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 .
Double Patenting
The non-statutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A non-statutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on non-statutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
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Claims 16, 17, 19, 22, 23, 26, and 27 are provisionally rejected on the ground of non-statutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21 of co-pending Application No. 18681574 (reference application). Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the subject matter of every limitation in the instant application is contained within the respective claims of the reference application as highlighted in the table below. This is a provisional non-statutory double patenting rejection because the patentably indistinct claims have not in fact been patented.
Instant Application:
16. A method for ascertaining the deformation of a tire casing subjected to an external stress in a state mounted on a wheel so as to constitute a pneumatic mounted assembly in rolling state with rotation speed W, the tire casing having a crown in contact with a ground and in revolution about a natural rotational axis, comprising the following steps:
(i.e. The applied load of the co-pending application is viewed as an external stress, and deformation is also found in line 22 of claim 16 in the co-pending application.)
fastening at least one sensor to the tire casing at the crown of the tire casing so as to generate at least one output signal sensitive to movement of the at least one sensor in the tire casing;
(i.e. Acceleration in the co-pending application is viewed as movement.)
acquiring (201) at least one first temporal signal Sig (101) comprising at least amplitude of the movement while rolling;
delimiting the first signal over a number N.sup.TdR of wheel turns so as to construct a wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TdR;
determining (202) at least one reference speed W.sup.reference associated with at least one portion of the wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TdR;
normalizing (203) the at least one portion of the wheel-turn signal by a variable which is a function F of the at least one reference speed W.sup.reference;
angularly resampling (204) the at least one portion of the wheel-turn signal;
obtaining (205) a spectral signal spect(Sig) of the at least one portion of the normalized and angularly resampled wheel-turn signal; defining (206) at least one spectral variable on the spectral signal spect(Sig);
(i.e. It is inherent in the co-pending application the spectral signal is obtained since a spectral variable is defined from it.)
and identifying (207) a deformation Def % of the tire casing as a function G of the at least one spectral variable.
17. The method for ascertaining the deformation of a tire casing subjected to an external stress according to claim 16, wherein the step of determining (202) the reference speed W.sup.reference consists of establishing a ratio of an angular variation to a temporal duration separating two azimuthal positions of the at least one sensor in the tire casing around the natural axis of rotation, from the wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR (101) or from a signal in phase with the wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR (101), according to the following formula:
[Math 1]
W
r
e
f
e
r
e
n
c
e
=
Δ
α
Δ
t
wherein α is an angular position and t is a temporal abscissa associated with the angular position.
19. The method for ascertaining the deformation of a tire casing subjected to an external stress according to claim 16, wherein an angular pitch is less than 18 degrees.
22. The method for ascertaining the deformation of a tire casing subjected to an external stress according to claim 16, further comprising a step of aggregating data from the at least one portion of the angularly resampled normalized wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR over at least one sub-portion of the at least one portion of the angularly resampled normalized wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR, the at least one sub-portion of the at least one portion of the angularly resampled normalized wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR becoming the at least one portion of the angularly resampled normalized wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR.
23. The method for ascertaining the deformation of a tire casing subjected to an external stress according to claim 22, wherein the at least one sub-portion of the at least one portion of the wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR is an integral multiple of the wheel turn.
26. The method for ascertaining the deformation of a tire casing subjected to an external
stress according to claim 16, wherein the movement of the at least one sensor is described by acceleration.
27. The method for ascertaining the deformation of a tire casing subjected to an external stress according to claim 26, wherein having phased the wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TdR (101) with respect to an angular position of the tire casing, a correction Corr is made to the wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TdR to take account of an effect of terrestrial gravity before the normalization step.
(i.e. the first signal with respect to an angular position of the tire casing of the co-pending application is viewed as the wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TdR (101))
Co-pending Application No. 18681574:
16. A method for ascertaining a load applied to a tire casing when mounted on a wheel so as to constitute a pneumatic mounted assembly in rolling state with rotation speed W, the tire casing having a crown in contact with a ground and in revolution about a natural rotational axis, the method comprising the following steps:
fastening at least one sensor to the tire casing at the crown of the tire casing so as to generate at least one output signal sensitive to acceleration, in a direction normal to the crown, applied to the sensor in the tire casing;
acquiring at least one first temporal signal Sig comprising at least an amplitude of the at least one output signal while rolling;
delimiting the first signal Sig over a number N.sup.TdR of wheel turns so as to construct a wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TdR, wherein N.sup.TdR is greater than 1;
determining at least one reference speed W.sup.reference associated with at least one portion of the wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TdR,
normalizing the at least one portion of the wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TdR by a variable which is a function F proportional to a square of the reference speed W.sup.reference, over a number of wheel turns N.sup.TdR, wherein N.sup.TdR is greater than or equal to 1;
angularly resampling the at least one portion of the wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR;
defining at least one energy density S from the at least one angularly resampled normalized wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR, by means of a threshold A or, if an angular pitch is fixed, at least one spectral variable from a spectral signal spect(Sig) of the at least one portion of the angularly resampled normalized wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR;
identifying a deformation Def % of the tire casing as a function G of the at least one first energy density S or the at least one spectral variable; and defining a load Z applied to the mounted assembly by means of a bijective function H comprising at least, as a variable, the deformation Def % of the tire casing.
