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 information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 1/6/2025 has been considered by the examiner.
Drawings
The drawings are objected to under 37 CFR 1.83(a). The drawings must show every feature of the invention specified in the claims. Therefore, the proportional integral control, as in Claim 1, must be shown or the feature(s) canceled from the claim(s). No new matter should be entered.
Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. The figure or figure number of an amended drawing should not be labeled as “amended.” If a drawing figure is to be canceled, the appropriate figure must be removed from the replacement sheet, and where necessary, the remaining figures must be renumbered and appropriate changes made to the brief description of the several views of the drawings for consistency. Additional replacement sheets may be necessary to show the renumbering of the remaining figures. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Figures 3 and 7 should be designated by a legend such as --Prior Art-- because only that which is old is illustrated. See MPEP § 608.02(g). Corrected drawings in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. The replacement sheet(s) should be labeled “Replacement Sheet” in the page header (as per 37 CFR 1.84(c)) so as not to obstruct any portion of the drawing figures. If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Response to Amendment
Applicant has submitted two, nearly identical, sets of claims on the same date of 6/28/2024 that differ by having the multiple dependencies removed from one set of the claims. A notice of non-compliance has not been sent and the set of the claims with the multiple dependencies removed has been treated as the active set of claims. Applicant is reminded to use the required identifiers when submitting amended claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because a computer program may have a transitory form which does not qualify as a statutory category.
See MPEP 2106.03 I. THE FOUR CATEGORIES
Products that do not have a physical or tangible form, such as a computer program per se (often referred to as "software per se") when claimed as a product without any structural recitations are not directed to any of the statutory categories.
As the courts' definitions of machines, manufactures and compositions of matter indicate, a product must have a physical or tangible form in order to fall within one of these statutory categories. Digitech, 758 F.3d at 1348, 111 USPQ2d at 1719. Thus, the Federal Circuit has held that a product claim to an intangible collection of information, even if created by human effort, does not fall within any statutory category. Digitech, 758 F.3d at 1350, 111 USPQ2d at 1720 (claimed "device profile" comprising two sets of data did not meet any of the categories because it was neither a process nor a tangible product). Similarly, software expressed as code or a set of instructions detached from any medium is an idea without physical embodiment. See Microsoft Corp. v. AT&T Corp., 550 U.S. 437, 449, 82 USPQ2d 1400, 1407 (2007); see also Benson, 409 U.S. 67, 175 USPQ2d 675 (An "idea" is not patent eligible). Thus, a product claim to a software program that does not also contain at least one structural limitation (such as a "means plus function" limitation) has no physical or tangible form, and thus does not fall within any statutory category. Another example of an intangible product that does not fall within a statutory category is a paradigm or business model for a marketing company. In re Ferguson, 558 F.3d 1359, 1364, 90 USPQ2d 1035, 1039-40 (Fed. Cir. 2009).
Even when a product has a physical or tangible form, it may not fall within a statutory category. For instance, a transitory signal, while physical and real, does not possess concrete structure that would qualify as a device or part under the definition of a machine, is not a tangible article or commodity under the definition of a manufacture (even though it is man-made and physical in that it exists in the real world and has tangible causes and effects), and is not composed of matter such that it would qualify as a composition of matter. Nuijten, 500 F.3d at 1356-1357, 84 USPQ2d at 1501-03. As such, a transitory, propagating signal does not fall within any statutory category. Mentor Graphics Corp. v. EVE-USA, Inc., 851 F.3d 1275, 1294, 112 USPQ2d 1120, 1133 (Fed. Cir. 2017); Nuijten, 500 F.3d at 1356-1357, 84 USPQ2d at 1501-03.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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(s) 1-2, 4-5, and 7-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhong (GB 2483879) in view of Zhong (Self-Synchronized Universal Droop Controller) and further in view of Chen (CN 109494789).
With respect to claim 1, Zhong ‘879 discloses a droop control method for parallel inverters (Fig. 4 E1,E2), comprising, for each inverter (Fig. 1a): performing proportional integral control (Fig. 6 integrator 1/s producing Ei has proportional constant set equal to 0) on a root mean square (RMS) voltage error value (Fig. 6 sum of E* - RMS(vo)) and a power value (Fig. 6 Pi) to obtain an integral error value (Fig. 6 Ei); obtaining an RMS voltage target value (Fig. 2 u) based on the integral error value (Fig. 6 u based on Vr based which is based on Ei) and adding a droop value (Fig. 2 Ki * i) of an output current (Fig. 2 i) of a corresponding inverter; converting the integral error value to an alternating current value (Fig. 6 Vri) to obtain an alternating current voltage reference value; and obtaining, based on the alternating current voltage reference value, a duty cycle (Fig. 1a duty of PWM) for controlling an output of the corresponding inverter. Zhong ‘879 discloses a droop control method in which a power value (Fig. 6 Pi), not a power error value, is used, and discloses use of a droop value of an output current (Fig. 2 i) of a corresponding inverter, not a droop value of an output power of a corresponding inverter.
Nevertheless, Zhong SUDC teaches replacing the power value (Fig 2 P) with a power error value (Fig. 3 Pset - P). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement a droop control method for parallel inverters, comprising, for each inverter performing proportional integral control on a root mean square voltage error value and a power error value to obtain an integral error value. The reason for doing so was to improve the power flow to the load and load balancing.
While Zhong discloses current droop, not power droop, power droop was well known before the effective filing date of the claimed invention. Chen discloses implementing a power droop (Fig. 4) as well as using PI compensation (Fig. 2 PI) rather than only integral compensation. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement a droop value of an output power of a corresponding inverter in order to improve the load sharing between the inverters, and to improve the stability and response with PI compensation.
