Appeal No. 2002-1879
Application No. 09/246,212
THE REJECTION
Claims 1 through 22 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Bessacini in view of Thornberg.
Attention is directed to the appellants’ brief (Paper No.
12) and to the examiner’s final rejection and answer (Paper Nos.
8 and 13) for the respective positions of the appellants and the
examiner regarding the merits of this rejection.1
DISCUSSION
Bessacini, the examiner’s primary reference, discloses “a
control method and apparatus for producing guidance parameters
for use by a pursuing vehicle [e.g., a torpedo] at launch that
take into account potential evasive maneuvers of a target
vehicle” (column 3, lines 27 through 30). In general,
initial guidance parameters are provided to place a
pursuing vehicle on an intercept trajectory from a
launching vehicle to a target vehicle with evasion
capabilities. At the launching vehicle, the control
method and apparatus respond to the initial parameters,
a representation of a pursuing vehicle characteristic
trajectory derived from a corresponding generic model
and a representation of an evading target
characteristic trajectory derived from another generic
model as inputs of iterative processing. Iterative
processing of functional forms of the trajectories,
1 As correctly pointed out by the examiner (see page 2 in
the answer), and notwithstanding comments to the contrary by the
appellants (see pages 3, 6 and 7 in the brief), the above stated
rejection constitutes the only issue in this appeal.
3
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