DETAILED ACTION
The following Office action concerns Patent Application Number 18/094,145. Claims 1-20 are pending in the application.
Claims 10-20 have been withdrawn from consideration as being drawn to non-elected inventions.
The applicant’s amendment filed October 17, 2025 has been entered.
Election/Restrictions
A restriction requirement was sent to the Applicant on August 20, 2025. The Applicant was required to elect among several groups of inventions. The Applicant responded to the restriction requirement on October 17, 2025 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 Accordingly, claims 10-20 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to non-elected inventions.
Claim Objections
Claim 6 is objected to because it does not end with a period. Correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC §§ 102 and 103
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. § 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
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 1-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by, or, alternatively, under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over Ho et al (US 2023/0187639).
Ho et al teaches battery electroactive particles having a coating (par. 10). The coating includes cerium oxide (par. 73). Cerium oxide is the claimed oxygen storage material.
Regarding claims 3 and 4, the coating further comprises iron oxide (par. 73). Iron oxide contains the iron cation. Iron oxide is reasonably expected to form a solid solution with the cerium oxide since the materials are combined in the coating and iron oxide is inherently capable of forming a solid solution with cerium oxide.
Ho et al is silent with respect to the lithium diffusion coefficient. However, the teachings of Ho et al have anticipated or rendered obvious the instantly claimed electroactive material. Therefore, it is reasonable that a person of ordinary skill in the art would expect the claimed lithium diffusion coefficient to naturally arise.
Regarding claims 5-8, the cerium oxide coating is not required for all particles. It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to include particles had a different coating than cerium oxide (par. 71). The optimum amount of cerium oxide coated particles would have been determined by routine experimentation. In addition, a mixing amount of 10 % is well known in the art. Furthermore, a surface coverage of less than 90 % is obvious and expected as being a failure to achieve 100 % coverage on every particle. The electroactive material includes LiNiO2, which satisfies the formula in claim 6 (par. 67).
Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Ho et al in view of LI et al (2014/0087254).
Ho et al teaches battery electroactive particles having a coating as described above. Ho et al does not teach that the coating has a thickness of 2-200 nm.
However, LI et al teaches a cathode active material having a coating layer (abstract). The coating has a thickness of 2-20 nm (par. 30). It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine the coating thickness of LI et al with the active material particles of Ho et al in order to obtain active material particles having a known effective coating thickness.
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 December 8, 2025