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
Claim 25 was withdrawn from consideration in the office action dated 23 September 2025 as being drawn to a non-elected invention (Invention 4, drawn to a photothermal agent). Claim 25 was amended to depend from claim 11 in the applicant’s reply dated 22 January 2026. While claim 11 does correspond to the elected invention (Invention 3, drawn to a method for additive manufacturing), claim 25 is directed to a non-elected species (Species 2, where the photothermal agent is added to the manufacturing feedstock during the additive manufacturing process). Accordingly, claim 25 remains withdrawn from consideration. Note that the election between Species 1 and 2 was made without traverse in the reply filed on 21 August 2025. Also note that the preamble of claim 25 refers to “The photothermal agent of claim 11” rather than “The method of claim 11”.
In the applicant’s reply of 22 January 2026, the applicant argues that claims 16-18 are readable on elected Species 6 and should be examined. Claim 16 is canceled. With respect to claims 17 and 18, regardless of whether they read on elected Species 6, they are directed to non-elected Species 2, where the photothermal agent is added to the manufacturing feedstock during the additive manufacturing process. Accordingly, claims 17 and 18 remain withdrawn from consideration. Also note that claim 15 depends from claim 13, which is canceled.
Response to Amendment
In the applicant’s reply of 22 January 2026, the specification and claims were amended. Based on these amendments, the specification and claim objections included in the previous office action are withdrawn.
Response to Arguments
The applicant’s arguments with respect to the rejections based on Jansson have been fully considered and are persuasive in part (in view of the amendments to claim 11). The process described in connection with Figure 1 of Jansson is not a typical “deposition” process. While the drying step arguably results in the graphene material being deposited onto the iron particles, the rejections based on Jansson have been withdrawn, and a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Zhamu. See below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 29 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 29 recites the limitations “the flakes” and “the particles of the powder construction material” in line 3. There is insufficient antecedent basis for these limitations in the claim. Claim 29 depends from claim 11, which does not specify the form of the construction material or photothermal agent. For purposes of examination, claim 29 is being interpreted as depending from claim 28.
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.
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 11-12, 14, 19, 22, and 26-30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2022/0339697 (“Jansson”) (related to WO 2021/054887, cited in an IDS) in view of US 2017/0225233 (“Zhamu”) (cited in an IDS).
Regarding claim 11, Jansson discloses a method for additive manufacturing ([0001], [0052], [0134]) comprising:
adding a photothermal agent to a construction material ([0058]-[0065], Fig. 1. The particles of iron-based material correspond to the construction material, [0014], [0052]. The coating of graphene-based material corresponds to the photothermal agent, [0014], [0051].), wherein said adding comprises depositing the photothermal agent onto the construction material (In the method of Fig. 1, the graphene-based material is deposited onto the outside of the iron-based particles. See also Figure 2b and [0112].), whereby to produce an additive manufacturing feedstock ([0058] states that the method of Fig. 1 produces “a metal powder suitable for AM”) in which the photothermal agent is in thermally conductive contact with the construction material (Figure 2b, [0112]); and
directing, by an additive manufacturing apparatus, electromagnetic, EM, radiation onto the additive manufacturing feedstock, thereby fusing portions of the additive manufacturing feedstock to form a component (this is an inherent feature of selective laser melting (SLM), as referenced in [0001]-[0003], [0052], [0134]),
wherein:
the additive manufacturing feedstock converts at least a portion of the EM radiation into thermal energy to effectuate the fusing (This would necessarily occur when the laser contacts the graphene-based material in the SLM process, as evidenced by [0008]-[0012] of the applicant’s specification for example. See also MPEP 2112.); and
the photothermal agent comprises chemically modified graphene, CMG (reduced graphene oxide (RGO), [0051], [0108]).
To the extent that the method of Fig. 1 of Jansson is not considered to involve a deposition of the graphene-based material onto the iron-based material, the prior art provides other methods of coating metal-based materials with graphene-based materials, and it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have selected from among these known methods. See MPEP 2143(I)(B) and (E).
For example, Zhamu discloses a method where a mixture of graphite particles 1 and solid carrier particles 2 is delivered into a continuous ball mill 4 to form graphene-coated solid carrier particles (Fig. 5, [0124]). The solid carrier particles 2 can be a metal, such as iron ([0054], [0096]). During the method, graphene sheets are produced from the graphite particles 1 and transferred to the solid carrier particles 2 ([0051]-[0052]). The graphene sheets can be pristine graphene, oxidized graphene with less than 5% oxygen content by weight (i.e., reduced graphene oxide), or chemically modified graphene, for example ([0075], [0115], claim 15).