17. The method for ascertaining the load applied to a tire casing according to claim 16, wherein the step of determining the reference speed W.sup.reference consists of establishing a ratio of an angular variation to a temporal duration separating two azimuthal positions of the at least one sensor in the tire casing around the natural rotational axis, from the first signal Sig or from a signal in phase with the first signal Sig, according to the following formula:
[Math 1]
W
r
e
f
e
r
e
n
c
e
=
Δ
α
Δ
t
wherein α is an angular position and t is a temporal abscissa associated with the angular position.
18. The method for ascertaining the load applied to a tire casing according to claim 16, wherein the angular pitch is less than 18 degrees.
19. The method for ascertaining the load applied to a tire casing according to claim 16, further comprising a step of aggregating data from the at least one portion of the angularly resampled normalized wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR over at least one sub-portion of the at least one portion of the angularly resampled normalized wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR, the at least one sub-portion of the at least one portion of the angularly resampled normalized wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR becoming the at least one portion of the angularly resampled normalized wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR.
20. The method for ascertaining the load applied to a tire casing according to claim 19, wherein the at least one sub-portion of the at least one portion of the wheel-turn signal Sig.sup.TDR is an integral multiple of the wheel turn.
Line 6 of claim 16.
21. The method for ascertaining the load applied to a tire casing according to claim 16, wherein having phased the first signal Sig with respect to an angular position of the tire casing, a correction Corr is made to the first signal Sig to take account of an effect of terrestrial gravity before the normalization step.
Prior Art Analysis
Claims 16, 17, 19, 22, 23, 26, and 27 stand rejected for double patenting, however, none of the known prior art could be applied to the claims for the following reasons.
With respect to claim 16,
Alff (FR 3092222 A1) teaches,
A method of obtaining the deformation of a pneumatic casing subjected to a load, in an inflated and loaded state rotating at a rotational speed W. The pneumatic casing having a vertex, two sides and two bulges of revolution around a natural axis of rotation and a median plane, the intersection of the median plane and the natural axis of rotation defines a wheel center. (Para. ([0010]) They further teach that the tire has contact with the ground in a contact area and a sensor that is fixed to the tire that generates an output signal that is proportional to acceleration experienced by the sensor. (Para. [0004] & [0010]) They also acquire a signal and delimit the signal over a number of wheel turns to construct a wheel turn signal where the wheel turn signal defines an energy density function. (Para. [0010]) They further normalize the function over the duration of the wheel turn signal to determine deformation in the tire. However, they teach that the energy density function is a function of a reference acceleration and not a reference speed. They also do not explicitly teach angularly resampling a portion of the wheel turn signal, obtaining a spectral signal of the normalized and resampled signal, defining a spectral variable, and in turn using a function of that variable to determine the deformation.
Blanchin (US 20070255467 A1) teaches,
A method for determining at least one rolling condition of a motor vehicle wheel. (Abstract) They further teach a device for detecting the angular displacements of a rotating component in relation to a fixed component, said device being suitable for generating an analogue signal which is representative of said angular displacements according to time. (Para. [0013]) They further perform a frequency analysis such as a FFT on the displacement signal which can be viewed as a spectral analysis and determine a flat tire which can be viewed as a deformation. (Para(s). [0024] and [0034]) However, they do not explicitly teach normalizing the signal before obtaining the spectral signal and they do not determine the deformation based on a function of a defined spectral variable.
Mancosu (US 6959593 B2) teaches,
A system for determining interaction between a tire and a contact surface during movement of a motor vehicle that includes at least one first sensor where the at least one first sensor is an accelerometer. (Abstract & Col. 3 Ln(s). [50-53]) They further teach receiving a signal from the sensor that includes an amplitude and further processing the signal using a spectral frequency analysis where the signal is proportional to variations of deformation. (Col. 25 Ln(s) [22-44]) However, they do not explicitly teach normalizing or angularly resampling the signal before obtaining the spectral signal.
As seen above none of the known prior art explicitly teaches and it would be non-obvious to combine the known prior art to teach,
“angularly resampling (204) the at least one portion of the wheel-turn signal;
obtaining (205) a spectral signal spect(Sig) of the at least one portion of the normalized and angularly resampled wheel-turn signal;
defining (206) at least one spectral variable on the spectral signal spect(Sig); and identifying (207) a deformation Def % of the tire casing as a function G of the at least one spectral variable.”
Therefore, prior art cannot be applied to claim 16. Prior art cannot be applied to
claims 17, 19, 22, 23, 26, and 27 because of their dependence upon claim 16.
.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, and 28-30 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 a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: Claims 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, and 28-30 depend upon claim 16 which includes allowable subject matter as seen above.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner
should be directed to JOSHUA L FORRISTALL whose telephone number is 703-756-4554. The examiner
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/JOSHUA L FORRISTALL/Examiner, Art Unit 2857
/ANDREW SCHECHTER/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2857
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