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 .
DETAILED ACTION
All the references cited in the International Search Report have been considered. None is anticipatory. The most pertinent of these references have been applied below.
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 of this title, 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.
Claim(s) 1-4 is (are) rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Inoue et al. (WO 2019151399. US 20210043358 as English equivalent) listed on ISR and IDS.
As to claims 1-4, Inoue (claims, abs., examples, Tables 1-2) discloses a wound core comprising a flat portion and corner portions adjacent to the flat portion, the flat portion including a lap portion, the corner portions including bent portions (Fig. 14):
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Cold finished grain-oriented electrical steel is used (0148, Table 1) as the magnetic domain refined material to form the wound core, which would inherently be non-heat-resistant magnetic according to instant pgpub [0049]. The wound core C has a shape with a stacked thickness of 30 mm, a steel sheet width of 120 mm, seven step laps, and a single step lap length of 8 mm (0148, Table 1). Thus, the ratio of the number of lap joint portions having a lap length of 8 mm (falling within the range of claim 1) to the total number of lap joint portions would be 100%, falling within the range (≥50%) of claim 1. In wound core A-C, the closure domains are formed in the cold finished grain-oriented electrical steel so as to extend in a direction intersecting a longitudinal direction of the non-heat-resistant magnetic domain refined material (Fig. 13):
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The grooves in the wound core are an equivalent term to the claimed closure domains. The width of grooves in the rolling direction is 40-250 mm. The depth of grooves is ≥ 10 mm (0132), overlapping with the range of claim 2. Thus, the area of each of the closure domains in a cross section that is taken in the longitudinal direction would be ≥2500 mm2, overlapping with the range (≥7500 mm2) of claim 1.
As to claims 3-4, the spacing of the plurality of grooves extending in the direction intersecting the rolling direction (equivalent to the claimed longitudinal direction) is ≤10 mm (0133), overlapping with the ranges.
It has been found that where claimed ranges overlap ranges disclosed by the prior art, a prima facie case of obviousness exists - see MPEP 2144.05.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHANE FANG whose telephone number is (571)270-7378. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Thurs. 8am-6pm. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Randy Gulakowski can be reached on 571.572.1302. 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.
/SHANE FANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1766
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