DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant’s submission filed on 3 February 2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks, filed 3 February 2026, with respect to the rejection of the claims under § 103 in view of Grande, Kim, and Halliday have been fully considered and are substantially persuasive. See the Allowable Subject Matter section below for more details. The § 103 rejection of the claims has been withdrawn.
Claim Objections
Claims 1–11, 17–19, 21, 23, and 24 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1 recites “at least one of plurality of holes” (l. 24), which should be amended to recite “at least one of the plurality of holes.”
Claim 10 recites that “a first connection fitting is installed on one side of the first pipe, and a second connection fitting is installed on the other side of the first pipe.” This language is at least partially duplicated from claim 1, which provides first and second connection fittings connected to first and second (rather than “the other”) sides of the first pipe. Applicant should either cancel the claim, or amend claim 10 such that it only narrows what is claimed in claim 1 without presenting overly duplicated limitations.
Claim 17 recites “at least one of plurality of holes” (l. 29), which should be amended to recite “at least one of the plurality of holes.”
Claim 24 recites “the first pipe” (l. 12) before properly providing antecedent basis for the limitation on line 14 (“a first pipe”).
Claim 24 recites “the circular manner” and “the imaginary circle” (l. 45) before properly providing antecedent basis for the limitations on the second-to-last and last lines.
For clarity, claim 24, lines 51–52, should be amended to recite “the plurality of first heating wires.”
Claims 2–9, 11, 18, 19, 21, and 23 are rejected due to dependency upon objected-to claims.
Claim Rejections — 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claim 21 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claim 21 recites limitations that could be understood as duplicated from the circular support plate limitations of claim 1 from which it depends, though it’s unclear, since the limitations of claim 21 could be understood as being intended to refer to an additional support plate (Applicant’s fig. 8 clearly shows two such support plates). Therefore, this is not understood as a § 112(d) issue. Nonetheless, claim 21 does not clearly explain the relationship between the “circular support plate” of claim 1 and its generic “support plate,” and therefore, whether these are the same or different is unclear.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1–11, 17–19, 23, and 24 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the objections set forth in this Office action.
Claim 21 would inherit the potential allowability of claim 2 if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) set forth in this Office action.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Each of independent claims 1, 17, and 24 now recite limitations directed to a circular support plate with some further limitations (mostly borrowed from now-canceled claim 22, further rejected in view of Boehmer). Claim 1 is the broadest independent claim. Applicant argued that the Office’s reliance on Boehmer is misplaced as it does not disclose or suggest numerous other claimed features. With respect to Boehmer, Applicant’s arguments are persuasive; but the withdrawal of this prior art rejection is not immediately dispositive of the question of whether these limitations are obvious to combine given other available prior art.
Support plates for tubes carrying fluid are well-known in various arts, especially heat exchangers. One of ordinary skill in the art would well-understand that these plates provide additional structural support for these tubes. However, on close review, a limitation such as this tips the scales against the conclusion that the claimed invention would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Independent claim 1 may be described, in summary, as combining at least three significant features: the plurality of heating wires formed on the surface of the first pipe (disclosed by Grande); the first and second unit heaters and flow paths, and the first tube (disclosed by Kim); and the circular support plate with a plurality of holes, at least one of which surrounds the first pipe.
The heating wires of the pipe of Grande are highly particular and atypical. They are depicted as being implemented with a pipe that clearly seems to support itself, and is designed to connect end-to-end with other similar pipes (see figs. 43–45) via flanges and clamps. This arrangement is different from Kim at least because it does not involve any tube that is inserted into a connection fitting. Nonetheless, Grande is pertinent simply for disclosing a heating wire arrangement suitable for heating contents of a tube. Grande’s pipes are also clearly shown with expansion zone features to enable safe thermal expansion of the pipes, which one of ordinary skill in the art could understand as a feature that would teach against restricting the pipes with support structures.
Kim discloses a specific system for heating fluid contents in heated tubes. If a support plate were to be implemented into Kim as disclosed, it would surely have a rectangular shape to adopt to the planar-serpentine arrangement of its pipes.
Although independent claim 1 does not require that its heaters are arranged around an imaginary circle as per claim 7 (the rejection of which additionally cites to Halliday), a proof that the claimed support plate with a plurality of holes, at least one of which surrounds the first pipe, would need to argue for the obviousness of some sort of envisionment for a circular plate with such features, and the rejection of claim 7 further in view of Halliday gives an example of how that might be shown.
Overall, given the particular elements and their arrangement as claimed, it seems less than likely that one of ordinary skill in the art would combine the highly particular pipe heating wire arrangement drawn in isolation from Grande with the sequential unit heaters, flow paths, and tube of Kim, and further modify it to work specifically with a circular support structure having a plurality of holes, at least one of which was for surrounding the first pipe, without the benefit of impermissible hindsight. See MPEP § 2141.02.I., the claimed invention as a whole must be considered.
Conclusion
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/JOHN J NORTON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3761