Ex Parte Alonso Sadaba et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 26, 2016

12602508 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 26, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
12/602,508 06/15/2010
26587 7590 09/26/2016
MCNEES WALLACE & NURICK LLC
100 PINE STREET
P.O. BOX 1166
HARRISBURG, PA 17108-1166
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Oscar Alonso Sadaba
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www .uspto.gov
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
34168-0003 5566
EXAMINER
NGUYEN, VIET P
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2831
MAILDATE DELIVERY MODE
09/26/2016 PAPER
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte OSCAR ALONSO SADABA, TERESA ARLABAN GABEIRAS,
RICARDO ROYO GARCIA, and MIGUEL NUNEZ POLO
Appeal 2015-001018
Application 12/602,508
Technology Center 2800
Before N. WHITNEY WILSON, WESLEY B. DERRICK, and
JEFFREY W. ABRAHAM, Administrative Patent Judges.
WILSON, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants 1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's
April 22, 2014 decision finally rejecting claims 33-39 and 41--472 ("Final
Act."). We have jurisdiction over the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We reverse.
1 Appellants identify the Real Parties in Interest as the Inventors - Oscar
Alonso Sadaba, Teresa Arlaban Gabeiras, Ricardo Royo Garcia, Miquel
Nunez Polo - and the Assignee, Acciona Windpower, S.A. (Appeal Br. 1).
2 Claims 40 and 48 stand objected to as being dependent on a rejected base
claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form (Final Act.
8). The objection is not before us.
Appeal 2015-001018
Application 12/602,508
CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
Appellants' invention is directed to a control system for a wind
turbine which includes a temperature configuration module for determining
the operating temperature of various components of the wind turbine
(Abstract). According to Appellants, in the claimed invention the operating
temperatures of the electrical components are continuously monitored, and
these temperatures are used as signals to modify the distribution of the
production of the total reactive power demanded to the wind turbine between
the stator and the network, so that the operating temperature of the electrical
component which is more thermally stressed is reduced (Appeal Br. 3, 5;
Spec. 1, 3). Details of the claimed invention are set forth in representative
claim 33, which is reproduced below from the Claims Appendix of the
Appeal Brief:
33. Control system for a wind turbine; such wind turbine
being a variable speed turbine provided with a doubly fed
induction generator having a stator and a rotor, the control
system comprising:
(1) a converter including a rotor side converter connected
with the generator rotor, and a network side converter adapted
to be connected to a power distribution network;
(2) a temperature determination module configured for
measuring and/ or estimating the operating temperature of
electrical components at least of the converter and the
generator;
(3) a reactive power distribution module configured to
cyclically calculate a distribution of reactive power production
demand values for the stator and for the network side converter,
to meet a global reactive power production demand, demanded
to the wind turbine generator; and
( 4) wherein distribution module is additionally
configured to modify the distribution of reactive power
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Appeal 2015-001018
Application 12/602,508
production between the stator and the network side converter,
based on the temperature determined by the temperature
determination module, in order to reduce the operating
temperature of the electrical component whose temperature is
closest to a limit temperature.
(Paragraph numbers added.)
REJECTIONS
I. Claims 33 and 41 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second
paragraph, as being indefinite, on the grounds that "[i]t is unclear how
reactive power production is distributed between a stator converter and a
network side converter when in a DFIG configuration, the stator and the
network are connected together and thus share the same converter."
II. Claims 33-39 and 41--47 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Barton3 in view of Llorente Gonzalez. 4
3 Barton et al., U.S. Patent Pub. 2007/0273155 Al, published November 29, 2007.
4 Llorente Gonzalez et al., U.S. Patent Pub. 2007/0073445 Al, published
March 29, 2007.
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Appeal 2015-001018
Application 12/602,508
REJECTION I
DISCUSSION
Appellants provide a detailed, technical explanation in the Appeal
Brief addressing the indefiniteness rejection of claims 33 and 41 (Appeal Br.
12-13). While the Examiner did not formally withdraw the rejection (see
Ans. 2, where no grounds of rejection are stated to have been withdrawn),
the Answer did set forth that only the obviousness rejection is "applicable to
the appealed claims" (Ans. 2). Nor did the Examiner provide any evidence
to refute Appellants' arguments with respect to the § 112, i-f 2 rejection (see
Ans. 2-5). Accordingly, we conclude both (a) that the Examiner has
effectively withdrawn the indefiniteness rejection, and (b) that Appellants
have demonstrated reversible error in the indefiniteness rejection.
Accordingly, we reverse the rejection.
