DETAILED ACTION
Acknowledgement is made of the preliminary amendment submitted on 01/15/2025. In virtue of this amendments:
Claims 1-5, 9 and 12-17 are currently amended; and thus,
Claims 1-17 are pending;
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
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy of CN202311124826.4 filed on 08/31/2023 has been received/retrieved by the office.
Acknowledgment is made of this application’s status as a 371 of PCT/CN2024/080036 filed on 03/05/2024.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 01/15/2025 (2) and 12/03/2025 has been considered by the examiner.
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 15-16 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 applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Regarding claim 15, the claim recites “the fourth bidirectional transistor” which renders the claim indefinite, as there is a lack of antecedent basis for said term.
Regarding claim 16, the claim recites “the third bidirectional transistor” which renders the claim indefinite, as there is a lack of antecedent basis for said term.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-14 and 17 are allowed.
Claims 15-16 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance, this statement is not intended to necessarily state all the reasons for allowance or all the details why the claims are allowed and has not been written to specifically or impliedly state that all the reasons for allowance are set forth (MPEP 1302.14).
Regarding claim 1, none of the prior art of record alone or in combination thereof discloses or renders obvious all of the claimed limitation recited in the claims.
Prior art of record US2017/0294907A1 discloses a shutdown module for half-bridge inverter wherein the shut down module determines overcurrent status of sensed current and provides shut down signal to turn off transistor when overcurrent status is detected; however, does not take into consideration polarity of the input power grid, and does not have a preset sequence of shutting down the switch transistors.
Regarding claims 2-17, the claims are allowed based upon dependency of allowed independent claim 1 and may not be allowable when presented independently without all the claimed limitation of the base claim.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RAYMOND R CHAI whose telephone number is (571)270-0576. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:30AM-5:00PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Alexander Taningco can be reached at 571-242-8048. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Raymond R Chai/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2845
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