Appeal No. 2002-0029 6
Application No. 09/437535
Rejection (3)
Looking first at the rejection of claim 1 as being unpatentable over Kaji in view of
White, the examiner acknowledges that Kaji does not disclose determining means for
determining the position of the occupant or a control circuit coupled to the determining
means for controlling the deployment of the side airbags based on the determined
position of the occupant. Nevertheless, the examiner considers (final rejection, pages
3-4) that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to provide Kaji
with such determining means and control circuit to control deployment of Kaji’s side
airbag in view of the teachings of White. For the following reasons, we find the
examiner’s reliance on White in this regard to be well founded.
White pertains to a circuit for actuating a vehicle passenger safety restraint such
as an airbag, said circuit including pressure transducers and ultrasonic acoustic
sensors for sensing the presence, weight and relative position of the passenger within a
vehicle, which information is supplied to a control module controlling operation of the
restraint (abstract). The control circuit operates in a number of ways, including
“inhibiting operation of the restraint if the likely injury attendant to operation of the
restraint is greater than the likely injury attendant to unimpeded passenger contact with
fixed interior structure of the vehicle, given the position assumed by the passenger
therein” (column 3, lines 2-7). See also, column 1, lines 23-27, the paragraph spanning
columns 1 and 2, and column 3, lines 45-52. It would have been obvious to provide
LJS/
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