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 .
Status of Claims
Claims 1 and 5-9 are pending.
Claims 1 and 5-9 have been amended.
Claims 2-4 and 10 have been cancelled.
This FINAL Office Action is in response to the “Amendments and Remarks” received on 08/27/2025.
Response to Applicant’s Arguments/Remarks
Amendments and Remarks filed on 08/27/2025 have been fully considered and are addressed as follows:
Regarding the claim interpretations under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f): Applicant has amended the claims and these amendments do not recite any terms to be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f). The prior claim interpretations are withdrawn.
Regarding the claim rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 101: Applicant’s amendments and arguments have been fully considered and are persuasive. The claim rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 101 have are withdrawn.
Regarding the Claim Rejections Under 35 U.S.C. § 102 & 35 U.S.C. § 103: Applicants “Amendment and Remarks” have been fully considered. Applicant has amended the independent claim and these amendments have changed the scope of the original application and the Office has supplied new grounds for rejection attached below in the FINAL office action and therefore the prior arguments are considered moot. However, even though applicant has amended the scope of the claims and the Office has provided new mapping of cited prior art below, the Office is still using the same cited prior art, thus the Office will attempt to address all remarks that remain relevant.
On page 7, applicant argues “The system in Li plans a route based on static data and does not teach or suggest the claimed capability of updating the route based on information that reflects the crane’s current operational state.” The Office disagrees because the static data reflects the crane’s current operational state when it is not moving, and the static data is acquired at the predetermined timing of every time the planning of an automatic inspection route is started. Paragraph 0126 of the specification discloses “In this manner, the flight route can be suitably set (changed even during the operation of the crane 20). Furthermore, the route setting at the predetermined timing may be performed during the flight of the moving body 40 in Step S7.” Claim 1 does not recite any limitation that precludes the generation of a route on a still crane instead of a moving crane that would require dynamic data from the crane. Therefore, prior art Li does teach all the limitations of claim 1.
Additionally, claim 1 recites “a controller configured to acquire disposition state information relating to at least one of a structure, a posture, a position, and a direction of the crane at a predetermined timing from the crane.” However, claim 7 further limits the structure information to come from a “crane information database” which is static data. Therefore, Li does teach the use of crane structure information (static data) from a database to calculate a route. Li also strongly suggests an operator manually updating the disposition state information of the crane to update the route. Li paragraph 0021 discloses "At this time, an instruction may be input through the interactive interface generated by the interface interaction module 301 to manually modify the inspection route to generate a designated inspection route." Therefore, Li does teach dynamic disposition state information being acquired by the controller by an operator visually looking at the crane.
Examiner’s Note: The examiner suggests incorporating the sensors (jib angle sensor, inclination sensor, boom angle sensor, and the lift meter) that are found directly on the crane to reflect the use of dynamic data for route calculations while the crane is moving. Alternatively, applicant could remove structure from claim 1 and dependent claim 7 to overcome the prior art.
Therefore, the Office's respectfully disagrees with applicant’s arguments. Applicant further argues that the other independent claims which recite similar features are allowable and the dependent claims are also allowable since they depend on allowable subject and the Office respectfully disagrees. It is the Office's stance that all of the claimed subject matter has been properly rejected; therefore, the Office's respectfully disagrees with applicant’s arguments. It is the Office’s stance that all of applicant relevant arguments have been considered and the rejections remain.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claims 1, 5, 6, 8, and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Li (EP 3680648).
With respect to claim 1: Li discloses A crane inspection system comprising [Li ¶ 0002, "Port machineries mainly include shore container cranes, rail cranes, tire cranes, portal cranes"]:
a moving body including a camera and moving around a crane [Li ¶ 0005, "one or more drones" and ¶ 0020 "an aerial camera"];
a management server configured to perform an inspecting process, based on imaging data captured by the camera [Li ¶ 0005, "The data management and evaluation device receives the image acquired by the drone from the ground monitoring and processing device, performs … analysis based on the image"];
a controller configured to acquire disposition state information relating to at least one of a structure, a posture, a position, and a direction of the crane at a predetermined timing from the crane [Li ¶ 0021 "The front-end data management module 302 obtains the basic data of the port machinery from the data management and evaluation device 104 or the interface interaction module 301. In an embodiment, the basic data of the port machinery includes size data and position data of the port machinery."]; and
a terminal device including a display, the terminal device being configured to [Li ¶ 0021 "the main control machine" and Fig. 3 element 131]:
set and update a movement route of the moving body during an inspection, based on the disposition state information acquired by the controller [Li ¶ 0021 "The route planning module plans an automatic inspection route" and "manually modify the inspection route"];
cause the display to display the movement route for confirmation by a user [Li ¶ 0021 "At this time, an instruction may be input through the interactive interface generated by the interface interaction module 301 to manually modify the inspection route to generate a designated inspection route." and Fig. 3 element 301]; and
cause the moving body to move along the movement route after the confirmation by the user [Li ¶ 0021, "After the designated inspection route is generated, the drone flies and performs aerial photography according to the newly modified designated inspection route."].
