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
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 07/27/2026 has been entered.
Amendments of Claims 20 to 26 is acknowledged.
The Examiner notes that the Claims were amended to read instead of “A paper packaging product comprising”, they now read “A method of cushioning an object or item packaged with a paper packaging product, comprising: A) providing paper packaging product comprising”; so, the claims now are directed to a method of using the paper packaging product. The Examiner could have issued a “Notice of non-responsive amendment”, but since the claims are basically the same, the cushioning of the object was already disclosed on the previous set of claims, and to advance prosecution, the Examiner will examine the claims as filed this time. This does not mean that further changes on the subject matter of the claims will be treated in the same way.
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 20 to 26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Goodrich (US 5667871) in view of Hickey (US 4832228).
Regarding Claim 20:
Goodrich discloses a paper packaging product comprising:
a first sheet of slit paper having a slit pattern that upon expansion a plurality of slits form a plurality of cells that include land regions that are inclined with respect to a plane of the unexpanded first sheet of slit paper, wherein said plurality of slits extend transverse to a length in a machine direction of said first sheet of slit paper (Column 4, lines 36, 37, Figure 6 shows the slit sheet before expanding and can take the form of a single sheet in a continuous roll, and the parallel rows of slits are transverse to the machine direction of the continuous roll, the sheet is expandable in the direction in which it is unrolled from the continuous roll, thus providing a handling convenience at the time of the wrapping process. Figures 10 and 11 show the expanded material and annotated Figure 11 shows the direction, plane and angle)
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a second sheet of slit paper layered on said first sheet of slit paper, said first sheet and said second sheet being expanded to form a pair of interlocking adjacent expanded sheets of slit packaging material (Column 4, lines 14-27, col. 6, lines 14-34, col. 11, lines 7-18, The roll can be formed of a plurality of layers of sheets, such that upon unrolling, at least a pair of sheets are unrolled together),
said first sheet of slit paper being made from a kraft paper having a weight within a range of 30 to 90 lbs. per 3,000 square feet and said second sheet of slit paper being made from a kraft paper having a weight within a range of 30 to 90 lbs. per 3,000 square feet (Column 2, lines 21 to 32, the sheets are made from preferably, 60 to about 70 pound Kraft paper, made from recycled corrugated cardboard),
said second sheet of slit paper having a slit pattern that upon expansion a plurality of slits form a plurality of cells having land regions that are inclined with respect to the plane of the unexpanded second sheet of slit paper sheet (Since the sheets are similar the second sheet has similar land regions, and angle in reference to the plane) and,
said first sheet land regions of said first sheet to have having an inclination angle in the range from about 50 to 85 degrees in the machine direction along the length of the expanded sheet (Column 3, lines 51 and 52, the angle is most preferable is the range from 50 to 65 degrees).
said paper packaging product cushioning an object or item packaged with said paper packaging product with said first expanded sheet layered on said second expanded sheet and with said second sheet land regions contacting said first sheet land regions (Figure 5 shows an object 42 being packaged and cushioned by multiple layers of the expanded packaging product).
Goodrich does not disclose that the land regions of said plurality of cells of said second sheet of slit paper having a different inclination angle than said inclination angle of said first sheet land regions of said plurality of cells of said first sheet of slit paper,
the first expanded sheet being layered on said second expanded sheet with said second sheet land regions contacting said first sheet land regions such as to adjoin while inhibited nesting due to said inclination angle of said second sheet land regions being different from said inclination angle of said first sheet land regions; and
the paper packaging product cushioning an object or item packaged with said paper packaging product with said first expanded sheet layered on said second expanded sheet and with said second sheet land regions contacting said first sheet land regions such as to adjoin while inhibited nesting due to said inclination angle of said second sheet land regions being different from said inclination angle of said first sheet land regions.
