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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant's election without traverse of Groups I (Claims 1-12) in the reply filed on 08/03/2026 is acknowledged. Claims 13-18 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected invention, there being no allowable generic or linking claim.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers submitted under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d), which papers have been placed of record in the file.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites “restoring … based on the received packet.”, which has insufficient antecedent basis. An antecedent basis only mentions “transmitting …the constructed packet to a server”. Although a vehicle transmits a packet to a server, the transmitted packet could be lost (not received by the server). The claim 1 never defines receiving any packet. The above underlined limitation has insufficient antecedent basis. Dependent claims 2-6 include all limitations of claim 1. These dependent claims are also rejected.
The examiner further notices that recited limitation omitted certain relationships. For example, a recited “a signal compressed for each channel” has no relationship with a previous defined “compressing …” step. If a term is used to refer back to a previously mentioned entity, a definite article must be used. Similarly, if “a server” recited in line 11 and “a server” recited in line 2 refer to the same entity, a definite article must be used.
Examiner’s Remarks
The instant application is related to a vehicle / a server implementation of an active noise cancelling (ANC) technique. The vehicle sends noise information (claimed “reference signal”, “noise control signal”, “error signal”) to a server. The server generates filter coefficients, which are sent back to the vehicle for filtering noises (see a dependent claim 7). The communication data between the vehicle and server are compressed using an adaptive differential pulse code modulation (ADPCM) technique. The examiner noticed that both ANC and ADPCM are known techniques in audio processing fields (see tutorial papers in the attached PTO-892 form).
Independent claims 1 and 8 recite limitations “compressing …” and “constructing …”. The compressing step only mentions compressing a multi-channel signal without generating a compressed signal. These two steps have no relationship. A recited “a signal compressed for each channel” in the constructing step is not related to any signals mentioned in the compressing step.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 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 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 of this title, 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 1-3, 5, 8-10 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §103 as being unpatentable over Kim (US PG Pub. 2017/0133001, referred to as Kim) in view of ZAFEIROPOULOS et al. (US PG Pub. 2020/0380947, referred to as Zaf) and further in view of Lien (US PG Pub. 2010/0183092, referred to as Lien).
Kim is a patent application by the same assignee (Hyundai Motor Company) of the instant application. Kim discloses a vehicle / server implemented active noise cancelling (ANC) system. The vehicle sends noise information to a server. The server sends back noise cancelling data to the vehicle (Kim, [0047], [0052], [0060], Fig. 3). Kim does not discuss details of an ANC technique. Kim does not discuss details of ADPCM technique to compress noise information. The examiner further cites Zaf and Lien to show ANC and ADPCM techniques.
Zaf discloses applying ANC technique to cancel noises in a vehicle (Zaf, [0024-0025], [0029-0030], Fig. 7). Zaf provides more details about the ANC technique.
Lien discloses transmitting data between two devices by applying ADPCM technique to compress the transmitted data (Lien, [0006-0008], Fig. 2).
Regarding claims 1 and 8, Kim discloses a method / an apparatus for transmitting and receiving a multi-channel signal between a vehicle and a server in a remote active noise cancelling (ANC) system (Kim, [0006-0012], [0060-0061], Fig. 3 and Fig. 5, a method / an apparatus of remote ANC), the method comprising:
transmitting, by the at least one processor of the vehicle, the constructed packet to a server (Kim, [0052-0056], Fig. 3, a vehicle / server implemented ANC techniques by sending packets to the sever from the vehicle; vehicle receives noise cancelling data from the server); and
restoring, by the server, based on the received packet (Kim, [0052-0055], Fig. 3).
Kim discloses a vehicle / server implemented ANC system. A vehicle sends noise data and vehicle information to a network server. The server generates noise cancellation signal and sent back the noise cancellation signal to the vehicle (Kim, [0060], [0068], [0073-0076]). Kim does not provide more details about various signals used in the ANC technique.
Zaf discloses using ANC to filter out noise in an vehicle environment (Zaf, [0024-0025], Fig. 7). Zaf provides more details about the ANC technique including reference signals, error signals and control signals (Zaf, [0017-0019], [0022], [0028-0029], Fig. 5).
Kim does not use ADPCM technique to compress data / signals. Lien discloses applying ADPCM to data in order to efficiently transmit data using TCP or UDP packets between two devices (Lien, [0005-0009], [0022], [0025] Fig. 2).
