DETAILED ACTION
This action is responsive to applicant’s amendment and remarks received on 05/28/2026. Claims 1-12 have been presented for examination. Claims 1-12 have been examined. Please disregard the previous Office Action that was sent on 06/16/2026. It has been replaced by this Office Action. Please refer to this Office Action moving forward.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-2 and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Herman (Pub. No.: 2020/0271823 A1).
1) In regard to claim 1, Herman discloses the claimed visual alarm device (fig. 3a) comprising:
a light source (fig. 3: 144),
a lens (fig. 3a: 148),
a processing module (fig. 1: 110 and ¶0032) and
a light sensing module (fig. 3a: 146);
wherein the light source and the light sensing module are both located on an inner side of the lens (fig. 3a: 135),
wherein the processing module is connected to the light sensing module (¶0032);
wherein the lens transmits light emitted by the light source (fig. 3a: 302a);
wherein the light sensing module senses light from the lens side when the light source is turned on emitting light (fig. 3a: 302b), and generates an illuminance signal indicating a light intensity of the sensed light, and sends the illuminance signal to the processing module (¶0083);
wherein the processing module sends a first fault signal to a management terminal if it is determined that the light intensity sensed by the sensing module is greater than a first illuminance threshold according to the illuminance signal (¶0092), and
wherein the first fault signal indicates the visual alarm device is blocked (¶0049).
2) In regard to claim 2 (dependent on claim 1), Herman further disclose the visual alarm device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the light from the lens side comprises at least one of: light reflected from an inner surface of the lens (2), light emitted from an outer surface of the lens, and light transmitted from an outer side of the lens to the inner side of the lens (fig. 3a: 302b).
3) In regard to claim 9, claim 9 is rejected and analyzed with respect to claim 1 and the references applied.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-8 and 10 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
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/CURTIS J KING/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2685
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