REJECTION II
Appellants do not offer separate arguments with respect any of the
dependent claims (see, Appeal Br. 5-11). Moreover, Appellants do not
make separate arguments for independent claims 33 and 41 (id.).
Accordingly, we limit our discussion to the rejection of claim 33 over Barton
in view of Llorente Gonzalez.
The Examiner finds that Barton discloses each of the limitations of
claim 33, except that Barton does not disclose either of limitations (2) and
( 4) (Final Act. 3--4, citing Barton, FIG. 1, i-fi-138, 40).
The Examiner further finds that Llorente Gonzalez teaches each of the
missing limitations (Final Act. 4, citing Llorente Gonzalez, i-fi-1 11, 12, 17, 21,
and 58). The Examiner determines that:
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Appeal 2015-001018
Application 12/602,508
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill
in the art at the time of the invention was made to use the
reactive power distribution steps to reduce operating
temperature as disclosed by Llorente Gonzalez et al. to
distribute reactive power between the rotor side and network
side converter disclosed by Barton et al.
One would have been motivated to do so to optimize the
performance of the wind turbine and to also reduce the number
of converter failures due to temperature.
(Final Act. 5).
Appellants contend that Llorente Gonzalez discloses a fully coupled
("FC") generator, which has only one path to meet a global reactive power
production demand through the network side converter (Appeal Br. 5).
Therefore, according to Appellants, "there is no possibility for distribution
of a global reactive power production demand demanded to the wind turbine
generator to be supplied to the electric grid," which means that in an FC
generator, a control system cannot be configured to establish a reactive
power production distribution between a stator and a network side converter
(id.).
Accordingly, Appellants argue that because Barton and Llorente
Gonzalez are directed to generators which operate in different and distinct
ways, the Examiner has not established a reason with rational underpinnings
to combine their teachings in the manner required for the rejection (Appeal
Br. 6). Appellants also contend that Barton does not teach and is not
concerned with a control system for extending the useful life of the wind
turbine components by controlling their operating temperatures, as is
achieved by the claimed invention (id.).
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Appeal 2015-001018
Application 12/602,508
Appellants also argue (Appeal Br. 9-10) that Llorente Gonzalez
discloses disabling converter modules to regulate the operating temperature
of the overall converter system. According to Appellants, Llorente
Gonzalez teaches disabling individual modules of the converter to reduce the
individual module temperature to prevent its failure, and does not teach
reducing the overall temperature of the converter (Reply Br. 2-3, Appeal Br.
9-10). Therefore, according to Appellants, Llorente Gonzalez does not
teach, disclose, or suggest modifying the power distribution to reduce the
operating temperature of most thermally stressed component (Reply Br. 2).
Appellants' argument is persuasive. Llorente Gonzalez teaches
shutting down modules in the converter to minimize thermal cycling
(Llorente Gonzalez, i-f 17). The Examiner finds that shutting down these
modules distributes the power produced by the generator between the
converter modules which make up the converter (Ans. 4). However, claim
33 recites that the distribution moduie is configured to modify the
distribution of power between the stator and the network side converter in
order to reduce the operating temperature of the electrical component whose
temperature is closest to a limit temperature. The Examiner has not, based
on the evidence of record, established that even ifthe teachings of Llorente
Gonzalez were combined with those of Barton, this claim limitation would
have been obvious to a person of skill in the art. Instead, as explained by
Appellants (Reply Br. 3), Llorente Gonzalez teaches shutting down
thermally stressed component, rather than diverting power away from them
so that they need not be shut down.
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Appeal 2015-001018
Application 12/602,508
In order to reject a claim in a patent application as obvious under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a), the Examiner must establish a prima facie case of
obviousness, including the presence of each element of the claim. In the
absence of a proper prima facie case of obviousness, an applicant who
complies with the other statutory requirements is entitled to a patent. In re
Rouffet, 149 F.3d 1350, 1355 (Fed. Cir. 1998); see also, In re Oetiker,
977 F.2d 1443, 1445 (Fed. Cir. 1992). In this instance, we determine that the
preponderance of the evidence does not support a finding that the prior art
teaches, suggests, or renders obvious each of the limitations in claim 33.
Therefore, we reverse the obviousness rejection of claim 33. Because
independent claim 41 contains corresponding limitations (and hence each of
the dependent claims does as well), we also reverse the rejection of the
remaining claims.
CONCLUSION
We REVERSE the rejection of claims 33 and 41under35 U.S.C. § 112,
second paragraph, as being indefinite.
We REVERSE the rejection of claims 33-39 and 41--47 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Barton in view ofLlorente
Gonzalez.
REVERSED
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