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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 6/23/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Claim Objections
All previous claim objections have been overcome based on applicant’s filed amendments dated 23 June 2026.
112 Rejection
All previous 112 Rejections have been overcome based on applicant’s filed amendments dated 23 June 2026.
102 Rejection
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 19 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
Claim(s) 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Matsumoto et al. (2019/0146038) in view of Jin (11,208,004).
With respect to claim 19, Matsumoto et el. teaches in Fig. 4 a system, comprising: a battery (1); memory (52); a voltage measurement circuit (4) coupled to the battery (1); a current measurement circuit (3) coupled to the battery (1); and a battery gauge circuit (as seen in Fig. 4) coupled to the memory (52), the voltage measurement circuit (4), and the current measurement circuit battery (3), the battery gauge circuit including: a processing circuit (53) capable of: receiving, from the voltage measurement circuit (4), a first signal representing a voltage across a battery (1; [0036]), receiving, from the current measurement circuit (3), a second signal representing a current conducted by the battery (1; [0035]); receiving, from memory (52), parameters of the battery (1; [0045-0046]); determining (via 53) one or more resistances [0045] of the battery (1) responsive to receiving the first and second signals (via 4 and 3) and the parameters (stored in memory 52); and provide a third signal (r1) indicative of a predicted behavior of the battery to a load responsive to determining the one or more resistances (as the calculating part 55 determines from the first and second signals and stored parameters a deteriorated state of the battery, which lends to a predictable behavior of the that battery when responding to a load).
Matsumoto et al. remains silent regarding the second signal represents a pulsed current conducted by the battery.
Jin teaches a similar system that includes sensing current as a signal (s88; Fig. 5) where the sensed signal is representative of a pulsed current conducted by a battery (Col. 6 lines 32-36; as Jin teaches when a vehicle decelerates, the electric motor acts as a generator, forcing a sudden, high-power burst of electrical energy back into the battery, the examiner considers this rapid injection acts as a high-amplitude charge pulse).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing of the instant invention to modify the system of Matsumoto et al. to include the pulsed current consideration in the predictive model when regenerative braking is part of the system as taught by Jin because such a modification allows for continuously updated SOH estimates, enabling predictive maintenance while preventing premature degradation and irreversible capacity loss.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-18 and 22-25 allowed for including indicated allowable subjected matter from OA dated 24 February 2026.
Claims 20 and 21 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
BABA et al. (2016/0252585) teaches using a battery model to estimate parameters while reducing a computation load.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MATTHEW G MARINI whose telephone number is (571)272-2676. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8am-5pm.
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/MATTHEW G MARINI/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2853
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