Hickey teaches using for cushioning a similar slit material as Goodrich (Figures 2, 3, 4 show the expanded material and 6 the slit material 23 before expansion in the direction 22), having a first expanded layer 14 that has a right-to-left orientation and second expanded layer 15 has an opposite orientation, that is, left-to-right (Figure 2), to obtain a relatively thick and inexpensive laminate, with layers that are mirror image to each other; this can be seen on a composite image formed of annotated Figure 11 forming a first layer and a mirror image of Figure 11 representing the second layer with the cellular material in the opposite direction;
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As it can be seen, the plurality of slits of the second sheet of slit paper will have having second sheet land regions that have a different inclination angle than said inclination angle of said first sheet land regions of said plurality of slits of said first sheet of slit paper, in particular the inclination angles on the first sheet would be mirror image of the angle, substantially reversed of the second sheet; the inclination angle on the first sheet can be considered “forward” while the angle on the second sheet can be considered “backwards” so the first sheet and the second sheet will have the land regions on a crisscross pattern, so, the crisscross pattern of the first sheet will have the land areas leaning in the forward direction and the crisscross pattern of the second sheet will have the land areas leaning in the backward direction. As can be seen above, when the first and second layer are placed in contact with each other the first and second sheet land regions would interlock with each other but not completely nest on each other since the angles are different.
As shown on the figure bellow, when the first expanded sheet layered on the second expanded sheet that is mirror-image of the first, as for the teachings of Hickey, the second sheet land regions will contact the first sheet land regions such as to adjoin and at the same time inhibiting nesting of one sheet inside the other and forming a “thicker” packaging product due to the inclination angle of the second sheet land regions being different from the inclination angle of the first sheet land regions, the tension of the expended sheets keeping the shape of the cells; the inclination angle of the first sheet land regions and the inclination angle of the second sheet land regions create a crisscross pattern.
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Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to incorporate to Goodrich the teachings of Hickey and for building an efficient and thicker contact packing by minimizing nesting, place unit layers of the cellular material superimposed upon each other in opposing directions producing a mirror-image effect layer by layer, generating land regions on the first sheet of a substantially reversed inclination for the land regions of the second sheet so the sheets are prevented to wholly nest on each other.
Regarding Claims 21 and 22:
As already mentioned above, the inclination angle of the second sheet land regions is substantially reversed, substantially a mirror image, from the inclination angle of the first sheet land regions.
Regarding Claim 23:
Goodrich discloses that the inclination angle of the first sheet land regions is angled forward in said machine direction (Figure 3, lands 20, Column 7, lines 34 to 36).
Regarding Claims 24 to 26:
As already mentioned above, the inclination angle of said first sheet land regions and said inclination angle of said second sheet land regions create a crisscross pattern, the first sheet land regions can be considered leaning in a forward direction and the second sheet land regions leaning in a backward direction.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 07/27/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
The Applicant argues that “the Examiner's acknowledgment regarding Applicant's arguments supporting patentability plainly apply to the present claims”; the argument being in reference to the arguments presented by the Applicant regarding how the material of Talbot and Goodrich are employed, by being manually pulled and expanded and other requirements. The arguments were based not on the material but on subject matter not claimed. The Claims were directed to the paper packaging product, not to how the paper packaging product is actually applied.
The Claims as amended now simply require “providing” the same paper product as on the previous action and “cushioning an object”, same as disclosed for the previous action. Therefore, even though the claim is meant to be a “method of cushioning an object or item packaged with a paper packaging product”, the paper packaging product to be provided stays exactly the same and as discussed, the combination teaches the paper product and the step of cushioning does not really disclose how the cushioning is obtained but simply properties of the two layers of expanded sheets when applied expanded in opposite directions.
In this action the Examiner, and without any admission of error, instead of using the reference Talbot as secondary reference decided instead to use Hickey (US 4832228), that was already mentioned on the previous action and used as secondary reference on the parent case 14/480319. Goodrich discloses the expanded slit sheet material as claimed and Hickey teaches placing layers of the expanded slit material in opposite direction as claimed. The claimed sheet material is already known in the art and a proper rejection could have been made with Hickey as main reference and Goodrich as motivation to use expanded slit sheet material as cushioning for an object.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. In particular Miller (US 4550046), Buhlmann (US 4501707), Fig 15, Hickey (US 4832228), Talbot (US 4105724) and Pasch (US 55002271) could have been used for a proper rejection since all teach having a second slit sheet placed in the opposite direction of the first slit sheet resulting in generating land regions on the first sheet of a substantially reversed inclination for the land regions of the second sheet.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EDUARDO R FERRERO whose telephone number is (571)272-9946. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:30-7:00.
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/EDUARDO R FERRERO/Examiner, Art Unit 3731
/ROBERT F LONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3731
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