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 1-8 and 17-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Choi (KR 20200035594 A) in view of Zhu (US 20110003182 A1), Walpole (“Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists: Ninth Edition”), and Meddings (Meddings, Nina et al., “Application of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy to commercial Li-ion cells: A review”).
Regarding claim 7, Choi discloses a method for inspecting disconnection of an electrode tab of an inspection target battery cell (¶1: “The present invention relates to a method for evaluating whether a battery cell is disconnected, and more particularly, to a non-destructive disconnection evaluation method capable of non-destructively detecting whether a disconnection between an electrode tab and an electrode is performed using a pressing force.”), the method comprising:
measuring impedance of the inspection target battery cell over frequency (¶17: the battery cell performance evaluation device performs a measurement of the battery cell; ¶30: “In the step (S50), whether the impedance measured in the steps (S20) and (S40) is changed through a Nyquist plot is measured.”; ¶58: “When the impedance value of a lithium secondary battery is Nyquist plot, a difference occurs depending on the frequency of the AC signal used for measurement. If the impedance is continuously measured for different frequencies in a predetermined frequency range, the impedance of the device can be represented by an impedance characteristic curve expressed as a function of frequency.”);
calculating real part resistance values of impedance of the inspection target battery cell over frequency from the impedance (¶57: “In electrochemistry, impedance data is represented by an impedance complex plane, commonly called a Nyquist Plot. The total impedance (Z) of the battery is divided into a real impendence component (Z' or Zreal) and an imaginary impedance component (Z" or Zimg) for each applied frequency. A method of plotting the imaginary part of the impedance on the y-axis and the real part on the x-axis according to a change in frequency is called a Nyquist plot.”); and
determining whether the electrode tab of the inspection target battery cell is disconnected by comparing real part resistance values in a real part resistance value range in a frequency range of a good battery cell having the same type as the inspection target battery cell with the real part resistance values of the impedance of the inspection target battery cell in another frequency range (Fig. 8: real and imaginary impedance is measured over a frequency range (see above explanation of a Nyquist plot) when the test cell is unpressurized and when at 0.2 MPa. When pressurized, the cell’s short circuit is fixed (¶18: “When the battery cell is pressurized…the foil in the state where the gap is generated and the coating part physically contact, the disconnection state is eliminated, and the contact area of the coating part increases.”; ¶26: pressure can reach 10 MPa to achieve adequate contact), thus it is a “good cell”. Finally, a comparison between impedance values (including real part of impedance) is made to determine if the tab of the test cell is disconnected (¶30: the evaluation step (S50) “may be a step of determining whether impedance changes in a charge transfer frequency band before and after pressurization.”)).
Choi does not explicitly disclose that impedance values and impedance angles are measured, nor that the real part resistance values of impedance are calculated from the impedance values and the impedance angles. The use of “impedance values” and “impedance angles” here refers to representing complex numbers in polar form, whereas Choi uses rectangular form. However, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to substitute polar form for rectangular form since both forms represent the same information.
In the determination step, Choi does not explicitly disclose that the frequency range of the good battery cell and the frequency range of the inspection target battery cell are the same. However, referring to Fig. 8 of Choi, Choi discloses that the frequency range for measuring the test cell at 0.1MPa was the same frequency range as used for the unpressurized test cell (see Fig. 8), and it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art practicing the invention of Choi to in general measure at the same frequencies before and after pressurization to avoid adding unnecessary extra variables.
In light of the above, in the determination step Choi still does not disclose that the real part resistance values of plural good battery cells are compared to.
Zhu teaches that impedance can vary with local temperature (¶8: “cell impedance can vary with local temperature”). Therefore, there may not be just one value representative of a “good” or “healthy” resistance.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Zhu with the invention of Choi by comparing the real part resistance values of the inspection target battery cell with not only itself in a pressurized state, but also with real part resistance values of other good battery cells in the real part resistance value range in the resonance frequency range. Doing so would enable one to compare the values for the pressurized cell with values of known good cells when determining whether contact has been reestablished, and accounting for variability due to e.g. temperature.