With respect to claim 5: Li discloses the crane inspection system according to claim 1, wherein the moving body includes a positional sensor configured to measure a position of the moving body [Li ¶ 0005, "the ground locators locates the three-dimensional position of the drone], and
The controller acquires position information of the crane [Li ¶ 0021, "data transmission module 308 performs data communication with the drone and the main control machine"],
based on position information of the moving body which is acquired by the positional sensor [Li ¶ 0021, "monitoring module 305 monitors the 3D position and status of the drone"].
With respect to claim 6: Li discloses the crane inspection system according to claim 5,
wherein the controller measures a position of the crane by the positional sensor of the moving body placed at a predetermined position of the crane [Li ¶ 0026, steps S3-S5].
With respect to claim 8: Li discloses an inspection system comprising:
a moving body including a camera and moving around an inspection target whose disposition state varies [Li ¶ 0005, "one or more drones" and ¶ 0020 "an aerial camera"];
a management server configured to perform an inspecting process, based on imaging data captured by the camera [Li ¶ 0005, "The data management and evaluation device receives the image acquired by the drone from the ground monitoring and processing device, performs … analysis based on the image"];
a controller configured to acquire disposition state information relating to at least one of a structure, a posture, a position, and a direction of the inspection target at a predetermined timing from the inspection target [Li ¶ 0021 "The front-end data management module 302 obtains the basic data of the port machinery from the data management and evaluation device 104 or the interface interaction module 301. In an embodiment, the basic data of the port machinery includes size data and position data of the port machinery."] and
a terminal device including a display, the terminal device being configured to [Li ¶ 0021 "the main control machine" and Fig. 3 element 131]:
set and update a movement route of the moving body during an inspection, based on the disposition state information acquired by the controller [Li ¶ 0021 "The route planning module plans an automatic inspection route" and "manually modify the inspection route"];
cause the display to display the movement route for confirmation by a user [Li ¶ 0021 "At this time, an instruction may be input through the interactive interface generated by the interface interaction module 301 to manually modify the inspection route to generate a designated inspection route." and Fig. 3 element 301] and cause the moving body to move along the movement route after the confirmation by the user [Li ¶ 0021, "After the designated inspection route is generated, the drone flies and performs aerial photography according to the newly modified designated inspection route."].
With respect to claim 9: Li discloses a non-transitory computer readable medium storing a route setting program for setting a movement route of a moving body moving around a crane, the program when executed by a computer, causing the computer to [Li ¶ 0026 "the route planning module executes the route planning program"]:
set and update the movement route of the moving body, based on a disposition state relating to at least one of a structure, a posture, a position, and a direction of the crane [Li ¶ 0007, "The route planning module plans an automatic inspection route based on the basic data of port machinery."]; cause a display to display the movement route for confirmation by a user [Li ¶ 0021 "At this time, an instruction may be input through the interactive interface generated by the interface interaction module 301 to manually modify the inspection route to generate a designated inspection route." and Fig. 3 element 301] and cause the moving body to move along the movement route after the confirmation by the user [Li ¶ 0021, "After the designated inspection route is generated, the drone flies and performs aerial photography according to the newly modified designated inspection route."].
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li in view of Shomura (JP2004239050).
With respect to claim 7: Li teaches the crane inspection system according to claim 1. Li does not teach further comprising: a non-volatile storage device configured to pre-store a crane information database in which a plurality of models of the crane and information relating to a structure of each model are associated with each other, wherein the controller sets a model of the crane, based on a user operation, and reads and acquires information relating to the structure of the model from the crane information database.
However, in a related field of invention, Shomura does teach a non-volatile storage device configured to pre-store a crane information database in which a plurality of models of the crane and information relating to a structure of each model are associated with each other [Shomura ¶ 0029],
wherein the controller sets a model of the crane, based on a user operation [Shamura ¶ 0003], and reads and acquires information relating to the structure of the model from the crane information database [Shomura ¶ 0050].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Shomura into the invention of Li to not only include a moving body, a processing unit, and a route setting unit in a crane inspection system as Li discloses but to also include a storage unit as a database for crane information as taught by Shomura with a reasonable expectation of success. One would be motivated to incorporate aspects of the cited prior art Shomura into Li to improve the efficiency and accuracy of an automated crane inspection system.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOSEPHINE RICH whose telephone number is (571)272-6384. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8-5pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Scott Browne can be reached at (571) 270-0151. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/J.E.R./Examiner, Art Unit 3666
/SCOTT A BROWNE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3666
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