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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 06/08/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
Applicant’s amendment filed 06/08/2026 has been entered. Claims 1-4, 6-12, 15-18, and 21-25 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see pages 9-10, filed 06/08/2026, with respect to 35 U.S.C. 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The 35 U.S.C. 103 rejection of Claims 1-12 and 15-22 has been withdrawn. Examiner agrees with applicant’s argument that previously disclosed prior arts Lee, Segelmark, Hua, and Yang do not teach the amended limitations of “detecting a transition of at least one battery into a charge cycle or a discharge cycle, the transition occurring prior to a failure condition; capturing, by a camera, at least one thermal image during the charge cycle of the at least one battery or the discharge cycle of the at least one battery responsive to detection of the transition of the at least one battery into the charge cycle or the discharge cycle.”
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 1-4, 6-12, 15-18, and 21-25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. Independent Claims 1, 10, and 17 are amended to include the limitation “detecting a transition of at least one battery into a charge cycle or a discharge cycle, the transition occurring prior to a failure condition; capturing, by a camera, at least one thermal image during the charge cycle of the at least one battery or the discharge cycle of the at least one battery responsive to detection of the transition of the at least one battery into the charge cycle or the discharge cycle”. The specification is silent with regards to detecting a transition into a charge cycle or a discharge cycle. Furthermore the specification is silent with regards to capturing a thermal image during the charge or discharge cycle in response to the detection of a transition into the charge or discharge cycle.
Claims 2-4, 6-9, 11-12, 15-16, 18, and 21-25 are rejected due to dependence on Claims 1, 10, and 17.
Examiner’s Note
Claims 1-4, 6-12, 15-18, and 21-25 are not rejected under a prior art rejection (35 U.S.C. 102 or 35 U.S.C. 103).
In regards to Claims 1, 10, and 17, Lee (KR20120038112A) teaches “receiving, by a data acquisition system, at least one thermal image corresponding to at least one battery of at least one vehicle, the at least one thermal image including pixel data (monitoring and managing a secondary battery – [0001]; secondary batteries are widely used in electric or hybrid vehicles – [0002]; image module performs function of generating an infrared/thermal image of a battery – [0032]; mechanism through image processing to determine whether a battery is overheated and to perform subsequent processing – [0033]; each pixel constitutes the infrared image, i.e. thermal image, has color information including Y, Cb, and Cr and the color information included in the image information has different values dependent on the heat of the object – [0035]);
converting, by the data acquisition system, the at least one thermal image into one or more parameters, the one or more parameters corresponding to one or more pixels of the pixel data (each pixel constitutes the infrared image has color information including Y, Cb, and Cr – [0035]; infrared image has different color, especially brightness information, depending on the temperature of the object and thus, by applying this principle, color information corresponding to each temperature is stored – [0038]; six types of color information are illustrated as an example, and it is possible to configure the size of the brightness or luminance information of the color according to each temperature as data – [0039]; from data processing, the brightness information of a pixel has a data value of 0 to 255, and a larger number means a brighter bright, and a brighter brightness means a subject with higher heat – [0044]);
transmitting, by the data acquisition system, the one or more parameters to a condition monitoring system (infrared image information is input from the image module and the control unit reads out the reference color information stored in the storage unit and compares the color information of the infrared image with the reference color information to determine whether the battery is overheated – [0040]; Figures 1 and 2 detail the control unit connected to the cameras 110);
evaluating, by the condition monitoring system and in advance of the battery failure, the one or more parameters based on one or more conditions to determine that at least one of the one or more parameters meet at least one of the one or more conditions (temperatures below 25C are judged as normal and temperatures above 25C are judged as overheating, i.e. condition – [0039]; control unit reads out the reference color information stored in the storage unit and compares the color information of the infrared image with the reference color information to determine whether the battery is overheated – [0040]; “In addition, the control unit of the present invention outputs alarm information when there is an overheated secondary battery cell, and it is preferable to configure it so that differential alarm information is output according to the degree of overheating” – [0020]; “is desirable to configure it so that it is possible to distinguish between secondary batteries that are overheated to the extent that immediate action is required and secondary batteries that are overheated to the extent that caution or preliminary action is required” – [0052]; as the system has different degrees of overheating in the evaluation, this would mean that the evaluation is done in before the failure of the battery); and
outputting, by the condition monitoring system and in advance of the battery failure, the one or more battery maintenance actions to one or more user interfaces of a user device (“Therefore, batteries used as energy storage sources assembled into large structures require monitoring of heat generation, and it can be said that follow-up measures based on the monitoring results, such as the operation of cooling air conditioning systems” – [0012]; “It is desirable to configure it so that it is possible to distinguish between secondary batteries that are overheated to the extent that immediate action is required and secondary batteries that are overheated to the extent that caution or preliminary action is required” – [0052]; by checking the interface screen, administrators can accurately determine which secondary battery cells require replacement or repair – [0053]; “In this case, as previously examined, the degree of overheating can be recognized in stages by utilizing the difference from the standard color information. Therefore, the control unit (130) of the present invention can be configured to output alarm information, etc. as described above, but to output differential alarm information according to the degree of overheating, thereby inducing an administrator, etc., to take differential follow-up or preliminary measures” – [0055]).”
