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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The IDSes filed 01/30/24 and 10/01/24 have both been considered and placed of record. The two (2) initialed copies are attached herewith.
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.
Claims 1, 6 and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Japanese document JPH08251981A in view of Japanese document JP2011205872A. See machine translation.
Re claims 1 and 7, document ‘981A discloses a power supply control apparatus comprising: a controller that controls discharging of secondary battery units (para 12), the secondary battery units each including secondary batteries and a switching unit 7 (para 1), and being coupled in parallel to each other, the switching unit switching coupling of the secondary batteries; and sensors 4/6 assigned to the secondary batteries on a one-to-one basis, the sensors each detecting a current flowing through a current path of corresponding one of the secondary batteries or a physical quantity having a predetermined correlation with the current, wherein the controller switches coupling between a first secondary battery 1 and each of one or more second secondary batteries 2 from parallel coupling to series coupling by controlling the switching unit based on a detection result obtained from each of the sensors, the first secondary battery being any one of the secondary batteries, the one or more second secondary batteries being one or more of the secondary batteries other than the first secondary battery (see para 10-14). Bolded text is not disclosed in document ‘981A.
Document ‘981A does not disclose the power supply batteries (para 1) are made of parallel and series connection. Official notice is taken of the fact that batteries are used as power supplies can be placed in parallel or in series depending on the application. Document ‘872A exemplified the parallel and series connection of its batteries whereby series connection is needed when high output is required and parallel connection when high output is no longer necessary (see para 17 and 20).It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to have connected the batteries of document ‘981A in parallel or in series as taught by document ‘872A for the purpose of, for example, increasing the output power.
Re claim 6, document ‘872A discloses switching unit 9 having plurality of FETs (para 28).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-5 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
Any inquiry concerning this communication should be directed to the Examiner at the below-listed number. The Examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Thu from 7:00am-5:00pm.
The Examiner’s SPE is Drew Dunn and he can be reached at 571.272.2312. The fax number for the organization where this application is assigned is 571.273.8300.
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/EDWARD TSO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2859 571.272.2087
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