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 .
Claims 1-10 are pending.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on January 23, 2024 has been considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claim 5 is objected to because of the following informalities: in line 2 the term "as-is" is used, it is unclear as to what this means and needs clarification. 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.
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over European Patent No. EP1818285 to Ishida et al.
Regarding claim 1, the Ishida patent teaches an automated warehouse comprising: a storage rack 4 comprising a plurality of storage sections capable of storing articles; at least one loading section 8 where loading processing, in which a loading target article among the articles is loaded to the storage rack, is performable; a transport apparatus 6 configured to transport the loading target article from the loading section to any one of the storage sections; and a control unit configured to perform the loading processing and control the transport apparatus, and wherein: each of the articles comprises a wireless tag ID tag in which identification information unique to the article is recorded, the loading section comprises a wireless tag reader 12, 14, 16 configured to read the wireless tag, the loading processing comprises reading processing of reading, with the wireless tag reader, the identification information recorded in the wireless tag of the loading target article, the automated warehouse further comprises a recording unit in which the identification information of the articles is recorded, and in the loading processing. It is also disclosed that the control unit 20 has a database for the ID tags and the information is collated with the data of the article. See Figs. 1 and 2 and the entire patent.
However, the Ishida patent lacks a specific teaching that in response to the identification information read in the reading processing not matching any recorded identification information of other articles already recorded in the recording unit, the control unit records the identification information read in the reading processing as the identification information of the loading target article in the recording unit.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the subject invention to modify the Ishida patent to have not matching recorded identification information recorded, as it would have been combining known prior art elements using known methods to provide the predictable result of updating the records of the items which the Ishida patent is already capable of doing to provide a more accurate inventory of the warehouse.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-10 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.
Chinese Patent No. CN114590513 to Zhao et al. teaches a wireless tag reading.
Japanese Patent No. JP2006341957 to Kitagaki et al. teaches a robot with a tag reader.
Japanese Patent No. JP6908683 teaches a robot that reads tags.
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/JUSTIN HOLMES/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3655