Kim and Zaf are dealing with ANC techniques. Kim and Lien are related to transmitting data between two devices. It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to modify Kim’s teaching with Zaf’s teaching to obtain more information about various signals used in ANC techniques. One having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make such a modification to reduce interference between desired sound waves and undesired sound waves in an active noise control system (Zaf, [0003]). It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to modify Kim’s teaching with Lien’s teaching to compress data using ADPCM technique to improve transmission efficiency and reduce cost (Lien, [0004]). In addition, all the claimed elements were known in the prior art and one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as claimed by known methods, and in the combination each element merely would have performed the same function as it did separately. “A combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results.” KSR, 550 U.S. ___, 82 USPQ2d at 1395 (2007). One of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the results of the combination were predictable.
Regarding claims 2 and 9, the combined teaching of Kim in view of Zaf and Lien further discloses:
the predetermined transmission unit is a preset number of ADPCM output samples per channel OR a preset transmission period (Lien, [0019-0020], [0025,] creating packets for transmitting using TCP / UDP, which has a preset transmission period; note, the reference only needs to teach ONE alternative recited using “OR”).
Regarding claims 3 and 10, the combined teaching of Kim in view of Zaf and Lien further discloses:
the channel information is channel identifier information assigned to distinguish the at least one reference signal, the at least one noise control signal, and the at least one error signal (Zaf, [0020-0022], [0026], [0035], Fig. 2, each signal channel has an identifier such as “error signal”, “reference signal”, “cancelling signal”, “anti-noise signal” etc.).
Regarding claims 5 and 12, the combined teaching of Kim in view of Zaf and Lien further discloses: the constructed packet is transmitted to the server using user datagram protocol (UDP) (Lien, [0022], packed in UDP message segment)
Claims 4, 6 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §103 as being unpatentable over Kim in view of Zaf and Lien, and further in view of Dent (“G.726 Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation (ADPCM) on the TMS320C54x DSP”, published in 2002, referred to as Dent).
Limitations recited in claims 4 and 11 are related to certain details of ADPCM encoder. Claim 6 recite limitations related to certain details of ADPCM decoder.
Lien discloses applying ADPCM to compress data for transmission between two devices using TCP / UDP packets. Lien does not provide more details about ADPCM encoder (claims 4 and 11) / decoder (claim 6).
Dent discloses implementing an ADPCM standard (G. 726) using a digital signal processor (DSP). Dent discloses more details of ADPCM compression / decompression algorithms with mathematical equations and program source codes (Dent, Section 2.4, encoder description, section 2.5, decoder description).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to modify Kim in view of Zaf and Lien’s teaching with Kent’s teaching to obtain more details about ADPCM standing by reading tutorial and program codes of an example implementation using a DSP. One having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make such a modification to implement the ADPCM compression / decompression algorithm that is complies with the ADPCM standard.
Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. §103 as being unpatentable over Kim in view of Zaf and Lien, and further in view Gopalakrishnan et al. (US Pat. 8,965,005, referred to as Gopal).
Regarding claim 7, Kim in view of Zaf and Lien discloses a vehicle sends noise information to a server. The server generates a noise cancelling signal to the vehicle to cancel noise signals (Kim, [0047], [0060], Fig. 2). Kim does not explicitly disclose:
updating, by the server, filter coefficients of a remote adaptive filter using the restored signal; and transmitting, by the server, the updated filter coefficients to the vehicle.
Gopal discloses a client / sever noise suppression system (Gopal, Fig. 1). Gopal discloses periodically sending / receiving noise compensation information between a client and a server to update noise filters (Gopal, Col. 8, lines 4-10; Fig. 8A, Col. 13, lines 44-62).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to modify Kim in view of Zaf and Lien’s teaching with Gopal’s teaching to update noise information and noise filters. One having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make such a modification to improve audio quality and reduce noise (Gopal, Col. 16, lines 1-10).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. The examiner discovered several relevant prior art references that are related to one or more concepts disclosed by the instant application. These references are included in the attached PTO-892 form for completeness of the record.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jialong He, whose telephone number is (571) 270-5359. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday – Friday, 8:00AM – 4:30PM, EST.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, Pierre Desir can be reached on (571) 272-7799. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JIALONG HE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2659
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