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 Species I, encompassing claims 1-3 and 9-10, in the reply filed on 05/21/2026 is acknowledged.
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.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDSs) submitted on 01/15/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements have been considered by the examiner.
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 1-3 and 9-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ichikawa et al. (U.S Publication No. 20200187329 A1) in view of Ito et al. (U.S Publication No. 20150264754 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Ichikawa discloses a lighting control device (which is a lamp module includes a drive circuit 110, see fig. 1-10, paragraph [0036]-[0041]) to control lighting of a first light source (which is a first light source 120) and a second light source (which is a second light source 130), the second light source (130) having a smaller load than the first light source (120), (see fig. 2 and 4A, paragraph [0038] and [0039]), the lighting control device comprising:
a voltage supply circuit (via an input voltage from a battery 2 to a drive circuit 110) to supply a driving voltage to each of the first light source (120) and the second light source (130), (see fig. 1-2 and 4A, paragraph [0004], and [0037]);
a first switching element (which is a first switch SW1) to control flowing of a current generated by the driving voltage to the first light source (120), (see fig. 2 and 4A, paragraph [0040] and [0050]);
a second switching element (which is a second switch SW2) to control flowing of a current generated by the driving voltage to the second light source (130), (see fig. 2 and 4A, paragraph [0040] and [0050]);
a control circuit (which is a switching circuit 140) to output control signals for control of the first switching element (SW1) and the second switching element (SW2), (which is the switching circuit 140 receives an H/L switching signal for indicating switching between the first function (the low-beam function) and the second function (the high-beam function) and generates control signals CNT1 and CNT2 indicating (i.e., specifying) ON or OFF of the first switch SW1 and the second switch SW2. see fig. 2A and 4, paragraph [0040] and [0050]).
Ichikawa silently discloses a smooth capacitor to absorb a ripple of the driving voltage supplied by the voltage supply circuit.
However, Ichikawa further discloses the drive circuit 110 in FIG. 6A includes a step-down converter 112 and a controller 114 for the step-down converter 112. The step-down converter 112 includes a switching transistor M1, a rectifier element D1, an inductor L1, a capacitor C1, and a sense resistor Rs (see paragraph [0056]).
It is noted that Ito discloses the driving device 20a includes a converter 30a, a filter 36, N bypass circuits 40_1 to 40_N, and a controller 50a. The configurations of the bypass circuits 40 are not especially limited, and the bypass circuits 40 may be configured as shown in FIG. 4 or 7. And the filter 36 is provided between the converter 30a and the light source 10. The filter 36 removes a ripple component or a noise component of an output current I.sub.OUT, and supplies the drive current I.sub.DRV to the light source 10 (see paragraph [0098] and [0100]).
Therefore, it is obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective date of the invention was made to modify the capacitor as taught by Ichikawa with the filter as taught by Ito is a smooth filtering as a capacitor which can be absorb a ripple of the driving voltage supplied by the voltage supply circuit (see paragraph [0100] by Ito).
Ichikawa does not explicitly disclose a bypass circuit to form a bypass path for bypass of a current flowing to the second light source, wherein the bypass path is formed by switching the bypass circuit to a conductive state based on a control signal for reduction of the load among the control signals output by the control circuit.
