3

In reference to the patent: US20140206488

The invention presented here is actually already available under another name. A cycloid speed reducer has exactly the same construction with an excentric shaft and an inner and outer gear. As can be seen on http://www.darali.com/ these have been produced for years. The actual picture of the patent suggests an involut gear teeth but this is by no means an invention.

Improve this question
1
  • Providing at least a diagram of a "darali" cycloid speed reducer would greatly help your case.
    – Atsby
    Jul 4, 2015 at 15:52

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
1

This is only an application and may never be granted. Claim 1 is especially unlikely given prior art. In this case, Wikipedia provides some prior art and a couple of useful links. including Onvio and Shimpo.

Update:

According to the US Public Pair site, this application's status is: "Abandoned -- Failure to Respond to an Office Action" as of 03-12-2015.

The applicant received a non-final rejection in 08-10-2014. I'm assuming the cited grounds for rejection were sufficient to convince the applicant to give up pursing a US patent.

Improve this answer
0

US20140206488 is a publication of a pending patent application that has not issued yet. It may issue as a patent. It may not.

It's possible that a patent Examiner might find the claims lack novelty and/or are obvious in light of this prior art or other prior art. However, look to the claim of the patent application to determine what the applications are actually trying to patent. The patent claims define the metes and bounds of what is protected - not the specification or drawings.

Again, these claims are not issued, but at least give you a sense of what the applicants are going after. Claim 1 is reproduced below. (Keep in mind that these claims may change during examination and may be ultimately rejected by the Examiner.)

  1. A harmonic drive, comprising:

a housing;

a first gear, fixed to the housing, the first gear having a first number of internal teeth;

a second gear, engaged with the first gear, the second gear having a second number of external teeth, wherein the second number is different from the first number;

an eccentric shaft, coupled to the second gear for driving the second gear to eccentrically rotate relative to the first gear; and

a power outputting unit, coupled to the second gear for converting eccentric rotation of the second gear to rotary power.

Improve this answer
2
  • Welcome to Ask Patents! I see you posted several answers recently, and they're definitely appreciated! This was a pretty broad question, so it's not a huge deal, but just something to keep in mind, we typically like answers for prior art searches to go a step beyond this. Ask Patents was originally started as a joint venture with the USPTO to help crowd-source finding prior art. It's better for these questions in particular to actually review the prior art that the person has listed and assess whether and why it may or may not bar novelty of the application.
    – Matthew Haugen
    Dec 31, 2015 at 11:01
  • Again, not a huge deal for this one, since that's still information that this asker may not have had, and you definitely addressed the "the actual picture" line that might have indicated some confusion. But I thought I'd just bring that up, since you're putting in effort to help out :).
    – Matthew Haugen
    Dec 31, 2015 at 11:03
0

The cycloidal transmission described here, http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/cycloid/ and first published on or before Mar 30, 2012, appears to cover every claim.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .