DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
Claims 1, 4, 6, 9, 11, 14, 16, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Shakuto et al (US Patent 7,123,872 B2).
With regard to claim 1: Shakuto discloses a cleaning member in the embodiment of Figure 10 (which incorporates structure from Figures 3-9), the cleaning member comprising an elastic contact plate 21 (see column 11 lines 20-30) which includes a distal end surface (at end 21a) with a corner portion to be brought into contact with a cleaning target surface (the contact arrangement between the cleaning member and image carrier 11 is shown in Figure 3, the arrangement results in the corner on the lower right of Figure 10 making contact with the image carrier) and a support plate 22 which is bonded to the elastic contact plate from a back surface side of the elastic contact plate (the side or 21 opposite the image carrier facing side is shown as being connected to the support, see column 11 lines 39-41 disclosing bonding of the contact plate to the support plate), with the support plate being disclosed as being more rigid than the elastic contact plate (see column 11 lines 42-44 disclosing that the support plate is stiffer than the elastic contact plate), with the distal end of the elastic contact plate being configured to project from a distal end surface 22c of the support plate (by a distance h shown in Figure 10, see column 14 line 65 through column 15 line 11 discussing projection of the elastic contact plate past the end of the support plate).
With regard to claims 6, 11, 16, and 19: The cleaning member of Shakuto is disclosed as being part of a cleaning device 16 which cleans a moving toner-carrying cleaning target surface (the surface of the image carrier 11) by scraping the toner off with the cleaning member (see column 10 line 58 through column 11 line 10 describing the toner removal). This cleaning device is provided with a holding member 24 that holding the cleaning member, and is additionally configured to be part of a removable unit (as part of a process cartridge, see column 19 line 57 through column 20 line 4, particularly note that per column 20 lines 40-49 that the cleaning member of the process cartridge is the same as that described in the first embodiments). This removable cleaning device is used as part of an image forming apparatus 70 (shown in Figure 51) which forms a toner image on a recording medium (sheets of paper, see column 58 line 54 through column 59 line 3).
With regard to claim 4: Shakuto discloses forming the support plate of materials which have significantly higher Young’s Modulus than the materials disclosed as being used for the elastic contact plate. Specifically the support is noted as being formed of “mild steel” and “SUS” (which a person in the art would readily recognize from the context as an abbreviation for “Steel Use Stainless”, a class of stainless steel alloys defined by Japanese Industrial Standards) while the elastic contact plate makes use of polyurethane rubber. While the exact values for Young’s modulus for each of these materials varies somewhat according to material composition, the typical moduli for mild and stainless steels are roughly four orders of magnitude larger than those of polyurethane rubbers (approximately 200GPa vs approximately 10MPa). This difference is much larger than any compositional variation, making it reasonable to conclude that the example cleaning member of Shakuto anticipates the claimed configuration despite Shakuto not explicitly disclosing precise values.
With regard to claims 9 and 14: The cleaning member of Shakuto is disclosed as being part of a cleaning device 16 which cleans a moving toner-carrying cleaning target surface (the surface of the image carrier 11) by scraping the toner off with the cleaning member (see column 10 line 58 through column 11 line 10 describing the toner removal). This cleaning device is provided with a holding member 24 that holding the cleaning member, and is additionally configured to be part of a removable unit (as part of a process cartridge, see column 19 line 57 through column 20 line 4, particularly note that per column 20 lines 40-49 that the cleaning member of the process cartridge is the same as that described in the first embodiments).
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 2-3, 7-8, 12-13, and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shakuto.
With regard to claim 2: Shakuto does not disclose an example in which the distal end surface of the elastic contact plate is arranged to be less than a plate thickness of the elastic contact plate.
Shakuto however does mention that the amount of protrusion is important, and that longer protrusion amounts result in reduced performance by preventing conduction of vibrations from the support member (which is vibrated by a piezoelectric element) to the point of contact between the elastic element and the object to be cleaned. To prevent this from occurring Shakuto indicates that experimental results have indicated that the amount of protrusion should be “a value of twice or less of the blade thickness” for a particular combination of JIS hardness and acceptable attenuation, see column 15 lines 4-37. This teaching is noteworthy because it indicates that the amount of protrusion is known to affect the cleaning ability of the device of Shakuto (by attenuating the amount of vibration transmitted to the blade edge), that less protrusion is preferable over (since more protrusion causes more attenuation and the range of acceptable protrusion amounts includes “or less”), and that the allowable amount of protrusion is also dependent upon the composition of the elastic contact plate. Additionally the toner being cleaned has an impact upon the required amount of vibration as noted in column 15 line 61 through column 16 line 4, and would be expected to influence the amount of allowable attenuation before cleaning failure occurs.
These teachings point to the amount of protrusion being a recognized result effective variable which can be adjusted to ensure that a sufficient amount of vibration can be transmitted to the cleaning contact point, with Shakuto indicating more towards lower amounts of protrusion. A person having ordinary skill in the art before the time of filing would have found the claimed range of protrusion (the thickness of the elastic contact plate or less) obvious as a matter of routine optimization of this variable within the range identified by Shakuto to ensure that a particular combination of vibration device and elastic contact plate composition results in sufficient amount of vibration at the contact point to reliably remove a particular toner size used within a printer for which the cleaning device is intended to be used as a part.
With regard to claims 7, 12, and 17: The cleaning member of Shakuto is disclosed as being part of a cleaning device 16 which cleans a moving toner-carrying cleaning target surface (the surface of the image carrier 11) by scraping the toner off with the cleaning member (see column 10 line 58 through column 11 line 10 describing the toner removal). This cleaning device is provided with a holding member 24 that holding the cleaning member, and is additionally configured to be part of a removable unit (as part of a process cartridge, see column 19 line 57 through column 20 line 4, particularly note that per column 20 lines 40-49 that the cleaning member of the process cartridge is the same as that described in the first embodiments). This removable cleaning device is used as part of an image forming apparatus 70 (shown in Figure 51) which forms a toner image on a recording medium (sheets of paper, see column 58 line 54 through column 59 line 3).
With regard to claim 3: Shakuto discloses that the plate thickness of the elastic contact plate (disclosed as preferably 100-500micrometers, or 0.1-0.5mm, see column 11 lines 22-23, but later noted as being 100-300 micrometers, or 0.1-0.3mm per column 14 lines 27-31) is less than the thickness of the support plate (two allowable thickness ranges for the support plate are noted in column 12 lines 46-49: 0.2-0.4mm for a metal support plate and 0.3mm-1.0mm for a resin support plate)
With regard to claims 8 and 13: The cleaning member of Shakuto is disclosed as being part of a cleaning device 16 which cleans a moving toner-carrying cleaning target surface (the surface of the image carrier 11) by scraping the toner off with the cleaning member (see column 10 line 58 through column 11 line 10 describing the toner removal). This cleaning device is provided with a holding member 24 that holding the cleaning member, and is additionally configured to be part of a removable unit (as part of a process cartridge, see column 19 line 57 through column 20 line 4, particularly note that per column 20 lines 40-49 that the cleaning member of the process cartridge is the same as that described in the first embodiments).
Claims 5, 10, and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shakuto in view of Watanabe et al (US Patent 10,908,553 B1).
With regard to claim 5: Shakuto does not disclose or teach a configuration in which an amount of projection of the distal end surface of the elastic contact plate at two end portions in the longitudinal direction is less than an amount of projection of the distal end surface at other portions.
Watanabe teaches that providing extensions of a support plate which extend further along a projecting elastic plate cleaning member at the longitudinal ends of a cleaning member (reducing the amount of projection of the elastic plate cleaning member at the longitudinal ends, see Figure 5A with extension portions 833A-B in contrast to Figure 4) reduces the likelihood that the ends of the blade will curl and fail to clean the cleaning target (see column 6 lines 30-45).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the time of filing to have configured the blade support plate of Shakuto to have extension portions at the longitudinal ends in order to reduce the occurrence of blade curling. Such an arrangement results in a structure where the amount of projection of the elastic blade member at the longitudinal ends is less than an amount at other, more central, portions of the assembly.
With regard to claims 10 and 15: The cleaning member of Shakuto is disclosed as being part of a cleaning device 16 which cleans a moving toner-carrying cleaning target surface (the surface of the image carrier 11) by scraping the toner off with the cleaning member (see column 10 line 58 through column 11 line 10 describing the toner removal). This cleaning device is provided with a holding member 24 that holding the cleaning member, and is additionally configured to be part of a removable unit (as part of a process cartridge, see column 19 line 57 through column 20 line 4, particularly note that per column 20 lines 40-49 that the cleaning member of the process cartridge is the same as that described in the first embodiments).
Claims 18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shakuto as applied to claims 6 and 19 above in view of Watanabe et al (US Patent 10,908,553 B1) and Mochizuki et al (US PGPub 2007/0201898 A1).
With regard to claims 18 and 20: Shakuto does not disclose or teach a configuration in which an amount of projection of the distal end surface of the elastic contact plate at two end portions in the longitudinal direction on an outer side of an effective image holding region of the image holding member is less than an amount of projection of the distal end surface at other portions which correspond to the effective image holding region.
Watanabe teaches that providing extensions of a support plate which extend further along a projecting elastic plate cleaning member at the longitudinal ends of a cleaning member (reducing the amount of projection of the elastic plate cleaning member at the longitudinal ends, see Figure 5A with extension portions 833A-B in contrast to Figure 4) reduces the likelihood that the ends of the blade will curl and fail to clean the cleaning target (see column 6 lines 30-45).
Mochizuki teaches that a cleaning member for a photosensitive image carrier should have ends which are positioned outside of the maximum image forming width, since the cleaning member needs to collect toner from the imaging region and toner which has scattered into the non-imaging region (see ¶0017, 0044, and ¶0053-0056). Mochizuki notes that the regions outside of the imaging region are more prone to defective cleaning.
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the time of filing to have configured the blade support plate of Shakuto to have extension portions at the longitudinal ends outside of the image forming region of the image holder in order to reduce the occurrence of blade curling and cleaning defects in a region known to be prone to defective cleaning. Such an arrangement results in a structure where the amount of projection of the elastic blade member at the longitudinal ends which correspond to the non-image area is less than an amount at other, more central, portions of the assembly.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Leon W Rhodes Jr whose telephone number is (571)270-5774. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00AM - 6:00PM.
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/LEON W RHODES, JR/Examiner, Art Unit 2852