Appeal No. 2000-0950 Page 2
Application No. 08/925,247
BACKGROUND
The appellant's invention relates to a brake system control (specification, p. 1).
Claim 1, the sole independent claim under appeal, reads as follows:
A brake system control method, comprising the steps of:
measuring a set of vehicle parameters including steering wheel angle,
vehicle speed, lateral acceleration and vehicle yaw rate;
responsive to the measured parameters using an observer to estimate
lateral velocity of the vehicle, wherein the observer contains (a) an open loop
nonlinear dynamic model of the vehicle responsive to the measured vehicle
speed and the measured yaw rate; (b) a closed loop term responsive to a first
error between the measured yaw rate and a predicted yaw rate, a second error
between a previously estimated derivative of lateral velocity and a predicted
derivative of lateral velocity and a third error between the measured lateral
acceleration and a predicted lateral acceleration;
estimating a vehicle slip angle responsive to the estimate of lateral
velocity;
determining a control command responsive to the vehicle slip angle; and
controlling an actuator responsive to the control command.
In the final rejection (Paper No. 7, mailed August 17, 1999) the examiner
(1) rejected claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being anticipated by U.S. Patent No.
5,742,918 to Ashrafi et al. (Ashrafi); and (2) rejected claims 2 and 3 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as being unpatentable over Ashrafi in view of U.S. Patent No. 5,641,212 to Sakai.
In the rejection of claim 1, the examiner determined that the claimed "second error
between a previously estimated derivative of lateral velocity and a predicted derivative
of lateral velocity" was disclosed by Ashrafi at column 7, lines 50-67, and column 8,
lines 1-17. In the rejection of claim 1, the examiner never set forth where in Ashrafi the
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