Appeal 2007-2682
Application 10/326,410
displaying at least one of: a time, a period, a location,
and a damage level when the damage factor exceeds a
designated level.
At the heart of the dispute in this appeal is whether Sarangapani discloses a
data structure in memory that determines a damage factor indicative of “an
instantaneous stress” applied to the machine component. If it does not, then
Sarangapani would not disclose the above-quoted maintaining step, the
above-quoted processing step which processes that data structure to
determine the damage factor, or the above-quoted displaying step which
displays the damage factor resulting from that processing.
For the maintaining step, the Examiner initially cited to Col. 3, ll. 29-
30, and Fig. 6-7 of Sarangapani, but nothing in the cited text indicates that
data is stored which determines a damage factor indicative of a component’s
“instantaneous stress.” Sarangapani, in Column 3, ll. 27-32, merely states:
Employing a complement of on-board and off-board hardware
and software, the machine prognostic system 10 monitors and
derives machine component information and analyzes the
resulting data to indicate and/or predict impending component
or system failures or unacceptable performance levels.
The above-quoted text does not teach that impending failures are determined
based on a damage factor indicative of a component’s “instantaneous stress.”
The approach may be based on accumulated stress over time or something
else. Figures 6 and 7 of Sarangapani are no better than the cited text. They
do not reveal anything about determining a damage factor which is
indicative of a component’s “instantaneous stress.” Indeed, the “severity”
computations referred to in Figures 6 and 7 appear to be based on trends
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