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
Claims 5-7 remain withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected invention. Claims 1-3 were previously presented and claims 8-11 are newly presented. Claims 1-3 and 8-11 are being examined in this office action.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The previous rejection of claim 3 has been withdrawn in view of the applicant’s amendment to the claim.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.
Claim(s) 1-3, 8, 9, and 11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as anticipated by JP 2016-18703 (hereafter “JP ‘703”) in view of Czaplicki et al (US 2014/0030624).
With respect to claim 1, JP ‘703 discloses a sealing member between a cathode separator 5 and an anode separator 6 which are adhered together and a space therebetween (fig. 1 and par. 0018). The cathode and anode separator being provided for a power generating unit (i.e. fuel cell). The sealing member comprises a base material 22 with an adhesive layer 9 arranged on one face of the base material (both faces) wherein the 91 portion of the adhesive layer is a foamed material (par. 0025) which inherently contains many bubbles in an adhered state.
JP ‘703 disclosed adhesive layers but did not disclose the peel strength of those adhesive layers. Czaplicki sets forth analogous fuel cell structure and taught the use of adhesives that exceeded 0.2 N/mm (par. 0038). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the filing to utilize an adhesive with a peel strength exceeding 0.2 N/mm as taught by Czaplicki for the sealing member of JP ‘703 in order to get a strong enough seal to hold the fuel cell together.
With respect to claim 2, JP ‘703 suggests that the foamed material 91 has an expansion ratio of 2 to 25 times and that the amount of foamed rubber 91 to adhesive component 92 is one-half to one-fifth (par. 0034). These ranges suggested by the reference would appear to overlap the broadly defined ranges of claim 2. For example, if JP ‘703 relied on a 2:1 expansion ratio, that would suggest that portion 91 of the seal is 50% bubbles. If twice as much adhesive component 92 were used than 91 (consistent with the set forth Hm to Hs ratios) and we assumed adhesive 91 had minimal initial bubbles , that would mean seal member would be 50%/3 or 17% bubbles, thereby meeting the claim limitation.
With respect to claim 3, JP ‘703 further discloses a membrane electrode assembly (24, 21, 25) and the adhesive layer 9 holds this assembly between the anode and cathode separators. Moreover, this sealing structure is outside of the electrode areas (fig. 1) and would hence be outside of an arbitrary circumferential port of the membrane electrode assembly. Furthermore, this adhesive layer of 91 and 92 is cross-linked to the separators (par. 0036) and are thereby adhered thereto.
With respect to claim 8, fig. 5 or 6 of JP ‘703 show that the adhesive can be applied to either face (5(6)) of the anode or cathode separator which then adheres to base material 22. Hence base material 22 is provided with the adhesive layer giving the claim language its broadest reasonable interpretation.
With respect to claim 9, Czaplicki adhesives can include well known modified polyolefins such as EPDM (par. 0030).
With respect to claim 11, the claim is drawn to an apparatus having bubbles, which JP ‘703 and Czaplicki render obvious, and the method of making the apparatus does not further define the actual apparatus. See MPEP 2113 (“Product-by-process claims are not limited to the manipulations of the recited steps, only the structure implied by the steps”).
Claim(s) 1, 3, 8, 9, and 11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shizuku et al (US 2017/0358806) in view of Czaplicki as evidenced by JP 2009-110822 (hereafter “JP ‘822”) or JP 2005-332738 (hereafter “JP ‘738”).
With respect to claim 1, Shizuku discloses a sealing member 300 arranged between a cathode and anode separator (210, 220) where with the sealing member, the cathode and anode separators being adhered and a space therebetween being sealed (fig. 2 and par. 0016-0020). The cathode and anode separators are being provided for a power generating unit (fuel cell). The sealing member comprising a base material 310 and an adhesive layer 320 arranged on at least one face of the base material (fig. 2, par. 0018).
Shizuku does not explicitly disclose that the adhesive layer contains many bubbles. However, this limitation would read on any non-vanishing content of bubbles that might reside in the adhesive regardless of whether the bubbles were actively sought. JP ‘822 teaches an inspection technique and found that it is conventional for seal portions to contain bubbles in it that originate from the adhesive application (par. 0022-0026). JP ‘738 similar disclosed that conventional adhesive applications can suffer from bubbles or fine pore being retained in the adhesive and sought to take steps to minimize their occurrence (abstract). Hence, both these references suggest that small numbers of bubbles can result from conventional adhesive applications in the art. It is noted the conclusion of these two references is consistent with the present invention where taking no particular adhesive application precautions seem to result in an adhesive starting with 5% bubble content (p. 15, l. 11).
Because Shizuku is presumably drawn to conventional means for applying adhesive and/or it would have been obvious for Shizuku to rely on conventional adhesive application means, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the filing that some conventional constructions of Shizuku would have had at least small amounts of bubbles remaining in its adhesive as evidenced by JP ‘822 and JP ‘738. Even small levels of bubble retention would constitute “many bubbles” giving the claim language its broadest reasonable interpretation.
