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 .
This Office Action is in response to the Amendment filed on 11/28/2022.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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 1-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over JP2002069255 to Shuichi et al. (as found on the IDS dated 6/14/2024) in view of JP2015034262 to Yoko et al. (as found on the IDS dated 11/28/2022). For the purposes of examination, citations for Shuichi and Yoko are taken from a machine translation equivalent of the document..
Regarding Claim 1 and 2, Shuichi teaches a resin composition [title] comprising a saponified ethylene-vinyl ester copolymer saponified material having an ethylene content of 1-15 mole% [abstract] (corresponding to (A)), and an inorganic layer structure compound [abstract] (corresponding to (B))
Shuichi does not particularly teach a modified vinyl alcohol-based polymer (A) that contains from 1 to 20 mol% of a structural units represented by instant formula (1).
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However, Yoko teaches a modified vinyl alcohol based polymer [Yoko, title] containing 0.1-30 mol% of the following formula [abstract, Yoko] (thereby reading on 1-20 mol% of formula (1)):
wherein the content of ethylene in the modified vinyl alcohol based polymer is 1-15 mol% [abstract, Yoko] reading on 1-20 mol% ethylene unit of claim 2.
Shuichi and Yoko are analogous art as they are from the same field of endeavor, namely compositions comprising modified ethylene vinyl copolymers.
Before the effective filing date of the instantly claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to substitute Yoko’s copolymer with Shuichi’s modified vinyl alcohol-based polymer, thereby arriving at the claimed invention.
The motivation to modify Shuichi with Yoko is that the modified polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) unit of formula (1) can reduce the crystallinity of the modified PVA, thereby improving the handling properties such as water solubility and improving the thermoforming properties at low temperatures [Yoko, 0023].
Regarding Claim 3, Shuichi in view of Yoko teach the resin composition of claim 1, wherein the ratio of the modified copolymer to the inorganic layered compound is more preferably 1.0 or more [Shuichi ,0027] (i.e., A/B of 1.0 or more ratio of instant claims) therefore it is reasonably calculated the B/A ratio is 1.0 or less, thus reading on a B/A ratio of 0.1/100 to 100/100.
Regarding Claim 4, Shuichi in view of Yoko teach the resin composition of claim 1, wherein the swelling inorganic compound is most suitably swellable fluoromica [Shuichi, 0015] i.e., swelling mica.
Regarding Claim 5, Shuichi in view of Yoko teach the resin composition of claim 1, wherein the water vapor transmission rate of inventive examples are less than 25 g*30 µm/m2*day or less [Shuichi, machine translation of table 1 shown below]
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Regarding Claim 6, 7 and 8, Shuichi in view of Yoko teach the resin composition of claim 1, wherein the components are dissolved in water [Shuichi, 0031] and made into a film (i.e., coating) that is preferably to use as a laminated film with another substrate [Shuichi, 0032] i.e., multilayered structure.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner
should be directed to Devin Darling whose telephone number is (703) 756-5411. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00-5:00.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Arrie Lanee Reuther can be reached on (571) 270-7026. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/DEVIN MITCHELL DARLING/Examiner, Art Unit 1764
/ARRIE L REUTHER/Supervisory Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1764