Ex Parte ZhangDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMay 12, 201613048599 (P.T.A.B. May. 12, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 13/048,599 03/15/2011 13923 7590 05/16/2016 Patterson & Sheridan, LLP I Vestas 24 Greenway Plaza, Suite 1600 Houston, TX 77046 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR JIANHUIZHANG 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. VEST/0004US (048866) 9034 EXAMINER BERHANU, SAMUEL ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2859 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/16/2016 ELECTRONIC 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. Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the following e-mail address( es): P AIR_eOfficeAction@pattersonsheridan.com PSDocketing@pattersonsheridan.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte JIANHUI ZHANG Appeal2014-005667 Application 13/048,599 1 Technology Center 2800 Before KAREN M. HASTINGS, MICHAEL P. COLAIANNI, and WESLEY B. DERRICK, Administrative Patent Judges. HASTINGS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellant seeks our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Examiner's decision rejecting claims 1, 3, 5-8, 10, 12-15, and 18-24 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)2 as being obvious over either Kozlowski et al. (US Pre- Grant Publication 2003/0184307, published Oct. 2, 2003) in view of Moore et al. (US Pre-Grant Publication 2004/0222768, published Nov. 11, 2004) or 1 The real party in interest is stated to be Vestas Wind Systems A/S (App. Br. 3). 2 A rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112 (pre-AIA), first paragraph for lack of written description has been withdrawn on appeal (Pre-Brief Appeal Conference Decision; App. Br. 6). Appeal2014-005667 Application 13/048,599 also in view of additional references that are not substantively argued on appeal. 3 We have jurisdiction over the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. The independent claim 1 is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal (emphasis added): 1. A method for estimating an aged capacity of a battery in an energy storage system (ESS) associated with a plurality of wind turbine generators, the method comprising: determining an internal impedance of the battery; determining an approximate age of the battery based on the internal impedance; determining a relationship between a maximum capacity corresponding to the battery and a number of charging cycles; determining the aged capacity of the battery based on the approximate age and the relationship; determining a state of charge (SOC) of the battery; and after determining the aged capacity, measuring an available energy remaining in the battery based on the SOC and the aged capacity. App. Br. 14 (Claims Appendix). Appellant argues the claims as a group, so independent claim 8 to an apparatus and independent claim 15 to a system, along with the remaining dependent claims, stand or fall together with independent claim 1 (App. Br. 7-12). 3 Independent claims 1 and 8 are rejected over the combination of Kozlowski and Moore. Final Rej. 3--4. Independent claim 15 is rejected over the combination of Kozlowski and Moore further in view of Erdman (US 5,225,712, issued July 6, 1993), with Erdman disclosing using a battery with wind turbine generators. Final Rej. 5-6. 2 Appeal2014-005667 Application 13/048,599 ANALYSIS Upon consideration of the evidence on this record and each of Appellant's contentions, we find that the preponderance of evidence supports the Examiner's conclusion that the subject matter of Appellant's claims is unpatentable over the applied prior art. We sustain the Examiner's § 103 rejection essentially for the reasons set out by the Examiner in the Final Rejection and Answer. We add the following primarily for emphasis. Appellant's principal argument is that the Examiner's cited prior art does not disclose the last limitation of the independent claims, "after determining the aged capacity [of the battery], measuring an available energy remaining in the battery based on the SOC [state of charge] and the aged capacity" (App. Br. 7-10). In the Final Rejection, the Examiner cites Moore for this limitation (Final Rej. 3--4). Appellant states that Moore determines a battery's life cycle parameters indicative of the level of degradation as a function of internal impedance, age of the battery, and/or the number of charge/discharge cycles to determine the maximum capacity of the battery (App. Br. 7-8). According to Appellant, Moore then uses the maximum capacity and a reserved capacity to determine the maximum amount the battery should be charged (id.). Appellant asserts that the Examiner confused the battery's capacity with the available energy in the battery and submits that the battery's capacity has no relation and provides no indication of actual energy stored in the battery (App. Br. 8). Appellant states that Moore determines a maximum state of charge and reserved capacity and then charges the battery to the maximum state of charge less the reserved capacity (App. Br. 9). 3 Appeal2014-005667 Application 13/048,599 Appellant maintains that Moore discloses a chronology opposite the claimed chronology because it first measures the battery's charge before charging to the maximum level less the reserved capacity, rather than first determining the aged capacity and then using that aged capacity to measure the available energy (App. Br. 9-10). At most, Appellant posits that Moore discloses using the maximum state of charge to determine an amount that the battery can be charged, not the amount of available energy remaining in the battery. Appellant concludes that "available energy remaining in the battery" is not so broad to encompass "the capacity of the battery" because the terms are used differently in the claims and because knowing a battery's capacity does not provide information on the energy remaining in the battery (App. Br. 10). The Examiner's Answer maintains that Moore discloses using the battery's aged capacity and the state of charge of the battery to determine the available energy in the battery, citing Figure 4 (Ans. 2-3). The Examiner adds that even if Moore does not disclose determining the battery's state of charge or available energy, Kozlowski discloses determining the battery's state of charge based on the battery's voltage, current, temperature, and other parameters through a computer based algorithm, meeting the limitation at issue (Ans. 3). We are unpersuaded of error in the Examiner's determination of obviousness. Appellant's arguments do not fully address the references cited in the rejection and the inferences of these references that are presented on this record for our review. It has been established that "the [obviousness] analysis need not seek out precise teachings directed to the specific subject matter of the challenged 4 Appeal2014-005667 Application 13/048,599 claim, for a court can take account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of ordinary skill in the art would employ." KSR Int'! Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007). Likewise, it is also well settled that a reference stands for all of the specific teachings thereof as well as the inferences one of ordinary skill in the art would have reasonably been expected to draw therefrom. See In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1264-65 (Fed. Cir. 1992). A person of ordinary skill in the art would have reasonably expected that based on the teachings of Kozlowski and Moore, one could determine the available energy remaining in the battery based on and after determining the state of charge and aged capacity of the battery. First, Moore discloses a rechargeable battery pack that monitors its life cycle based on the battery's age and number of discharge/recharge cycles, that is, monitors its charge capacity, or cycle life parameter, as it ages and declines from its manufactured capacity (Moore, Abstract and ,-i 27). Therefore, Moore determines the aged capacity of the battery based on the battery's age, its charging cycles, and its original maximum capacity (Moore, ,-i,-i 8, 27, 29).4 Then, Moore charges the battery or battery pack by a calculated amount to the current maximum available state of charge less the reserved capacity (Moore, ,-i,-i 35-36). As such, Moore implicitly determines a current charge level, that is, the state of charge of the battery as claimed, that is based on the maximum capacity due to battery age and so constitutes determining the 4 Moore's ,-i 34 refers to a "maximum state of charge (SOC) of the battery pack," but based on the entirety of Moore's disclosure, it is apparent that this maximum state of charge equates to the aged capacity of the battery as claimed. The particular terms being different is of no importance if the references disclose the same process. 5 Appeal2014-005667 Application 13/048,599 available energy in the battery or battery pack (see Moore iii! 34-37, 42). The aged capacity, current state of charge, and available energy remaining in the battery are all variables in a straightforward relationship represented in Moore's Figure 2 where the available energy for a given state of charge decreases over battery cycle life. Moore Fig. 2. The relationship between the aged capacity, current status of charge, and available energy remaining in the battery is the same as that for Emax, SOC, and Eavailable that can be set forth in a single equation, as stated in Appellant's Spec. iii! 11, 20-22, 31. It is well within the level of ordinary skill in the art to manipulate variables to measure and determine some and solve for others in any order, especially when the variables are based on the same information, as in Appellant's claims. Even so, Moore discloses, either patently or implicitly, measuring an available energy remaining in a battery based on its current state of charge and its aged capacity after having determined the aged capacity. Moreover, as pointed out in the Answer, Kozlowski discloses a battery monitoring method that mirrors the claimed invention. First, we note that Kozlowski and the claimed invention use the term "state of charge" differently as Kozlowski iJ 18 defines state of charge as "the measure of the amount of available energy in the battery," and Appellant uses state of charge "as the available capacity left in the battery expressed as a percentage of the maximum capacity of the battery" such that "SOC = (Eavailable)/(Emax)" where Emax is the aged capacity of the battery that decreases as the battery ages (Spec. iii! 21-23, 31 ). The initial battery capacity state of charge prior to discharging is based on the impedance in the battery, along with the battery's age, and corresponds to the aged capacity because the maximum capacity decreases as the battery ages and its health diminishes (Kozlowski, 6 Appeal2014-005667 Application 13/048,599 iii! 44, 65, 70, 121 ). Then, the continuous state of charge represents the current amount of energy available in the battery as it is charged or discharged, where the current amount of energy is determined based on the initial state of charge, or aged capacity, and information extracted from the system representing the percentage of the battery that is charged, the state of charge of the claimed invention (Kozlowski, iii! 18, 45, 63-67). Therefore, we determine that Appellant's remarks on the applicability of the combination of Kozlowski and Moore to be unpersuasive (contra Reply Br. 3-5). In sum, we determine that a preponderance of evidence on this record establishes that one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the available energy remaining in a battery can be determined based on the aged capacity of the battery along with a current state of charge that represents the percentage of the full aged capacity. Appellant has not sufficiently disputed the Examiner's reasoning, nor the teachings and inferences of the applied prior art. See KSR, 550 U.S. at 421 ("A person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton."); Ball Aerosol & Specialty Container, Inc. v. Limited Brands, Inc., 555 F.3d 984, 993 (Fed. Cir. 2009) (under the flexible inquiry set forth by the Supreme Court, the PTO must take account of the "inferences and creative steps," as well as routine steps, that an ordinary artisan would employ (emphasis omitted)); In re Sovish, 769 F.2d 738, 743 (Fed. Cir. 1985) (skill is presumed; an "argument [that] presumes stupidity rather than skill" is not persuasive). 7 Appeal2014-005667 Application 13/048,599 Accordingly, we atlinn the Examiner's prior art rejection of the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) for the reasons given above and presented by the Examiner. DECISION The Examiner's§ 103 rejections are affirmed. TIME PERIOD FOR RESPONSE No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 3 7 C.F .R. § 1.13 6( a )(1 ). AFFIRMED 8 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation