Ex Parte Pham et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Mar 29, 2018

12781044 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 29, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
121781,044 05/17/2010
27572 7590 04/02/2018
HARNESS, DICKEY & PIERCE, P.L.C.
P.O. BOX 828
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI 48303
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
HungM. Pham
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.
0315-000723/US 2000
EXAMINER
ZERPHEY, CHRISTOPHER R
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3744
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/02/2018 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):
troymailroom@hdp.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte HUNG M. PHAM and NAGARAJ JAY ANTH
Appeal2016-001864
Application 12/781,044
Technology Center 3700
Before STEFAN STAICOVICI, BRANDON J. WARNER, and
ARTHUR M. PESLAK, Administrative Patent Judges.
WARNER, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Hung M. Pham and Nagaraj Jayanth ("Appellants") 1 appeal under
35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's decision rejecting claims 1, 2, 4--14,
36-39, 41--48, and 50-53, which are all the pending claims. Appeal Br. 5.
We have jurisdiction over the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We REVERSE.
According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Emerson Climate
Technologies, Inc. Appeal Br. 3.
Appeal 2016-001864
Application 12/781,044
CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
Appellants' disclosed invention "relates to diagnostic systems, and
more particularly, to a diagnostic system for use with a compressor and/or
refrigeration system." Spec. i-f 2. Claims 1 and 38 are independent.
Claim 1, reproduced below with emphasis added, is illustrative of the subject
matter on appeal.
1. A compressor comprising a shell, a compression
mechanism, a motor, and a diagnostic system for determining
non-severe fault conditions where continued operation of the
compressor is permitted by said diagnostic system and severe
fault conditions where operation of the compressor is stopped
by said diagnostic system, said diagnostic system including a
processor and a memory and operable to predict said severe
fault conditions before occurrence of said severe fault
conditions based on an order of a sequence of historical fault
events and a combination of the types of said historical fault
events, said historical fault events being determined based on
compressor run time and at least one of a state of a motor
protector, a low-pressure cutout switch, and a high-pressure
cutout switch.
EVIDENCE
The Examiner relied on the following evidence in rejecting the claims
on appeal:
Yamada us 5,690,475 Nov. 25, 1997
Sama ta US 2004/0064212 Al Apr. 1, 2004
Jayanth US 7 ,260,948 B2 Aug.28,2007
Douglas US 2010/0080713 Al Apr. 1, 2010
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Appeal 2016-001864
Application 12/781,044
REJECTIONS
The following rejections are before us for review:
I. Claims 1, 2, 4--8, 12-14, 38, 39, 41--45, and 49-51 stand
rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over
Jayanth, Douglas, and Samata. Final Act. 2-7.
II. Claims 9-11, 36, 37, 46--48, 52, and 53 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Jayanth,
Douglas, Samata, and Yamada. Id. at 8-9.
ANALYSIS
All the claims recite, in relevant part, a compressor that includes "a
diagnostic system" for determining non-severe fault conditions (where
continued operation of the compressor is permitted by said diagnostic
system) and severe fault conditions (where continued operation of the
compressor is stopped by said diagnostic system), where the diagnostic
system includes a processor and a memory and is "operable to predict said
severe fault conditions before occurrence of said severe fault conditions
based on an order of a sequence of historical fault events." Appeal
Br. 28-34, Claims App. (emphasis added). In other words, the claimed
diagnostic system must be operable to predict severe fault conditions, before
they occur, based-not merely on the fact that a sequence of historical fault
events has occurred-but on the order in which such a sequence of historical
fault events has occurred. See id.
In rejecting the claims, the Examiner relies on Jayanth for teaching a
compressor with a diagnostic system, but acknowledges that Jayanth lacks
teachings for tracking any order or sequence of occurrences of historical
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Appeal 2016-001864
Application 12/781,044
fault events, as well as any predicting of severe fault conditions before they
occur based on such tracking. See Final Act. 3--4. The Examiner turns to
Douglas for the tracking of an order or sequence of occurrences of historical
fault events (see id.), and to Samata for the predicting of severe fault
conditions before they occur (see id. at 4).
Appellants argue that, although the cited references disclose various
elements of the claimed invention, the references do not teach "a diagnostic
system operable to predict severe fault conditions before occurrence of the
severe fault conditions based on an order of a sequence of historical fault
events," as claimed. Appeal Br. 10 (underlining omitted). In particular,
Appellants persuasively assert that, even if Douglas were to use a sequence
of identified steps to determine some fault condition, as the Examiner
indicates in the rejection, this feature still does not determine a fault
condition based on an order of such a sequence of the identified steps, as
required by the claimed diagnostic system. See id. at 10-13; Reply Br. 4--5.
In response, the Examiner reiterates the teachings from Douglas relied on in
the rejection, but does not adequately account for its lack of any order of a
sequence of historical fault events in determining a severity level of the
system. See Ans. 9--11.
Rejections based on obviousness must rest on a factual basis, and the
Examiner making such a rejection has the initial burden of supplying that
requisite factual basis. See In re Warner, 379 F.2d 1011, 1017 (CCPA
1967). Upon review of the record before us, we agree with Appellants that,
to the extent that Douglas's system uses the information identified by the
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Appeal 2016-001864
Application 12/781,044
Examiner at all, 2 it would occur in only one order, which would not allow
for any decisions to be based thereon because no other order would occur.
See Reply Br. 4--5. Consequently, the Examiner does not identify, nor do we
discern, disclosure in Douglas of a system that tracks an order of a sequence
of occurrences of historical fault events. Because the cited art does not teach
this recited limitation of the diagnostic system, the requisite factual basis for
the obviousness rejections has not been established by a preponderance of
the evidence.
In short, for the reasons presented by Appellants regarding the
distinctions between the information upon which any prediction could be
made, between the systems of the cited art and the claimed diagnostic
system, we agree with Appellants that the rejections are deficient. More
specifically, we agree with Appellants that the Examiner has not supported a
finding that Douglas, as relied on in the rejections, teaches a diagnostic
system that predicts fault conditions based on the order in which a sequence
of historical fault events has occurred. The Examiner's reliance on Jayanth,
Samata, and Yamada for teaching additional elements of the claimed
compressor diagnostic system does not cure this deficiency.
Accordingly, we do not sustain the rejections.
2 Appellants submit that steps 314, 318, and 320 in Douglas-identified
and relied on by the Examiner (see Ans. 9--10}-are not fault events at all,
but rather involve initiating and running an algorithm (see Reply Br. 4--5).
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Appeal 2016-001864
Application 12/781,044
DECISION
We REVERSE the Examiner's decision rejecting claims 1, 2, 4--8,
12-14, 38, 39, 41--45, and 49-51under35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Jayanth, Douglas, and Samata.
We REVERSE the Examiner's decision rejecting claims 9-11, 36, 37,
46--48, 52, and 53 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over
Jayanth, Douglas, Samata, and Yamada.
REVERSED
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