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 .
Response to Amendment
The amendment filed October 31, 2025 has been entered. Claims 1-5 remain pending in the application.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed October 31, 2025 have been fully considered.
[1] Applicant’s arguments that Park and Shindo fail to disclose or suggest the amended claim 1 are persuasive, in that the added limitation “wherein the storage unit stores a relationship between a frequency and the body sensitivity for each position of the sound source outside of the vehicle cabin” is not disclosed or suggested by Park and/or Shindo. Consequently, the 103 rejections for claims 1-3 are withdrawn.
[2] Applicant argued that new claim 5 is similar to claim 4, which describes "spectrogram" or "time-axis data of the sound outside the vehicle cabin without considering the acquisition position", but is an independent claim: see the last clause of claim 5. Note that claim 5 is slightly broader than claim 4, due to its independent nature, so claim 5 should not be objected to as having the same scope as claim 4
Examiner respectfully disagrees.
In this office action, Sailor is further cited to reject the feature related to the spectrogram.
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 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Park (US 20240013593 A1) in view of Shindo (US 20220230483 A1) and Sailor et al. (Unsupervised Filterbank Learning Using Convolutional Restricted Boltzmann Machine for Environmental Sound Classification), which was cited by Applicant.
Regarding claim 5, Park discloses:
An abnormal sound diagnosis system that diagnoses an abnormal sound generated in a vehicle {paragraph [0012]: detecting abnormal… by mapping the sound information}, comprising: a storage unit that stores a database of body sensitivity data determined for each position of a sound source located outside a vehicle cabin {[0010] discloses each position of a sound source: data generated from mechanical or electronic devices of the used car by sound. [0012] discloses a database for mapping sound information. Examiner notes that the body sensitivity data corresponds to data entry stored in the database for mapping sound information. [0035] discloses sound sources: place the acoustic sensor in parts where various internal and external forces act}, a sound acquisition unit that acquires vehicle cabin internal sound data as data on a sound from inside the vehicle cabin and monitor data as data on a sound from outside the vehicle cabin {[0035]: signals for detecting abnormal symptoms of the car are collected by an acoustic sensor such as a predetermined microphone installed in a passenger seat}; a body sensitivity acquisition unit that acquires the body sensitivity data corresponding to an acquisition position at which the monitor data are acquired {[0012]: detecting abnormal symptoms of the car by mapping the sound information data with an error DB that was previously databased. Mapping implies that acquiring the body sensitivity data corresponding to the monitor data acquisition position}; a sound source estimation unit that calculates sound source estimation data as data on a sound estimated as being generated from an abnormal sound generation source using the body sensitivity data and the vehicle cabin internal sound data {[0012] discloses detecting abnormal sound based on body sensitivity data and the vehicle cabin internal sound data: collects a sound signal through a microphone installed inside… detecting abnormal symptoms of the used car by mapping the sound information data with an error DB. [0016] discloses calculating sound source estimation data as data on a sound estimated as being generated from an abnormal sound generation source: collecting sound signals generated from mechanical or electronic devices of the car… analyze a pattern of a sound information in the sound information data and detect abnormal symptoms. [0035] discloses an abnormal sound generation source}; and a determination unit that determines that the abnormal sound generation source is located in a vicinity of the acquisition position when the monitor data and the sound source estimation data coincide with each other {[0012]: generating an abnormal symptom report, [0016]: detect abnormal symptoms of the car. Examiner notes that the abnormal sound generation source is one or more parts of the car, and thus the source is in a vicinity of the acquisition position}.
Park does not disclose:
[1] body sensitivity data as a ratio of a sound pressure of a sound propagated from the sound source into the vehicle cabin to a sound pressure of a sound generated by the sound source.
[2] a diagnosis unit that diagnoses a cause of the abnormal sound generation source based on a spectrogram acquired from time-axis data of the sound outside the vehicle cabin without considering the acquisition position determined to have the sound generation source.
[1] Shindo teaches that the sound generated by the sound source has a weakened pressure after the sound has been propagated from the sound source into vehicle cabin in paragraphs [0008]: a sound emitted by the sound source may reach into the vehicle cabin and [0009]: the diagnosis device may determine whether the part has an abnormality based on a difference between a rate of sound pressure decay in the detected sound data and a rate of sound pressure decay in the reference sound data. Examiner notes that the ratio of the sound pressure and therefore the body sensitivity data can be obtained since the sound pressure of a sound propagated from the sound source into the vehicle cabin and the a sound pressure of a sound generated by the sound source are known.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art of before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the sound pressure ratio feature of Shindo
with the described invention of Park in order to provide a reference for determining an abnormal sound source.
[2] Sailor teaches diagnosing cause of abnormal sound generation source based on a spectrogram acquired from time-axis data of the sound in the Introduction: the environmental sound classification (ESC) technology development is better for characterizing
the essential role of environmental sounds… audio surveillance system… Since CNN classifier is useful for capturing the energy modulations across time and frequency-axis of audio spectrograms, it is well suited as classifier for ESC task. Examiner notes that teaching Sailor does not require considering the acquisition position determined to have the sound generation source.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art of before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the spectrogram feature of Sailor with the combination of Park in view of Shindo in order to provide an analysis method for diagnosing external noise.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-4 are allowed.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Yasui et al. (US 11494950 B2) teaches extracting sound pressure and detecting occurrence of an event on a basis of the information from outside the vehicle.
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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 CHANMIN PARK whose telephone number is (408)918-7555. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Thursday and alternate Fridays, 7:30-4:30 PT.
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/C.P./Examiner, Art Unit 3661
/RUSSELL FREJD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3661