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
Response to Arguments
Applicants arguments and amendments, filed on 8/27/26, have been fully considered but they do not confer patentability on all the instantly filed claims. Applicants have incorporated the allowable subject matter of claim 4 and its intervening claim 3 (with claims 3 and 4 being canceled). By doing so, the obviousness type prior art rejection to Mitsui et al. (US 2012/0025179) has been withdrawn. The objection to claim 13 has been withdrawn via amendment. Applicants have amended independent claim 9 to include the limitation that at least two selected from among n11, n21, and 31 are each 1, and at least one of X1, X2, and X3 is O or S. This amendment overcomes the anticipatory prior art rejections to Mitsui et al. (US 2012/0025179), Ammasi et al. (Struct. Chem. 2018, 6(18), 5012-5017), and Fisher et al. (US Pat. 3,855,215). The compounds taught by Mitsui et al. and Fisher et al. have one of n11, n21, and n31 equal to 1. The compounds taught by Ammasi et al. does not include one of X1, X2, and X3 equal to O or S. Further search has led to a new prior art rejection as described below. A new claim objection also appears below.
Claim Objections
Claim 9 is objected to. The limitation “and at least one occurring one selected from among X1, X2, and X3 is O or S” is confusing and should be amended to “and at least one of X1, X2, and X3 is O or S” for better clarity.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 9, 12, 13, 17, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Breimaier et al. (Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2021, 4690-4700). The accepted manuscript of Breimaier et al. was available online as of 7/26/21 and qualifies as prior art under 102(a)(1).
Claims 9 and 12: Breimaier et al. teaches donor-acceptor dyads composed of a polychlorotriphenylmethyl radical (PTM*) as the acceptor and 2,2’:6’,2’’:6”,6-trioxytriphenylamine (TOTA) as the donor. The TOTA-PTM* dyad has the structure as shown in Scheme 2 and anticipates Formula 1 of claim 9. As applied to Formula 1, compound TOTA-PTM* has n11, n21, and n31 equal to 1, X1, X2, and X3 equal to O, n12, n22, and n32 equal to zero, n41 equal to 1, R41 and R42 equal to hydrogen atoms, and Q equal to an electron-withdrawing group PTM* (the polychlorotriphenylmethyl radical). The TOTA-PTM* dyad also satisfies claim 12 as all of n11, n21, and n31 are equal to 1.
Claim 13: The TOTA-PTM* dyad as taught by Breimaier et al. also anticipates Formula 1A of claim 13 with R1a, R1c, R2a-R2c, and R3a-R3c equal to hydrogen, and all other variable assignments being described above.
Claim 17: The TOTA-PTM* dyad as taught by Breimaier et al. has n41 equal to 1, thereby anticipating claim 17.
Claim 18: In the TOTA-PTM* dyad as taught by Breimaier et al., all R1-R3 are equal to hydrogen atoms, thereby anticipating claim 18.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1 and 5-8 are allowed. Claims 10, 14, 15, 19, and 20 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims. The structural features required by claim 10 (which includes claims 14 and 15) is not taught or suggested in the prior art. Additionally, it cannot be stated with any degree of certainty whether the TOTA-PTM* dyad taught by Breimaier et al. satisfies Applicants HOMO and LUMO energy requirements of claim 19. Last, the compounds of claim 20 are novel and unobvious over the prior art.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ROBERT S LOEWE whose telephone number is (571)270-3298. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday from 8 AM to 5 PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Randy Gulakowski, can be reached at telephone number 571-272-1302. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Robert S Loewe/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1766
