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 § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1 and 15 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over WO2019098744 in view of optionally in view of Nair 2016/0102173 or Clendinning 4716211.
Jeong 11,919,999 is relied on as a translation of WO2019098744.
Jeong’s exemplifies (#1) add DPO, EKKE, TPC, IPC and benzoyl chloride capping agent to oDCB in a reactor (ie applicant’s step “a”). The temperature is kept at -100 to -50C while AlCl3 is added (ie applicant’s step “b”). N2 was then blown into the reactor. This N2 is added from above or below in a plurality of directions (col 5 line 30-35). PEKK was polymerized at 900C (col 6 line 48). The PEKK is then washed with distilled water and vacuum dried at 1800C (col 6 line 48).
Jeong (col 6 line 41-43) does not does not report the rate of AlCl3 (catalyst) addition, merely stating “catalyst was added” while constantly maintaining the temperature at -100C to -50C.
It is recognized in the art that the entirety of the AlCl3 should not added all at once.
Nair (paragraph 109) teaches addition of AlCl3 “gradually” to avoid exotherm.
Clendinning (col 5 line 34-36) teaches adding the AlCl3 “in portions” apparently also to help maintain the low temperature.
Presumably, Jeong’s catalyst was added at rate slow enough that that the temperature did not significantly increase. Secondly, Jeong’s process (col 7 line 23-25) resulted in high yield due to the formation of minimal oligomer. In fact, Jeong (fig 3) indicates almost no oligomer was formed. Thirdly, Jeong states (col 6 line 19) the formation scale was suppressed.
It would have been within the ordinary skill of the art through routine experimentation to identify the most favorable rate of catalyst addition that maintains the reaction temperature. This would be done by slowing Jeong’s addition of catalyst to a rate where the reactor’s temperature remains in the specified range. The optimum rate would depend on multiple factors including size of reactor, amount of solvent, monomer concentration etc.
Secondly, without tying the catalyst addition rate to amounts of monomers and amounts of solvent, this claimed rate is essentially meaningless. A polymerization process that adds 1.1-1.3g/min of catalyst to 0.1g of monomer will not behave the same as adding 1.1-1.3g/min of catalyst to 10,000g of monomer.
Claim 16 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.
These very specific amounts of monomers and solvent are not suggested by the references of record.
Applicant's arguments filed 12/12/25 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues that the claimed catalyst addition rate has been shown to result in unexpectedly high yields (ie 92%+).
This is not convincing. The primary reference WO2019098744 (US 11,919,999) is said to have produced increased yields (col 7 line 23-25) and suppressed scale (col 7 line 34). Applicant’s declaration employing slower catalyst rates have yields of 66% and below. No one of ordinary skill would consider the values particularly good yields. See for instance GB2287031’s high yields (table II) when making polyether ketones. One would have to assume the primary reference’s catalyst rate addition was somewhat slower than “all at once” (to avoid a temperature rise) but not slower than 1g/10min (or the yield would not have been characterized as favorable).
Furthermore applicant (paragraph 74 of spec) states that the high yield suppresses scale. Jeong (col 7 line 34) indicates his scaling is also suppressed.
It would have been within the ordinary skill of the art through routine experimentation to identify the most favorable rate of catalyst addition that maintains the reaction temperature. This would be done by slowing Jeong’s addition of catalyst to a rate where the reactor’s temperature remains in the specified range. The optimum rate would depend on multiple factors including size of reactor, amount of solvent, monomer concentration etc.
Applicant’s claimed rate of catalyst addition would not be expected to provide unexpected results over all possible amounts of solvent, monomer concentrations etc. While a 1.1-1.3g/10min addition might be favorable for reactions systems of 26.6g EKKE, 4.26g TPC, 6.75g IPC in 750g of solvent, such a rate would not necessarily be favorable when there is a much greater amount of solvent, much lesser amounts of solvent or more/less amount of monomer. It is not believable that the best catalyst rates of addition are not dependent on monomer concentration of the reaction system. Applicant’s response fails to provide even a token response to this point.
Catalyst/monomer ratio is always an important factor in polymerization. Solvent amount would also be critical because (as alluded to by the secondary references) the reaction is exothermic. Large amounts of solvent (ie low monomer concentration) would have less issues with temperature rise. On the other hand, small amounts of solvent (and therefore high monomer concentrations) would have greater problems with controlling the temperature rise. Applicant’s response fails to provide even a token response to this point.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DAVID J BUTTNER whose telephone number is (571)272-1084. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9-3pm.
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/DAVID J BUTTNER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1765 1/30/26