Ito, on the other, hand, discloses a driving device which is used together with a light source including a plurality of light emitting units connected in series to configure a vehicle lamp (see fig. 1-10). In figure 2, Ito discloses the bypass circuit 40r includes a bypass transistor M1 which is provided in parallel to a light emitting unit 12, and a lowpass filter (an integration circuit) 42 which filters a control signal for instructing to turn on or off the bypass transistor M1 and supplies the filtered control signal to the gate of the bypass transistor M1. In the front stage of the lowpass filter 42, a level shift circuit 44 is provided. The bypass circuit 40r of FIG. 2 including a shunt capacitor provided between the gate and the source of the bypass transistor M1 and came to recognize the following phenomenon. In addition, since the smoothing capacitor has large capacitance, in order to suppress an increase in the drive current I.sub.DRV due to control on turning on or off of the bypass circuit 40, it may be necessary to set a turning-on tune and a turning-off time (hereinafter, referred to generally as transition times) to be considerably long. On the other hand, if the transition times are set to be excessively long, a switching loss increases and thus efficiency decreases. Also, in a case of using the bypass circuit 40 to perform PWM dimming, if a duty ratio is small, the accuracy of the dimming decreases due to influence of the transition times (see paragraph [0012]-[0014] and [0019]). In the above driving device, each of the bypass circuits may include: a bypass transistor which is provided in parallel to a corresponding light emitting unit; a feedback capacitor which is provided between a gate and a drain of the bypass transistor or between a gate and a collector of the bypass transistor; and a gate drive circuit which is configured to supply a drive voltage between the gate and a source of the bypass transistor or between the gate and an emitter of the bypass transistor, according to a control signal (see paragraph [0039]). The configuration of a bypass circuit 40 will be described with reference to FIG. 4. The bypass circuit 40 includes a bypass transistor M1, a feedback capacitor C1, and a gate drive circuit 60. The bypass transistor M1 is provided in parallel to the light emitting unit 12. A line which is connected to the cathode of the light emitting unit 12 is referred to as a cathode line L.sub.K, and a line which is connected to the anode of the light emitting unit 12 is referred to as an anode line L.sub.A. The cathode line of the i-th bypass circuit 40 is common to the (i+1)-th bypass circuit 40 (see paragraph [0062]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective date of the invention was made to incorporate the bypass circuit including a shunt capacitor provided between the gate and the source of the bypass transistor as taught by Ito into the lighting control circuit as taught by Ichikawa with the lighting control device as taught by Ito and configured to supply a drive voltage between the gate and a source of the bypass transistor or between the gate and an emitter of the bypass transistor, according to a control signal (see paragraph [0039] by Ito).
The modification provides a bypass circuit to form a bypass path for bypass of a current flowing to the second light source, wherein the bypass path is formed by switching the bypass circuit to a conductive state based on a control signal for reduction of the load among the control signals output by the control circuit as claimed.
Regarding claim 2, Ichikawa in view of Ito discloses the lighting control device according to claim 1, wherein the bypass circuit includes a third switching element (which is a bypass transistor M1 in parallel with light emitting unit 12), and a capacitor (which is capacitor C1) connected to a control terminal of the third switching element (M1), and the control signals are input to the control terminal of the third switching element (M1) via the capacitor (C1), (see fig. 2 and 4, paragraph [0014], [0016]], [0017], [0063], [0065]-[0067], [0084] by Ito).
Regarding claim 3, Ichikawa in view of Ito discloses the lighting control device according to claim 2, wherein lighting of the first light source and the second light source is selectively controlled, the first light source and the second light source are connected in parallel, the first switching element is connected in series with the first light source, the second switching element is connected in series with the second light source, and the bypass circuit inputs a control signal for control of a conduction state of the second switching element, included in the control signals, to the control terminal of the third switching element via the capacitor (see fig. 1-2 and 4, paragraph [0057]-[0058], [0060]-[0068], and claim 1 by Ito).
Regarding claim 9, Ichikawa in view of Ito discloses an illumination device comprising the lighting control device, the first light source, and the second light source according to claim 1 (see abstract, paragraph [0038] and [0039] by Ichikawa, and abstract, paragraph [0022] by Ito).
Regarding claim 10, Ichikawa in view of Ito discloses a vehicle lamp configured using the illumination device according to claim 9 (see paragraph [0002], [0038] and [0039] by Ichikawa, and fig. 6, abstract, paragraph [0002], [0088] by Ito).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to THAI N PHAM whose telephone number is (571)270-5518. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00 am-5:00 pm.
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/Thai Pham/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2845 06/01/2026
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