Segelmark (US20240256977) teaches “based on the evaluating, determining, by the condition monitoring system and in advance of the battery failure, one or more battery maintenance actions to prevent the battery failure based on the at least one of the one or more parameters that meets the at least one of the one or more conditions (infrared imaging system may determine image settings using trained machine learning models and includes the functionality of recommending actions – [0017]; trained machine learning model performs target recognition based on temperature profile to identify targets of interesting including overheating components, and provides recommended actions based on the assessment – [0087]; recommended action can include repair [i.e. action to prevent the battery failure] or replace – [0103]).”
Hua (CN110532600A) teaches “predict a future temperature or health of the at least one battery (“This invention also relates to a power battery thermal management method, which corresponds to the aforementioned power battery thermal management system and can be understood as a practical application method of the aforementioned system. This method involves establishing a digital battery thermal management module in the cloud that matches the physical battery thermal management module, and creating a digital twin system based on the data and information of both. The system calculates and analyzes the battery system temperature distribution in real time in the cloud, obtaining the current highest temperature and temperature inconsistencies within the system, predicting its future development trend, and formulating a reasonable thermal management control strategy to manage the inconsistencies in the battery pack temperature distribution, control the highest and lowest temperatures, and predict future temperature trends” – [0038]).”
Bing (Bing, “Battery Cycle Detection Using ‘Current’ Time-series data”, 01/10/2022, https://www.d3view.com/battery-cycle-detection-using-current-time-series-data/) teaches “detecting a transition of at least one battery into a charge cycle or a discharge cycle, the transition occurring prior to a failure condition (“The end of a cycle (start of the next cycle) is marked by the end of a charge event. Charge events and discharge events can be easily identified by the sign of the current curve. If the current stays above zero for a period of time, it indicates a discharge event; if the current stays negative for a period of time, it indicates a charge event. It also happens that the current goes up and down crossing zero constantly within a period of time. We don’t want to include any point from the noise as a cycle start time… When an event reaches zero, it marks the end of the event. A cycle is counted every time a charge event lasts more than a certain amount of time and it starts when a charge event ends. Figure 2 shows the four cycles identified in this data and the cycle start time is marked by a dashed red line. The first point is considered to be the start of the first cycle. Cycle 5 starts very late at the end of the data collection process. There isn’t enough information for us to conclude anything. Notice that in order to count a cycle, the charge event must last a certain amount of time. Therefore, not all charge events suggest a new cycle. This explains why no cycle starts around 35k at the end of the charge event because it doesn’t meet the duration requirement.” – Pages 1-2)
Yang (CN115063418A) teaches “capturing, by a camera, at least one thermal image during the charge cycle of the at least one battery or the discharge cycle of the at least one battery (data collection occurring during charging and discharging cycles of the batteries with infrared images of the battery collected – [n0017]).”
Lee in view of Segelmark, Hua, Bing, and Yang are silent with regards to the language of “capturing, by a camera, at least one thermal image during the charge cycle of the at least one battery or the discharge cycle of the at least one battery responsive to detection of the transition of the at least one battery into the charge cycle or the discharge cycle”
Conclusion
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/YOSSEF KORANG-BEHESHTI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2857
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