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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1 and 8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by (Ooba US 2020/0269448).
In regard to claims 1 and 8, Ooba teach a component posture information acquiring device that acquires information of a posture of a component from a hand that holds the component arranged on a picking table and places the component at a supply position, the component posture information acquiring device comprising: a distance measure that is provided in a vicinity of a component holding part of the hand and measures a distance from the distance measure to the component (element 43 and paragraph 50); and a hardware processor that determines the posture of the component, wherein the hardware processor determines a region of interest to be used for determining the posture of the component based on information of an arrangement position of the distance measure when the measured distance becomes a predetermined distance (paragraph 43, when the camera and workpiece satisfy a predetermined positional relationship the precision detection unit 42 determines a position and posture of the workpiece. The precision detection unit detects a degree of similarity between a template and the image), and the hardware processor determines the posture of the component based on a feature amount in the region of interest (paragraph 43, determine posture based on degree of similarity).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-7 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.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: In regard to claims 2-7, the prior art fails to teach or make obvious “wherein the region of interest is a region in which a difference between a feature amount on a first surface of the component and a feature amount on a second surface different from the first surface is assumed to be large” in combination with the claim’s other features.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOSEPH R HALEY whose telephone number is (571)272-0574. The examiner can normally be reached 7:30am-5pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Amr Awad can be reached at 571-272-7764. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JOSEPH R HALEY/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2621
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