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.
Election/Restrictions
The applicant has elected Group II (claims 15) without traverse.
This restriction is made FINAL. See previous action for the reasons of applying restriction.
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) 15 is (are) rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Uryu et al. (J. of Polym. Sci., Vol. 17, 673-678, listed on IDS and ISR) in view of NIshikubo et al. (JP 2005255973).
As to claim 15, Uryu (pg.673) discloses a process of producing a xylofuranose (a monosaccharide) based polyether via ring opening polymerization on oxetane groups using a cationic catalyst, such as boron fluoride ethyl ether complex (Ex.5-6):
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, wherein the conversion rate is 14% or 49% (Table 1).
Uryu is silent on the claimed anionic/binding agent catalyst.
Solving the same problem of producing a polyether (claims, examples) via monomers having plural hydroxyl groups (like Uryu’s xylofuranose) and via ring opening polymerization (15-18, 21) of oxetane groups on monomers using a cationic catalyst, such as boron fluoride ethyl ether complex (Ex.5, the same cationic catalyst of Uryu), NIshikubo discloses using anionic catalyst (15-18), such as t-BuOK/crown ether (18-C-6), for ring opening polymerization would increase the conversion 48%-63% (Ex.5, Table 4, boron fluoride/ethyl ether ) to (Ex.2, Table 2, t-BuOK/crown ether (18-C-6)) 83-98%. Crown ether is a binder agent according to instant pgpub [0024], and t-BuOK is an anionic catalyst according to instant examples.
Therefore, as to claim 15, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have modified the process disclosed by Uryu and replaced the cationic catalyst of boron fluoride ethyl ether with the anionic catalyst of in view of NIshikubo, because the resultant process would yield improved conversion rate.
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.
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/SHANE FANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1766