DETAILED ACTION
1. Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority based on an application filed in Japan on August 9, 2023. It is noted, however, that applicant has not filed a certified copy of the 2023-130170 application as required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
2. The information disclosure statements submitted are being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
3. Claim 14 is objected to under 37 CFR 1.75 as being a substantial duplicate of claim 15. When two claims in an application are duplicates or else are so close in content that they both cover the same thing, despite a slight difference in wording, it is proper after allowing one claim to object to the other as being a substantial duplicate of the allowed claim. See MPEP § 608.01(m).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
4. 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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
5. Claims 1 and 2 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Bastyr et al, U.S. Patent No. 10,672,378 (hereinafter Bastyr).
Regarding claim 1, Bastyr discloses an active noise reduction system (from Figure 1, see 100), comprising:
a canceling sound output device (from Figure 1, see 124) configured to output a canceling sound for canceling a noise;
an error microphone (from Figure 1, see 112) configured to generate an error signal based on the noise and the canceling sound; and
a controller (from Figure 1, see 104) configured to control the canceling sound output device based on the error signal,
wherein the controller includes:
a control signal generation unit including a control filter (from Figure 1, see 118) configured to generate a control signal (from Figure 1, see Y(n)) for controlling the canceling sound output device; and
a sound field learning unit including a secondary path filter (from Figure 1, see S’(z)) that represents an estimation value of a transfer function (from Figure 1, see S(z)) of a secondary path from the canceling sound output device to the error microphone,
the control filter and the secondary path filter are configured to be adaptively updated and the controller is configured to differentiate a timing of an adaptive update (from Figure 5, see 520) of the control filter and a timing of an adaptive update (from Figure 5, see 564) of the secondary path filter.
Regarding claim 2, Bastyr discloses the controller is configured to alternately perform the adaptive update (from Figure 5, see 520) of the control filter and the adaptive update (from Figure 5, see 564) of the secondary path filter.
Allowable Subject Matter
6. Claim 15 is allowed while claims 2-14 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.
Conclusion
7. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to OLISA ANWAH whose telephone number is 571-272-7533. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Friday from 8.30 AM to 6 PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Carolyn Edwards can be reached on 571-270-7136. The fax phone numbers for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned are 571-273-8300 for regular communications and 571-273-8300 for After Final communications.
Any inquiry of a general nature or relating to the status of this application or proceeding should be directed to the receptionist whose telephone number is 571-272-2600.
Olisa Anwah
Patent Examiner
January 23, 2026
/OLISA ANWAH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2692
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