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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group 1, claims 1-6 in the reply filed on 11/19/2025 is acknowledged. Claims 7-17 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected invention, there being no allowable generic or linking claim.
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 1-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over JP’514 (JP 2009-043514) in view of Park (US 2015/0349333)
Regarding claim 1, JP’514 teaches an electrode material applied to a positive electrode material. The electrode material is made by sintering active material particles and the first conductive material such that the active material particles and the first conductive material are bonded by heating and the first conductive material and the second conductive material are bonded together. The first conductive material is at least one of an amorphous carbon material and the second conductive material may be carbon nanotube. The first conductive material is attached to the surface of the active material particles and the second conductive material is made of fibrous carbon material; such as, nanotubes and bonded to the first conductive material. JP’514 teaches the bond between the active material particles and the first conductive material is strong and the bond between the first conductive material and the second conductive material is also strong which results in a favorable conductive network and the life characteristics of the battery being improved; further, the second conductive material are physically and chemically stable and have excellent electrical conductivity resulting in favorable conductive network that stably is maintained over a long period of time.
While JP’514 does not recite the active material particles is “lithium transition metal oxide particles”, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide the active material particles of JP’514 as “lithium transition metal oxide particles” because a known and suitable positive electrode active material particles in the battery art includes lithium transition metal oxide particles as demonstrated by [0109] of Park and providing a known and suitable positive electrode active material particles (lithium transition metal oxide particles) of the same field of endeavor of positive electrode active material for batteries yields predictable results.
Regarding claim 2, page 9 of the machine translation shows the first conductive material adhering active material particles is formed of a film.
Regarding claim 3, amorphous carbon is a form of carbon black.
Regarding claims 4 and 6, the combined teachings of JP’514 and Park would predictably yield the same composition and the substantially the same structure as the instant application, i.e. amorphous carbon is bonded to the surface of lithium transition metal oxide particles and carbon nanotubes are formed and bonded on the amorphous carbon.
Regarding claim 5, while JP’514 is silent to the claimed weight percent with respect to the total weight of the positive electrode active material, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide the positive electrode active material with “an amorphous carbon based material of the amorphous carbon-based coating layer and a carbon nanotube of the carbon nanotube coating layer are contained in an amount of 0.01 to 5% by weight based on a total weight of the positive electrode active material” because Park teaches a composite cathode (positive) active material comprising a core including an active material; such as; lithium cobalt oxide (a lithium transition metal oxide) and a coating film disposed on the surface of the core wherein the coating film includes carbon nanostructure that is partly molten and amorphized wherein the coating film is 0.1-30 parts by weight based on 100 parts by weight of the composite cathode active material wherein such amounts improve the lifetime characteristics and improve high rate characteristics of the composite cathode active material (abstract, [0045], [0064], [0109]).
Conclusion
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/KENDRA LY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1749