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 § 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.
Claims 1, 2-5, and 8-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rusconi (US 20190052954, IDS 10/18/24) and Chang (US 8857563).
Regarding claim 1, Rusconi teaches an acoustic output apparatus, comprising:
at least one acoustic driver for outputting sounds (speaker 7, [0032], fig 1);
a housing enclosing the at least one acoustic driver (audio system 2, [0032], fig 1), the housing forming a front chamber of the at least one acoustic driver (cavity 16, [0032], fig 1) and a rear chamber of the at least one acoustic driver (guide channel 10, [0032], fig 1), wherein a resonant cavity is disposed within at least one chamber of the front chamber (cavity 16 is a Helmholtz resonator as shown in figure 1, [0032], fig 1) or the rear chamber to filter sound in a specific frequency band output by the at least one acoustic driver (Helmholtz resonator of cavity 16 as shown in figure 1 inherently has a filtering characteristic of a frequency band, [0032], fig 1).
Although Rusconi does not explicitly teach the feature of an acoustic impedance material is disposed within the resonant cavity, and the acoustic impedance material includes at least one of porous material or particulate material, Chang teaches a Helmholtz chamber with an absorber 1418 that can be a porous material wherein absorption magnitude and bandwidth of the Helmholtz cavity can be optimized using specific absorber materials (Chang, col 14, ln 34-43) and it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to use a porous acoustic impedance material with the motivation of optimizing the absorption magnitude and bandwidth of the Helmholtz cavity as disclosed by Chang (Chang, col 14, ln 34-43).
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Regarding claim 3, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 1, wherein the resonant cavity includes a set of cavities (one cavity 16, Rusconi, [0032], fig 1).
Regarding claim 4, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 1, wherein the resonant cavity is a Helmholtz cavity (Rusconi, fig 1).
Regarding claim 5, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 1, wherein the at least one chamber defines an acoustic route connecting the at least one acoustic driver and outside of the acoustic output apparatus, the resonant cavity being constructed on a branch of the acoustic route (cavity 16, Rusconi, [0032], fig 1).
Regarding claim 8, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 1, wherein the acoustic output apparatus further includes a supporting structure configured to: carry the at least one acoustic driver; and enable the acoustic output apparatus to be located off a user ear (driver 7 and ear opening 22, Rusconi, [0032], [0034], fig 1).
Regarding claim 9, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 1, wherein the at least one acoustic driver outputs the sounds through at least two sound guiding holes (secondary opening 19 and primary opening 13 and, Rusconi, [0033], fig 1) acoustically coupled to the at least one acoustic driver (speaker 7, Rusconi, [0032], fig 1), the front chamber is acoustically coupled to one of the at least two sound guiding holes (secondary opening 19 coupled to cavity 16, Rusconi, [0032-0033], fig 1), and the rear chamber is acoustically coupled to another one of the at least two sound guiding holes (primary opening 13 and coupled to channel 10, Rusconi, [0032-0033], fig 1).
Regarding claim 10, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 9.
Altough Rusconi and Chang do not teach wherein a distance between the sound guiding hole acoustically coupled to the rear chamber and the user's ear canal is greater than a distance between the sound guiding hole acoustically coupled to the front chamber and the user's ear canal, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to move the three speakers further down the eyeglasses temples (i.e. arms that extend over the ears; see the bolded arrow added by the examiner in figure 1 of Rusconi below) as a matter of designer’s preference and, in that case, the recited limitations would be met wherein the distance between the sound guiding hole acoustically coupled to the rear chamber and the user's ear canal is greater than a distance between the sound guiding hole acoustically coupled to the front chamber and the user's ear canal.
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Regarding claim 11, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 9, wherein the sounds output by the at least one acoustic driver through the at least two sound guiding holes have different frequency components (different physical dimensions of Helmholtz resonator of channel 10 and cavity 16 create different frequency output characteristic, Rusconi, fig 1).
Regarding claim 12, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 9, wherein the at least one acoustic driver includes: at least one low-frequency acoustic driver configured to generate at least one first sound, wherein a frequency of the at least one first sound being within a first frequency range (third speaker 7 is bass speaker, Rusconi, [0036],fig 1); and at least one high-frequency acoustic driver configured to generate at least one second sound, a frequency of the at least one second sound being within a second frequency range (treble speaker 6, Ruscnoi, [0036], fig 1), wherein the second frequency range includes at least one frequency that exceeds the first frequency range (treble frequency ranges inherently exceeds bass frequency range, Rusconi, [0036]).
