DETAILED ACTION
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior office action.
All outstanding objections and rejections made in the previous Office Action, and not repeated below, are hereby withdrawn.
The new grounds of rejection set forth below are necessitated by applicant’s amendment filed on 12/31/25. In particular, claims 1 and 3 have been amended to recite “previously” and “bond-exchanging, dynamic crosslink promoting”.
The newly introduced limitations and/or the new claims were not present at the time of the preceding action. For this reason, the present action is properly made final.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
Claim(s) 1 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Guo et al. Macromolecules 2020, 53, 458-464 (herein Guo).
As to claims 1, Guo discloses a method of recycling a polymer of poly(ethylene-vinyl acetate) through dynamic cross-linking. See abstract. In section 2, it is disclosed that the polymer is processed with catalyst and crosslinker and reprocessed more than five times. Thus, as seen in figure 5, the material can be recycled and reprocessed to re-dynamically crosslink the ethylene vinyl acetate material. The ethylene vinyl acetate reads on both the vinyl ester and the C2 olefin.
As to the new limitations, note that the material is recycled five times, therefore, after the first recycle, the material is crosslinked (i.e. the second recycle would be on a previously crosslinked polymer. The catalyst allows for “bond exchange” reactions. See page 460. Further, the catalyst is defined as a allowing for dynamic cross-linking”. See abstract, page 461 and examples.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 2 is objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Claims 3-24 are allowed.
Response to Arguments
The rejections over US 2014/0066530 (herein Shen) and CN 11218054 (herein Cheng) are withdrawn in light of the amendments and applicant’s arguments. No prior art discusses mixing both conventional peroxide crosslinked EVA with vitrimer (dynamically crosslinking) methods. All literature uncovered is published after the filing date of the instant application. Therefore, there is no motivation or expectation of success of combining the two methods that are alternatives. Especially considering that utilizing a dynamical crosslinking catalyst will have no effect on covalent bonds already present by peroxide crosslinking. Flowing from this, there is no teaching of a method having both crosslinked polymer and uncrosslinked polymer present together when dynamically crosslinking the reaction.
Regarding Guo, Applicant's arguments have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Specifically, the second time performing the recycling on the vitrimer reads on the instant method as outline above because the polymer would have been dynamically crosslinked the first time.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/MARK S KAUCHER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1764