KONE Corporation

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Oct 26, 2020

14674546 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Oct. 26, 2020)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
14/674,546 03/31/2015 Lauri STOLT 1381-0583PUS1 2606
2292 7590 10/26/2020
BIRCH STEWART KOLASCH & BIRCH, LLP
8110 Gatehouse Road
Suite 100 East
Falls Church, VA 22042-1248
EXAMINER
NOVAK, PETER MICHAEL
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2839
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
10/26/2020 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):
mailroom@bskb.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte LAURI STOLT and JUHAMATTI NIKANDER

Appeal 2019-006875
Application 14/674,546
Technology Center 2800
____________

Before ROMULO H. DELMENDO, JEFFREY B. ROBERTSON, and
MONTÉ T. SQUIRE, Administrative Patent Judges.

DELMENDO, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
The Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Primary
Examiner’s final decision to reject claims 1–18.2 We have jurisdiction under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.

1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in
37 C.F.R. § 1.42—i.e., “KONE Corporation” (Application Data Sheet filed
March 31, 2015 at 4), which is also identified as the real party in interest
(Appeal Brief filed April 5, 2019 (“Appeal Br.”) at 1).
2 See Appeal Br. 5–18; Reply Brief filed September 23, 2019 (“Reply Br.”)
at 1–3; Final Office Action entered August 9, 2018 (“Final Act.”) at 5–20;
Examiner’s Answer entered July 23, 2019 (“Ans.”) at 3–12.
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I. BACKGROUND
The subject matter on appeal relates generally to regenerative electric
converters, which may be used for supplying electrical power in, e.g.,
elevator systems, and to associated methods (Specification filed March 31,
2015 (“Spec.”) at 1, ll. 1–5). Representative claims 1 and 7, which are the
only independent claims on appeal, are reproduced from the Claims
Appendix to the Appeal Brief, as follows:
1. A method of driving a regenerative converter including a
line bridge connected to an A.C. main power supply to receive
an A.C. mains voltage and a machine bridge interconnected via
a DC intermediate circuit, the machine bridge being connected
to drive an electric machine having windings, the method
comprising:
- charging, through the line bridge and while the
machine bridge remains inactive, the DC
intermediate circuit to a target voltage higher than
peak value of the mains voltage[;] and
- thereafter, using the target voltage to provide a
higher startup voltage to the electric machine
through said machine bridge to facilitate start of the
electric machine with the higher startup voltage.
7. A regenerative converter providing power from power
mains of an A.C. power supply to an electric machine having
windings, comprising:
a line bridge for connecting to the power mains;
a machine bridge for connecting to the windings of the
electric machine;
a DC intermediate circuit connecting the line bridge and
the machine bridge together;
a control coupled to both the line bridge and the machine
bridge, the control being configured to:
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cause, while the machine bridge remains inactive, the line
bridge to charge the DC intermediate circuit to a target voltage
higher than peak value of the voltage of the power mains.
(Appeal Br., Claim App. 1–2 (emphases added)).
II. REJECTIONS ON APPEAL
The claims on appeal stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as follows:
A. Claims 1–18 as unpatentable over Schnetzka3 in view of Falk et
al.4 (“Falk”);
B. Claims 1–18 as unpatentable over Schnetzka in view of
Masuda;5
C. Claims 1–18 as unpatentable over Schnetzka in view of
Paatero;6 and
D. Claims 1–18 as unpatentable over Schnetzka in view of
Geissler.7
(Final Act. 5–20; Ans. 3–12).8
III. DISCUSSION
A dispositive issue in each of the four Rejections A through D is
whether a sufficient reason with some rational underpinning has been

3 US 2006/0208685 A1, published Sept. 21, 2006.
4 US 2015/0069841 A1, published Mar. 12, 2015.
5 US 2010/0085019 A1, published Apr. 8, 2010.
6 US 2005/0213357 A1, published Sept. 29, 2005.
7 US 6,329,636 B1, issued Dec. 11, 2001.
8 In the Final Action, the Examiner’s rejection includes certain texts that
have been stricken (see, e.g., Final Act. 5–6). We assume that these stricken
texts were intended to be deleted.
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articulated in support of the Examiner’s conclusion that a person having
ordinary skill in the art would have combined Schnetzka with Falk, Masuda,
Paatero, or Geissler in the manner claimed by the Inventors. For the reasons
given by the Appellant and below, we conclude that a sufficient reason has
not been articulated for any of the four rejections.
Schnetzka, the principal reference in all four rejections, describes a
system for precharging a DC link in a variable speed drive (VSD) using
insulated gate transistors in a rectifier or converter (Schnetzka ¶ 2).
According to Schnetzka, the VSD 104 receives AC power having a fixed
line voltage and fixed line frequency from an AC power source 102 and
provides AC power to a motor 106, which is preferably used to drive a
compressor of a refrigeration or chiller system (id. ¶¶ 29–30; Fig. 1A). In
one embodiment, Schnetzka teaches that an inverter 206 converts the DC
power from the DC link 204 into variable frequency, variable voltage AC
power for the motor 106 (id. ¶ 31; Fig. 2A). Schnetzka teaches that,
preferably, a “converter module 202 can operate as a boost rectifier to
provide a boosted DC voltage to the DC link 204 to obtain an output voltage
from the VSD 104 greater than the input voltage of the VSD 104” (id. ¶ 41).
The Examiner acknowledges that, in contrast to the subject matter
recited in claim 1, Schnetzka “does not explicitly state the DC intermediate
circuit to a target voltage higher than peak value of the mains voltage, [and]
thereafter, using the target voltage to the electric machine through [the]
machine bridge to facilitate the start of the electrical machine with the higher
startup voltage” (Final Act. 6, 9, 13, 17 (underlining omitted)). The
Examiner asserts, however, that this missing feature “was known” as
evidenced by each of the secondary references (id.). According to the
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Examiner, a person having ordinary skill in the art would have been
motivated to combine Schnetzka with Falk, Masuda, Paatero, or Geissler “to
ensure the motor could be started at full power and prevent stalling” (id. at 6,
10, 14, 17). Similar analyses are provided for claim 7 (id. at 7–8, 11, 14–15,
18–19).
As the Appellant argues (Appeal Br. 6), none of the evidence on
which the Examiner relies provides support for the Examiner’s conclusions.
Cf. In re Nuvasive, Inc., 842 F.3d 1376, 1382–1384 (Fed. Cir. 2016)
(holding that the Board’s reliance on an expert’s conclusory statement that
the proposed modification of the prior art would have provided “additional
information” found to be inadequate to support an obviousness conclusion).
Falk’s disclosure, unlike Schnetzka’s disclosure that relates to a
system for driving, e.g., a refrigeration or HVAC system, concerns a method
for operating a photovoltaic system for feeding a medium-voltage grid,
wherein the system includes a plurality of photovoltaic modules, at least one
inverter, and at least one medium-voltage transformer (Falk Abstract). Falk
states that the system includes a DC link that is subjected to pulse loading by
an inverter and a DC-link capacitor that is provided to smooth a DC-link
voltage Uz and to maintain an optimum working point (id. ¶ 27). Falk
teaches further that the working voltage in the DC link is generally greater
than the peak voltage of the AC voltage present at the AC output of the
inverter and that the DC-link capacitors are precharged via corresponding
precharging devices from the respective buffer battery to a preset setpoint
value that is greater than or equal to the minimum voltage Umin (id. ¶¶ 42,
48). These teachings, however, are insufficient to establish that a person
having ordinary skill in the art would have been prompted to charge an DC
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intermediate circuit in Schnetzka to a target voltage value higher than the
peak value of a mains voltage while the machine bridge remains inactive—
let alone demonstrate that a person having ordinary skill in the art would
have done so to ensure that Schnetzka’s motor used in, e.g., a refrigeration
or HVAC system could be started at full power and stalling prevented, as the
Examiner alleges. KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007)
(“Often, it will be necessary for a court to look to interrelated teachings of
multiple patents; the effects of demands known to the design community or
present in the marketplace; and the background knowledge possessed by a
person having ordinary skill in the art, all in order to determine whether
there was an apparent reason to combine the known elements in the fashion
claimed by the patent at issue.”) (emphasis added).
The Examiner’s reliance on Masuda is equally unavailing. Masuda
teaches “a battery temperature control system that carries out the
temperature rise control to raise the temperature of a battery mounted on a
vehicle by its charging/discharging” (Masuda ¶ 2). According to Masuda, a
smoothing capacitor of a boost converter is precharged by stepping up the
output voltage of a low-voltage battery at two-way DC-DC converter and
supplying it to the power supply line of a high-voltage battery immediately
after an ignition switch is turned on (id. ¶ 46). Masuda states that,
alternatively, the temperature of the high-voltage battery may be raised by
carrying out charging and/or discharging of the high-voltage battery by a
step-up/down operation of the two-way DC-DC converter between the high-
voltage battery and the low-voltage battery during the execution of the
temperature rise control (id.). Masuda also discloses that a motor may be
selected as an electric equipment that carries out the temperature rise
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control, wherein the operation mode is alternately and periodically switched
between a motor mode and a generator mode (id. ¶ 128). Again, however,
Masuda’s teachings have not been shown to support a conclusion that a
person having ordinary skill in the art would have modified Schnetzka to
charge an DC intermediate circuit to a target voltage value higher than the
peak value of a mains voltage while the machine bridge remains inactive—
let alone demonstrate that a person having ordinary skill in the art would
have done so to ensure that Schnetzka’s motor used in, e.g., a refrigeration
or HVAC system, could be started at full power and stalling prevented.
Paatero describes an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) in which a
rectifier or other circuit is used to generate a DC voltage at a DC output or
link from an AC power supply (Paatero ¶ 2). Although the Examiner
correctly determines that Paatero teaches precharging (Final Act 13 (citing
Paatero ¶ 26); Ans. 10), we agree with the Appellant (Reply Br. 2) that this,
too, falls short of establishing that a person having ordinary skill in the art
would have modified Schnetzka to charge an DC intermediate circuit to a
target voltage value higher than the peak value of a mains voltage while the
machine bridge remains inactive—let alone demonstrate that a person
having ordinary skill in the art would have done so to ensure that
Schnetzka’s motor used in, e.g., a refrigeration or HVAC system, could be
started at full power and stalling prevented.
Geissler teaches a method and apparatus for providing welding power
(Geissler Abstract). Although Geissler states that a DC bus quickly rises to
a rectified input voltage through a precharge resistor (id. at col. 6, ll. 6–16),
it is not apparent why a person having ordinary skill in the art would have
been prompted to combine Schnetzka and Geissler in the manner claimed in
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order to ensure that Schnetzka’s motor used in, e.g., a refrigeration or
HVAC system, could be started at full power and stalling prevented.
For these reasons, we do not sustain any of the Examiner’s rejections.

IV. CONCLUSION
In summary:
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1–18 103 Schnetzka, Falk 1–18
1–18 103 Schnetzka, Masuda 1–18
1–18 103 Schnetzka, Paatero 1–18
1–18 103 Schnetzka, Geissler 1–18
Overall
Outcome
1–18

REVERSED