Shizuku disclosed adhesive layers but did not disclose the peel strength of those adhesive layers. Czaplicki sets forth analogous fuel cell structure and taught the use of adhesives that exceeded 0.2 N/mm (par. 0038). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the filing to utilize an adhesive with a peel strength exceeding 0.2 N/mm as taught by Czaplicki for the sealing member of Shizuku in order to get a strong enough seal to hold the fuel cell together.
With respect to claim 3, this sealing structure of Shizuku is for holding a membrane assembly structure (111, 112, 114) between the anode and cathode separators and is outside of a circumferential part of the assembly (fig. 2 and par. 0017). Each adhesive layer 320 adheres to one of the cathode or anode separators.
With respect to claim 8, both sides of the base layer 310 is provided with the adhesive 320 (fig. 2).
With respect to claim 9, Czaplicki adhesives can include well known modified polyolefins such as EPDM (par. 0030).
With respect to claim 11, the claim is drawn to an apparatus having bubbles, which Shizuku and Czaplicki render obvious, and the method of making the apparatus does not further define the actual apparatus. See MPEP 2113 (“Product-by-process claims are not limited to the manipulations of the recited steps, only the structure implied by the steps”).
Claim(s) 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over either JP ‘703 or Shizuku in view of Czaplicki as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of DE 199 60 516 (DE ‘516). DE ‘516 is being cited and relied on for the first time with this office action. Its use here was necessitated by new claim 10.
With respect to claim 10, JP ‘703 or Shizuku in view of Czaplicki set forth all the limitations of the claim, but did not explicitly recite when the adhesive is applied to either the anode or cathode separator, depressions or projections on the separator correspond to depressions or projections on the adhesive layer. This appears to corresponds to fig. 4 and the associated discussion of the present invention, which is basically analogous to either the anode or cathode separator having some non-vanishing surface roughness that the adhesive fills in for separator depressions and surrounds for projection. This is well known in the art as discussed by DE ‘516 where it states that separators 30, 40 have an inherent surface roughness and the elastic seal material (equivalent to the polymeric and initially liquid seals of either JP ‘703 or Shizuku) should ‘absorb’ the surface roughness. See par. 0046. Hence DE ‘516 evidences that any separators, including the separators of JP ‘703 or Shizuku, have inherent surface roughness (i.e. any material short of mirror polishing has non-vanishing surface roughness and surface roughness is equivalent to depressions and projections from the average material thickness) and any seal between them should absorb the surface roughness to provide the best possible gas seal.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the filing to utilize the teaching of DE ‘516 and ensure that the seal material is suitably elastic for either JP ‘703 or Shizuku in view of Czaplicki to get the best possible seal between the base material and separator.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 11/13/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. With respect to the previous rejection of claim 4 (limitations now incorporated into claim 1), applicant urges that Czaplicki relies on sealing process that is different from that of the present invention. In particular Czaplicki utilizes an electrostatic precursor layer forming a temporary bond to the stainless steel and the plurality of stainless steel sheets are thereby laminated by the precursor laminated film.
It is unclear how this is substantially different from the present invention. Both techniques rely on depositing the adhesive between the materials being bonded. The fact that Czaplicki relied on an electrostatic deposition scheme does not appear to be germane as the claims as presented as the claims do not exclude the use of any particular deposition schemes. Using claim 1 as an example, all applicant has specified is an adhesive layer is arranged on a base material with many bubbles. There is no reason on record to suggest that the electrostatic deposition of Czaplicki is inconsistent with that.
Moreover, if the electrostatic deposition of Czaplicki was a sharp distinction from that of the present invention, the fact that Czaplicki was able to get high adhesion, and assuming the electrostatic deposition was important to achieving that high adhesion, then one of ordinary skill in the art would still have looked to the teaching of Czaplicki in order to get the high levels of adhesion.
Applicant urges similar arguments concerning JP ‘703 or Shizuku in view of Czaplicki, in particular that JP ‘703 or Shizuku relied on two or multi-layer structures. This point is not entirely understood as applicant did not further elaborate nor provide any citations where these references teach away.
For Shizuku, it is presumed the applicant is referring to its sealing member being a “triple-layer” (par. 0018). However, this triple-layer structure has individual adhesive layers 320 and the rejection of Shizuku in view of Czaplicki was for potentially replacing the adhesives used for that in view of Czaplicki. The rejection was not a replacement of the triple-layer structure, but rather the utility of potentially alternate adhesives in order to arrive at the claimed peel strength.
For JP ‘703, it taught the use of a foaming material 91 and an adhesive 92 together forming a seal. Like with Shizuku above, the rejection was not a replace of this entire seal structure, but rather the obviousness of utilizing other adhesives to maximize the seal strength.
At a fundamental level, Czaplicki established a) that the peel strength between fuel cell layers was both a result effective variable and the claimed levels of strength were already known in the prior art, and b) disclosed choices of adhesives and means for delivering those adhesives that made those peel strengths possible.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/KAJ K OLSEN/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 1714