Choi in view of Zhu does not explicitly teach comparing a plurality of frequencies and a plurality of pieces of real part resistance value data for the good battery cells to generate a correlation through linear regression, and comparing the correlation to the inspection target battery cell to determine whether the electrode tab of the inspection target battery cell is disconnected.
Walpole teaches that a set of measured values may be related to underlying variables in a non-exact way, and that one may perform regression to find a relationship (pg., 389, under 11.1 Introduction to Linear Regression). Walpole further teaches that linear regression can be used to treat the relationship of values to one or more regressors, where the relationship is assumed to be linear (p. 391, paragraph above Section 11.2). A regression line represents a linear function associating one or more regressors with an output variable, where the function minimizes the error between expected output and measured output (See Fig. 11.2 on pg. 392).
Consider the case described above in which the real part resistance values of the inspection target battery cell are compared over a resonant frequency range to the measured values of multiple good battery cells. Consider also the teaching that impedance depends not only on frequency, but also on temperature (refer to ¶8 of Zhu above). From this it follows that the relationship between resistance and frequency is not exact. To account for this, one would be motivated to apply a simple linear regression on the good battery cell measurements, to determine a rule for associating a frequency with an “average” resistance which attempts to minimize the error due to unknown variables (such as the temperature at which the good battery cells were measured, if that information is not available) between the measurements of the multiple good battery cells. The linear regression line would be a correlation of the real part resistance value data for the good battery cells.
For the reasons above, then, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Walpole with the invention of Choi in view of Zhu by comparing a plurality of frequencies and a plurality of pieces of real part resistance value data for the good battery cells to generate a correlation through linear regression, and comparing the correlation to the inspection target battery cell to determine whether the electrode tab of the inspection target battery cell is disconnected.
Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole does not teach that the frequency range of the good battery cells is a resonance frequency range.
Choi does disclose measuring a lithium battery (¶57), and furthermore discloses measuring in the kHz range (¶29: “The AC voltage applied in the steps (S20) and (S40) is preferably a high frequency band in the unit of kHz or MH”).
Meddings teaches that electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is “a widely applied non-destructive method of characterization of Li-ion batteries” which is easy to apply (Abstract). Meddings also teaches that a typical EIS Nyquist plot measurement of a Li-ion battery includes a range, in kHz, through which Im
(
Z
)
=0 (see Fig. 1 and description). The range in Fig. 1 is a resonance frequency range because it is a range of values including a point where the reactance (imaginary part of
Z
) vanishes.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Meddings with the invention of Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole by using EIS to measure impedance over frequency, and by causing the frequency range of the good battery cells to be a resonance frequency range like that depicted in Fig. 1 of Meddings. One would be motivated to use EIS to measure a Li-ion battery for ease of application. Furthermore, Meddings shows that a typical Li-ion battery has a resonance in the kHz range, and Choi teaches measuring in the kHz range, thus one would expect to obtain a resonance frequency range.
Regarding claim 1, the measuring, calculating, and determining steps of claim 1 are found in claim 7 and rejected for the same reasons. Furthermore, Choi discloses an apparatus for inspecting disconnection of an electrode tab of an inspection target battery cell (¶17: battery cell performance evaluation device). Furthermore, considering the combination of Choi with Zhu and Meddings described in the rejection of claim 7, it would have been obvious to include the EIS as a measurement part to perform the measuring step for ease of application. Finally, while Choi does not explicitly disclose the calculation and determination parts, since the calculation and determination steps could be performed by a computer, it would have been obvious to include a computer to more easily and autonomously perform the calculation and determination steps.
