DETAILED ACTION
The following Office action concerns Patent Application Number 18/022,834. Claims 1-13 are pending in the application.
Claims 10-13 are withdrawn from consideration as being drawn to non-elected inventions.
Election/Restrictions
A restriction requirement was sent to the Applicant on November 19, 2025. The Applicant was required to elect among several groups of inventions. The Applicant responded to the restriction requirement on January 6, 2026 and elected Group I, claims 1-9. Since the election was not made with traverse, it is treated as being made without traverse. Accordingly, claims 10-13 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to non-elected inventions.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-6, 8, 9 are allowable over the closest prior art of Choi et al (US 2021/0399337) in view of Sato et al (US 2002/0106562). The references do not teach or suggest a lithium transition metal oxide of formula 1 or the claimed amounts of additives.
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 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 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over Choi et al (US 2021/0399337) in view of Sato et al (US 2002/0106562).
Choi et al teaches additives for a lithium battery comprising Li5AlO4, Li3BO3, and a lithium transition metal oxide (par. 19). The additive contains aluminum (par. 19). The additive forms a coating on a lithium transition metal oxide (par. 13, 18).
Choi et al does not teach that the additive includes Li3PO4.
However, Sato et al teaches an additive for a lithium battery comprising Li3PO4 (par. 15). The additive allows the battery to have high capacity (par. 16). A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the Li3PO4 of Sato et al with the additive of Choi et al in order to obtain a lithium battery with high capacity.
Examiner’s Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to William Young whose telephone number is (571) 270-5078. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday, 8:30 AM to 5 PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Angela Brown-Pettigrew, can be reached at 571-272-2817. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000./WILLIAM D YOUNG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1761 February 17, 2026
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