In summary, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement a droop control method for parallel inverters, comprising, for each inverter: performing proportional integral control on a root mean square (RMS) voltage error value and a power error value to obtain an integral error value; obtaining an RMS voltage target value based on the integral error value and a droop value of an output power of a corresponding inverter; converting the RMS voltage target value to an alternating current value to obtain an alternating current voltage reference value; and obtaining, based on the alternating current voltage reference value, a duty cycle for controlling an output of the corresponding inverter, in order to improve the load sharing and power flow to the load.
With respect to claim 2, Zhong in view of Zhong and Chen make obvious the droop control method for parallel inverters according to claim 1, wherein the droop control method further comprises: obtaining the RMS voltage error value based on an RMS voltage reference value (Fig. 5 E*) and an RMS of an output voltage (Fig. 6 Vo) from the corresponding inverter.
With respect to claim 4, Zhong in view of Zhong and Chen make obvious the droop control method for parallel inverters according to claim 1, wherein the step of the proportional integral control comprises: multiplying the RMS voltage error value (Fig. 6 E*- RMS(vo)) by a voltage proportion coefficient (in combination, multiply by gain of P of PI in Chen) to obtain a gain of the RMS voltage error value; multiplying the power error value (Fig. 3 Pset – P) by a power proportion coefficient (in combination, multiply by gain of P of PI in Chen) to obtain a gain of the power error value; obtaining a sum error value based on the gain of the RMS voltage error value and the gain of the power error value; and integrating the sum error value to obtain the integral error value (in combination, sum proportional and integral terms of PI in Chen)).
With respect to claim 5, Zhong in view of Zhong and Chen make obvious the droop control method for parallel inverters according to claim 1, wherein the droop control method further comprises: multiplying the output power of the corresponding inverter by a droop coefficient (Chen Fig. 4 ΔU/ΔP) to obtain the droop value of the output power of the corresponding inverter.
With respect to claim 7, Zhong in view of Zhong and Chen make obvious the droop control method for parallel inverters according to claim 2, wherein the droop control method further comprises: detecting the output voltage of the corresponding inverter through an RMS detector (Fig. 6 RMS) to obtain the RMS of the output voltage.
With respect to claim 8, Zhong in view of Zhong and Chen make obvious the droop control method for parallel inverters according to claim 1 as set forth above. Zhong does not provide the details for determining the duty cycle, which were well known before the effective filing date of the claimed invention. Chen discloses obtaining a voltage error value (Fig. 2 Vref – Vdc) based on the voltage reference value and the output voltage; performing proportional integral control (Fig. 2 PI) on the voltage error value to obtain a current reference value (Fig. 2 Iref); obtaining a current error value (Fig. 2 Iref – Idc) based on the current reference value and an output current; and performing proportional integral control (Fig. 2 PI) on the current error value to obtain the duty cycle (Fig 2 duty cycle of PWM). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement wherein the step of obtaining, based on the alternating current voltage reference value, a duty cycle for controlling an output of the corresponding inverter further comprises: obtaining an alternating current voltage error value based on the alternating current voltage reference value and the output voltage from the corresponding inverter; performing proportional integral control on the alternating current voltage error value to obtain a current reference value; obtaining a current error value based on the current reference value and an output current from the corresponding inverter; and performing proportional integral control on the current error value to obtain the duty cycle, in order to generate the duty cycle to accurately control and regulate the output.
With respect to claim 9, Zhong in view of Zhong and Chen make obvious the computer-readable storage medium, comprising a computer program that can be executed by a processor to implement the steps of the method of claim 1. See claim 1 for additional details.
With respect to claim 10, Zhong in view of Zhong and Chen make obvious to implement the steps of the method according to claim 1 by executing the one or more executable instructions as set forth above. See claim 1 for additional details. While Zhong remains silent as how to implement the method, it was well known before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement one or more processors; and a memory, configured to store one or more executable instructions; the one or more processors are configured to implement control steps. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement one or more processors; and a memory, configured to store one or more executable instructions; the one or more processors are configured to implement the steps of the method according to claim 1 by executing the one or more executable instructions, due to the computational speed and reprogrammability of processors.
Claim(s) 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhong (GB 2483879) in view of Zhong (Self-Synchronized Universal Droop Controller), (CN 10949789) and further in view of Hurtado (US 10,224,831).
With respect to claim 6, Zhong in view of Zhong and Chen make obvious the droop control method for parallel inverters according to claim 1 as set forth above, and Zhong remains silent as how to generate the AC sinusoid from the RMS voltage target amplitude.
Hurtado discloses a well known technique of multiplying (Fig. 17 70) the RMS voltage target value (Fig. 17 output of 1712,1716) by a unit sine function (Fig. 17 SIN(wt) o obtain the alternating current voltage reference value. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement wherein the droop control method further comprises: multiplying the RMS voltage target value by a unit sine function with an amplitude of square root over 2 to obtain the alternating current voltage reference value, in order to provide the desired synchronization and amplitude.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 3 is 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:
With respect to claim 3, the prior art does not disclose or suggest, in combination with the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims, primarily, wherein the droop control method further comprises: obtaining the power error value based on an average power of all the parallel inverters and the output power of the corresponding inverter.
The aforementioned limitations in combination with all remaining limitations of the respective claims are believed to render the aforementioned indicated claim and any dependent claims thereof patentable over the art of record.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Zhong (US 2019/0131888) discloses power droop.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to HARRY RAYMOND BEHM whose telephone number is (571)272-8929. The examiner can normally be reached M-F: 8-5 EST.
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/HARRY R BEHM/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2838