Regarding claim 2, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches the limitations of claim 1. Furthermore, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches that when the real part resistance values of the impedance of the inspection target battery cell in the same frequency range as the resonance frequency range are greater than the real part resistance values in the real part resistance value range in the resonance frequency range of the good battery cells, the determination part determines that the electrode tab of the inspection target battery cell is disconnected (Fig. 8; ¶78: “a part of the positive electrode tab was disconnected, and the battery cell was pressed at a pressure of 0.2 MPa.”; ¶80: “the overall plot is moved to the left after the pressing (0.1 MPa and 0.2MPa), and the magnitude of the impedance (｜Z｜) showed a decreasing distribution. That is, through the present invention, it was possible to detect whether the battery cell was disconnected.” Note in Fig. 8 that the short-circuit cell (Reference) is shifted leftward i.e. has higher resistance at all points than the connected cell (0.2 MPa). Note also rejection of claim 7 motivating the “resonance frequency range” and comparison with other “good battery cells” to determine when contact has been reestablished).
Regarding claim 3, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches the limitations of claim 1, and further teaches that the measurement part includes an EIS meter (see rejection of claim 7 and Abstract of Meddings).
Regarding claim 4, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches the limitations of claim 1. Consider the argument in the rejection of claim 7 motivating comparison with multiple good battery cells, particularly the argument that their impedance values may be over a range due to variations such as e.g. temperature (see rejection of claim 7 and Zhu, ¶8: “cell impedance can vary with local temperature”). Due to individual variations, it may be that one or more good battery cells have recorded resistance (
R
i.e. Re(
Z
)) values over a frequency (
f
) range which crosses a
R
(
f
)
line or enters a
R
range of a disconnected cell over some frequencies in the resonance frequency range. Therefore, one may or may not be motivated to consider a battery cell tab under inspection to be disconnected if, at some pressure, its values over some frequency range in the resonance frequency range match both defective and healthy battery data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Zhu with the invention of Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings by, when a part of the real part resistance value range of the good battery cells in the resonance frequency range overlaps a change line of real part resistance values of a defective battery cell or a real part resistance value range of the defective battery cell in the same frequency range as the resonance frequency range, causing the determination part to inspect whether the electrode tab of the inspection target battery cell is disconnected by comparing the real part resistance values in the real part resistance value range of the good battery cells including or excluding the overlapping change line or range with the real part resistance values of the inspection target battery cell.
Regarding claim 5, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches the limitations of claim 1. Furthermore, Choi discloses using the impedance measurements over frequency to interpolate the real and imaginary parts of impedance over frequency (Fig. 8, lines interpolate points). Interpolation is useful because it enables one to estimate the real and imaginary parts of impedance at an unmeasured frequency. For this reason, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Choi with the invention of Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings by causing the determination part to inspect whether the electrode tab of the inspection target battery cell is disconnected by determining real part resistance values in a real part resistance value range of the good battery cells based on frequency data of the resonance frequency range of the good battery cells and real part resistance value data in the resonance frequency range and comparing the real part resistance values in the real part resistance value range of the good battery cells with the real part resistance values of the inspection target battery cell. Doing so would enable one to make comparisons at unmeasured frequencies when inspecting the electrode tab of the inspection target battery cell.
Regarding claim 6, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches the limitations of claim 1. Furthermore, in order to compare the inspection target battery cell values to the values of the good battery cells, the values of the good battery cells must either be taken during the experiment or stored on the device for comparison. Since latter enables the values to be brought up whenever necessary, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art practicing the invention of Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings to cause the apparatus to further comprise a storage part (a memory of the computer; use of a computer was argued in the rejection of claim 1) including information on at least one of the resonance frequency range of the good battery cells, the real part resistance value range of the good battery cells in the resonance frequency range, and a correlation between frequencies and real part resistance values in the resonance frequency range.
Regarding claim 8, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches the limitations of claim 7. Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings further teaches that the resonance frequency range of the good battery cells is a range of frequencies when an imaginary part resistance value of an impedance value measured for each of the plurality of good battery cells changes from a positive (+) value to a negative (-) value (see rejection of claim 7 and Fig. 1 of Meddings, which shows that a typical Nyquist plot for a Li-ion battery passes Im(
Z
)=0).