Regarding claim 13, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 12, wherein the at least two sound guiding holes include: at least two first sound guiding holes acoustically coupled to the at least one low-frequency acoustic driver, the at least two first sound guiding holes being configured to output the at least one first sound (primary opening 13 and secondary opening 19 output bass sound, [0034], [0036], fig 1); and at least two second sound guiding holes acoustically coupled to the at least one high-frequency acoustic driver, the at least two second sound guiding holes being configured to output the at least one second sound (primary opening 12 and secondary opening 18 output treble sound, [0034], [0036], fig 1).
Regarding claim 14, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 13.
First, the examiner asserts that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have a stereo set of aufdio eyeglasses with the motivation of providing spatial audio. See the proposed modification of figure 2 of Rusconi by the examiner:
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Assuming that the temple of figure 2 of Rusconi is duplicated on the left and right sides of the eyeglasses, then Rusconi and Chang teach wherein: the at least two first sound guiding holes include
a first set of first sound guiding holes located in a first region of the acoustic output apparatus (1st set of 1st sound guiding holes/1st region, see fig. 2 of Rusconi, modified by the examiner above) and
a second set of first sound guiding holes located in a second region of the acoustic output apparatus (2nd set of 1st sound guiding holes/2nd region, see fig. 2 of Rusconi, modified by the examiner above), the
first region of the acoustic output apparatus and the second region of the acoustic output apparatus being located at opposite sides of the user (1st region is on opposite sides of the user from 2nd region, see fig. 2 of Rusconi, modified by the examiner above); and
the at least two second sound guiding holes include a first set of second sound guiding holes located in a third region of the acoustic output apparatus (1st set of 2nd sound guiding holes/3rd region, see fig. 2 of Rusconi, modified by the examiner above) and a second set of second sound guiding holes located in a fourth region of the acoustic output apparatus (2nd set of 2nd sound guiding holes/4th region, see fig. 2 of Rusconi, modified by the examiner above),
the third region of the acoustic output apparatus and the fourth region of the acoustic output apparatus being located at opposite sides of the user (3rd region is on opposite sides of the user from 4th region, see fig. 2 of Rusconi, modified by the examiner above).
Regarding claim 15, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 13, wherein a distance between each of the at least two first sound guiding holes and an ear of the user is greater than a distance between each of the at least two second sound guiding holes and the ear of the user (secondary sound opening 19 is a greater distance from the ear 22 than secondary sound opening 18, Rusconi, [0032], [0034], fig 1).
Regarding claim 16, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 13, wherein the acoustic output apparatus further includes a baffle structure, the at least two first sound guiding holes and the at least two second sound guiding holes being distributed on both sides of the baffle structure (see figure 3 of Rusconi labeled by the examiner below).
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Claims 2, 6, and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rusconi, Chang, and Larson (US 20050093653, IDS 10/18/24).
Regarding claim 2, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 1.
Although Rusconi and Chang do not teach wherein an acoustic impedance of the acoustic impedance material is within a range of 5MKS Rayleigh to 500MKS Rayleigh, Larson teaches a material for a decoupling layer in the range of 2 Mral to 16 Mrayl (Larson, [0032]; it is noted that 1 Mral = 1 MKS Rayleigh) which is within the claimed range and it would have been obvious to use a material of such an acoustic impedance as disclosed by Larson since doing so is the use of a known technique to improve a similar system in the same way.
Regarding claim 6, Rusconi, Chang, and Larson teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 2, wherein the acoustic route is composed of one or more groups of lumen structures connected in series (cavity 16, Rusconi, fig 1).
Regarding claim 7, Rusconi, Chang, and Larson teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 2, wherein a combination of a lumen structure and the resonant cavity is constructed in the acoustic route (cavity 16, Rusconi, fig 1).
Claim 17 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rusconi, Chang, and Laroche (US 20070237341, IDS 10/18/24).
Regarding claim 17, Rusconi and Chang teach the acoustic output apparatus of claim 1.
Although Rusconi and Chang do not explicitly teach wherein the acoustic output apparatus further includes a noise reduction system including: an audio sensor configured to detect a sound and generate a plurality of sub-band sound signals in response to the detected sound; a noise reduction device configured to reduce or eliminate the noise in the plurality of sub-band sound signals, Rusconi teaches using a microphone for noise cancelation (Rusconi, [0022]) and it would have been obvious to use subband analysis since doing so is routine in the art as disclosed by Laroche (Laroche, [0022]) with the motivation of processing in the frequency domain.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 18-20 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
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Kile Blair whose telephone number is (571)270-3544. The examiner can normally be reached M-F.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Duc Nguyen can be reached at 571-272-7503. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/KILE O BLAIR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2691
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