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 .
Restriction/Election
Applicant’s election of group I, claims 1-8 in the reply filed on October 14, 2025 is acknowledged. Because applicant did not distinctly and specifically point out the supposed errors in the restriction requirement, the election has been treated as an election without traverse (MPEP § 818.01(a)). Claims 1-8 are now pending in the application, and claims 9-20 are withdrawn from consideration.
Examination of Application
IDS
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on March 24, 2023 and September 6, 2023 are being considered by the Examiner.
Drawing
The drawing filed on March 24, 2023 is accepted by the Examiner.
Specification
The specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
Claim rejection – 35 U.S.C. §112
With regard to claims 6-7: the instant claims are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §112(b) or 35 U.S.C. §112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite because the respective claims have insufficient antecedent basis for the corresponding limitation in the claim as follows:
With regard to claim 6: page 3, three lines into the claim, “at least one of the events of powering a traction motor,” is referring to the events that it is about to list: powering a traction motor, powering vehicle accessory systems, and causing the modules to charge the packs. One suggestion would be to delete the phrase “the events of”, so the claim recites “and cause at least one of powering a traction motor…”.
With regard to claim 7: the instant claim depends on claim 6 and includes similar issues as it inherits the attributes of the respective base claim.
Claims 6-7 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Allowance
Claims 1-5, and 8 are allowed. The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
In reference to claims 1-5 and 8: Macias et al. (IEEE Publication, “A Novel Online Energy Management Strategy for Multi Fuel Cell Systems,” hereon Macias) discloses a system for energy management system for muti-stack fuel cell system (MFCS). The system includes two power allocation systems, namely daisy chain and equal distribution which are developed and compared in their basic characteristic terms. An adaptive strategy is utilized to split the power between the fuel cells and the battery packs. A few variables are used for splitting the power including demanded power, state of charge, the battery packs maximum power, and efficiency point on each cell. It is observed that each fuel cell shows variable specific aging, material and external factors. The study provides a better look at the maximum power and efficiency of the fuel cell during an operation (see Macias, page 2043, Abstract).
The instant claim 1 differ in that the controller of the system which is based on having state of health (SOH) of a respective battery cells and respective battery packs, and “monitor and control the operation of the plurality of the fuel cell modules or the battery packs, receive power demand of the fuel cell vehicle, determine power split between the plurality of fuel cell modules and the plurality of battery packs based on operating phase of the fuel cell vehicle, and cause a flow of power based on a determined power split from the plurality of fuel cell modules and from the plurality of battery packs to meet the power demand,” " in combination with the rest of the claim limitations as claimed and defined by the Applicants.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Yamamoto et al. (U.S. Patent No. 9,356,470) discloses a method of operating a power adapter that includes an energy storage device and a fuel cell system including a fuel supply and a fuel cell stack, the method including determining a connectivity state of an auxiliary power source and a load with the power adapter, and selecting a power adapter operation mode based on the connection states of the auxiliary power source and the load.
Morrison et al. (U.S. PAP 2022/0106060) discloses system and method for fuel-cell and motor trend monitoring including recording signals from fuel-cell and motor system-condition sensors or sets of onboard sensors and periodically analyzing results to examine fuel-cell and motor system performance trends to predict the need for fuel-cell or motor system maintenance.
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/ELIAS DESTA/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2857