Regarding claim 17, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches the limitations of claim 1. Furthermore, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches a first central processing unit (CPU) or a first micro controller unit (MCU); and a first non-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer executable program code configured to instruct the first CPU or the first MCU to perform the calculation of real part resistance values of impedance of the inspection target battery cell over frequency (the computer included in the rejection of claim 1 to perform the calculation and determination steps; computers have a CPU or MCU and a memory such as SSD or HD space).
Regarding claim 18, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches the limitations of claim 1. Furthermore, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches a second central processing unit (CPU) or a second micro controller unit (MCU); and a second non-transitory computer readable medium comprising computer executable program code configured to instruct the second CPU or the second MCU to perform the determination of whether the electrode tab of the inspection target battery cell is disconnected (the computer included in the rejection of claim 1 to perform the calculation and determination steps; computers have a CPU or MCU and a memory such as SSD or HD space. Note that since claim 18 does not depend from claim 17, the “first” and “second” CPUs, MCUs, and readable mediums may refer to the same objects. Also note that, even if claim 18 depended from claim 17, it still would have been obvious for a computer to have two memory devices and two CPUs or MCUs).
Regarding claim 19, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches the limitations of claim 1. Furthermore, in the rejection of claim 1 it was argued that it would have been obvious to exchange rectangular form of complex numbers to polar form (see rejection of claim 1). Let the impedance be denoted by
Z
. It is well-known that, in polar form, the real part of a complex number (here the real part resistance value of impedance
Z
) is
Z
cos
θ
, where
|
Z
|
is the magnitude of the impedance and
θ
is the angle to the point
Z
in the complex plane, measured counterclockwise from the positive real axis on the complex plane. Therefore it would have been obvious to calculate the real part resistance values by multiplying a magnitude of an impedance value by a function of an impedance angle. This is just a standard way of finding the real component of a complex number using polar coordinates.
Claims 9-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Choi (KR 20200035594 A) in view of Zhu (US 20110003182 A1), Walpole (“Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists: Ninth Edition”), and Meddings (Meddings, Nina et al., “Application of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy to commercial Li-ion cells: A review”), and further in view of Liang (US 20010045823 A1).
Regarding claim 9, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches the limitations of claim 8 but does not teach the limitations of claim 9. However, note in Fig. 8 of Choi that, as pressure increases, Im(Z) seems to remain constant for each frequency, and only Re(Z) (i.e. resistance) changes.
Liang teaches that one can plot resistance over frequency
R
f
(Fig. 7).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Liang with the invention of Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings by deriving a real part resistance value line of good product impedance for each of the good battery cells by connecting real part resistance values of each of the good battery cells over frequency in the resonance frequency range. This would be useful to visualize
R
(
f
)
for good battery cells and compare with
R
(
f
)
of a cell under test which changes with pressure, all while ignoring Im(Z) which does not change as a function of pressure on the pouch cell.
Furthermore, it would have been obvious to set a real part resistance value zone of the good battery cells, of which real part resistance value lines of good product impedance are adjacent, to the real part resistance value range in the resonance frequency range of the good battery cells. This just describes considering a particular zone of the plot of
R
(
f
)
in which the
R
(
f
)
line of a number of good cells are adjacent. Doing so would be useful in order to focus on a particular zone of interest.
Regarding claim 10, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings and Liang teaches the limitations of claim 9. Furthermore, it would be sensible to consider a battery cell under test to be defective if its unpressurized resistance is higher than the resistance of good battery cells by some threshold amount in a particular zone of
R
(
f
)
. This makes sense when considering that Choi teaches that resistance decreases when a defective cell is pressurized to reconnect a disconnected electrode tab (see Fig. 8 and rejection of claim 2). Since this is in essence what claim 10 recites, it would have been obvious to cause the determining whether the electrode tab of the inspection target battery cell is disconnected to include:
determining the inspection target battery cell to be a defective product when the real part resistance values of the impedance of the inspection target battery cell in the same frequency range as the resonance frequency range are greater than the real part resistance values of the real part resistance value zone of the good battery cells; and
determining the inspection target battery cell to be a good product when the real part resistance values of the impedance of the inspection target battery cell in the same frequency range as the resonance frequency range are smaller than or equal to a range of the real part resistance values of the real part resistance value zone.
Regarding claim 11, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings and Liang teaches the limitations of claim 9. Claim 11 is essentially met by comparing
R
(
f
)
of an unpressurized battery cell under test to
R
(
f
)
of the good battery cells at the minimum, middle, and maximum frequencies of the resonance frequency range to determine if the cell under test is defective. As argued in the rejection of claim 10, it would be sensible to consider a battery cell under test to be defective if its unpressurized resistance is higher than the resistance of good battery cells by some threshold amount. This makes sense when considering that Choi teaches that resistance decreases when a defective cell is pressurized to reconnect a disconnected electrode tab (see Fig. 8 and rejection of claim 2).
One of ordinary skill would understand that comparing resistances over a set of points is simpler than comparing over an entire range. Furthermore, when considering points in a range it is natural to use a minimum, middle, and maximum value. Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art practicing the invention of Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings and Liang to cause the determining whether the electrode tab of the inspection target battery cell is disconnected to include determining whether the inspection target battery cell is defective by comparing each of real part resistance values in the real part resistance value zone of the good battery cells with each of real part resistance values of the inspection target battery cell at three points of a minimum frequency, a middle frequency, and a maximum frequency in the resonance frequency range.
Regarding claim 12, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings and Liang teaches the limitations of claim 9. Furthermore, a reasonable interpretation of claim 12 would be to find
R
(
f
)
of one or more defective cells by interpolation over the resonance frequency range (their plots being next to each other i.e. adjacent), then if the
R
(
f
)
line for one or more defective cells overlaps
R
(
f
)
for one or more good cells, deciding either that the overlapping zone would render a test cell defective if it has values in the overlapping zone, or not.
As given in the rejection of claim 7, Zhu teaches that battery impedance may vary with variables such as local temperature (Zhu, ¶8: “cell impedance can vary with local temperature”). This may include resistance and may apply to defective and non-defective cells. Furthermore, as given in the rejection of claim 10, it would be sensible to consider a battery cell under test to be defective if its unpressurized resistance is higher than the resistance of good battery cells by some threshold amount in a particular zone of
R
(
f
)
(see Fig. 8 of Choi and rejection of claim 10). Therefore, both good and defective cells may have slightly different
R
(
f
)
curves. When these curves overlap at a particular range of frequencies in the resonance frequency range, it can be come ambiguous whether a test cell with resistance values in the overlapping zone should be considered defective or not. Therefore, one of ordinary skill would be motivated either to reject such a test cell as defective or to consider such a cell as not necessarily defective based solely on the fact that it has values in the overlapping zone.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art practicing the invention of Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings and Liang to derive a defective product real part resistance value line of an individual defective battery cell or a defective real part resistance value zone in which real part resistance value lines of a plurality of defective battery cells are adjacent by connecting real part resistance values of each of the plurality of defective battery cells in which electrode tabs are disconnected over frequency; and
set, when the defective product real part resistance value line or the defective product real part resistance value zone overlaps the real part resistance value zone of the good battery cells, a range including or excluding an overlapping zone or line to a real part resistance value range of the good battery cells for determining whether the inspection target battery cell is operating properly.
Regarding claim 13, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings teaches the limitations of claim 8. Furthermore, using the reasoning in the rejection of claim 9 (see rejection of claim 9 and Fig. 7 of Liang), it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of Liang with the invention of Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings by deriving a correlation between frequencies and the real part resistance values in the resonance frequency range from frequency data and real part resistance value data in the resonance frequency range of the plurality of good battery cells. This is met by creating one or more
R
(
f
)
curves using data from the good battery cells and interpolating between data points.
Additionally, the latter part of claim 13 simply describes setting a resistance range in the resonance frequency range based on the above correlation, which is also met by plotting
R
(
f
)
and interpolating between data points (the plot would show a range of resistance values over the resonance frequency range). Therefore it also would have been obvious to set a real part resistance value range in the resonance frequency range based on the derived correlation to a real part resistance value range in the resonance frequency range of the good battery cells.
Regarding claim 14, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings and Liang teach the limitations of claim 13. Following the reasoning in the rejection of claim 10, it would be sensible to consider a battery cell under test to be defective if its unpressurized resistance is higher than the resistance of good battery cells by some threshold amount. This makes sense when considering that Choi teaches that resistance decreases when a defective cell is pressurized to reconnect a disconnected electrode tab (see Fig. 8 and rejection of claim 2). Claim 14 is essentially met by determining that the battery cell under test is defective if its resistance values are greater than the resistance values of the good battery cells by some threshold over the resonance frequency range, using the
R
(
f
)
line derived in claim 13. This is similar to the limitations of claim 10, save that there is no mention of a particular zone, and would have been obvious for essentially the same reasons (see rejection of claim 10, and Fig. 8 of Choi showing that the resistance values of a connected battery are lower than the resistance values of a disconnected battery). Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art practicing the invention of Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings and Liang to cause the determining whether the electrode tab of the inspection target battery cell is disconnected to include:
determining the inspection target battery cell to be defective when the real part resistance values of the impedance of the inspection target battery cell in the same frequency range as the resonance frequency range are greater than the real part resistance value range in the resonance frequency range of the good battery cells based on the correlation; and
determining the inspection target battery cell to be operating properly when the real part resistance values of the impedance of the inspection target battery cell in the same frequency range as the resonance frequency range are smaller than the real part resistance value range in the resonance frequency range of the good battery cells based on the correlation.
Regarding claim 15, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings and Liang teaches the limitations of claim 13. The limitations of claim 15 are essentially the same as those of claim 11 (see rejection of claim 11), save that claim 15 explicitly recites using the correlation between frequency and resistance recited in claim 13. Doing so would be met by using an interpolated
R
(
f
)
curve of the good battery cells, which would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art because an
R
(
f
)
curve enables one to determine resistance at any frequency in the domain of
f
. Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art practicing the invention of Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings and Liang to cause the determining whether the electrode tab of the inspection target battery cell is disconnected to include determining whether the inspection target battery cell is defective by comparing each of real part resistance values of the good battery cells expressed according to the correlation at three points of a minimum frequency, a middle frequency, and a maximum frequency of the resonance frequency range with each of real part resistance values of the inspection target battery cell at the three frequencies.
Regarding claim 16, Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings and Liang teaches the limitations of claim 13. The limitations of claim 16 are essentially the same as those of claim 10 (see rejection of claim 10 and note the threshold mentioned; it would be sensible to set a threshold resistance over a good battery cell’s value for considering a test cell to be defective. Resistance is a continuous value, therefore resistance of a good cell and a test cell can be arbitrarily close though technically different, and in such a case it would be unreasonable to reject the test cell as defective), save that claim 16 explicitly recites using the correlation between frequency and resistance recited in claim 13. Doing so would have been obvious for the reasons given in the rejection of claim 15. Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art practicing the invention of Choi in view of Zhu and Walpole and Meddings and Liang to cause the determining whether the electrode tab of the inspection target battery cell is disconnected to include determining the inspection target battery cell to be defective when the real part resistance values of the impedance of the inspection target battery cell in the same frequency range as the resonance frequency range are greater than the real part resistance values in the resonance frequency range of the good battery cells based on the correlation by a predetermined range or more.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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ETHAN WESLEY EDWARDS
Examiner
Art Unit 2857
/E.W.E./ Examiner, Art Unit 2857
/ANDREW SCHECHTER/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2857