The method of Zhamu is considered to involve a deposition of the graphene sheets onto the carrier particles. Note, [0055] of Zhamu, which states:
“With the presence of impacting balls, graphene sheets can be peeled off from the source graphite particles and tentatively deposited onto the surfaces of impacting balls. When these graphene sheet-coated impacting balls subsequently impinge upon solid carrier particles, the graphene sheets are transferred to surfaces of carrier particles to produce graphene-coated inorganic particles” (emphasis added).
In other words, the graphene sheets are deposited onto the impacting balls and then deposited from the impacting balls onto the solid carrier particles. This type of deposition is illustrated in Fig. 3 of Zhamu, which relates to a prior art process but only in that the graphene sheets are previously produced ([0089]) rather than being produced in situ as desired by Zhamu ([0051]).
Additionally, note that claims 28 and 29 of the present invention further define the addition/deposition step as involving a mechanical mixing of construction material powder with photothermal agent flakes such that the flakes become embedded in the powder. Zhamu teaches these limitations as discussed above, including embedding of the graphene sheets into the carrier particles ([0055]). See also the rejections of claims 28 and 29 below.
Regarding claim 12, modified Jansson discloses that the CMG comprises reduced graphene oxide, RGO ([0051], [0108] of Jansson).
Regarding claim 14, modified Jansson discloses performing said adding prior to introducing the additive manufacturing feedstock into the additive manufacturing apparatus ([0058]-[0065], Fig. 1 of Jansson. [0085] of Zhamu: “The mass of graphene-coated or graphene-embedded inorganic particles can be fed into… a selective laser sintering apparatus to make a graphene-reinforced inorganic composite part.”).
Regarding claim 19, modified Jansson discloses that said directing EM radiation comprises directing EM radiation from at least one laser (as part of the SLM process of Jansson, [0001]-[0003], [0052], [0134]).
Regarding claim 22, modified Jansson discloses that the additive manufacturing feedstock has a form factor of one of a powder, a rod, and a sheet (Powder. [0012], [0058]-[0065] of Jansson. [0073], [0122] of Zhamu.).
Regarding claims 26 and 27, modified Jansson discloses that directing the EM radiation onto the additive manufacturing feedstock comprises selectively directing the EM radiation onto the portions of the additive manufacturing feedstock, wherein the EM radiation is selectively directed towards the additive manufacturing feedstock according to an input design (as discussed above, Jansson relates to selective laser melting (SLM), and these are inherent features of an SLM process).
Regarding claim 28, modified Jansson discloses:
providing the construction material as a powder ([0073], [0122], [0137] of Zhamu); and
providing the photothermal agent as a powder or a plurality of flakes ([0123], [0137] of Zhamu),
wherein depositing the photothermal agent onto the construction material comprises dispersing the powder or the plurality of flakes of the photothermal agent amongst the powder of the construction material ([0124], Fig. 5, [0137] of Zhamu).
Regarding claim 29, modified Jansson discloses that the adding further comprises mechanically mixing the photothermal agent with the construction material ([0124], Fig. 5, [0137] of Zhamu) such that fragments of the flakes become embedded in the particles of the powder construction material ([0055] of Zhamu: “graphene sheets may be embedded into the carrier particles”), wherein the mechanically mixing is carried out in dry conditions (the process described in [0137] of Zhamu does not use any liquids).
Regarding claim 30, modified Jansson discloses that the additive manufacturing feedstock produced by the adding comprises particles of powder ([0073], [0122] of Zhamu) in which the photothermal agent is arranged irregularly around a corresponding particle of construction material (this would necessarily occur during the process corresponding to [0124], Fig. 5 of Zhamu, particularly in cases where the graphene sheets end up embedded in the carrier particles, as noted in [0055]).
Claims 20-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jansson in view of Zhamu, as applied to claim 19 above, and further in view of US 2017/0129009 (“Jagdale”) (cited in an IDS).
Regarding claims 20 and 21, as discussed above, Jansson discloses using the composite powder in an SLM process. However, Jansson does not disclose any details of this process, such as the wavelength of the laser.
Jagdale is directed to an additive manufacturing method where metal powder is fused by a laser ([0002]-[0008], [0020]-[0021]). In addition to the metal powder, an absorptive material is included to improve laser absorption ([0022]-[0024]). The absorptive material can be graphene ([0027]). The laser can have a wavelength of 1064 nanometers (i.e., 1.064 micrometers), which is described as the “predominant wavelength used in commercial production laser additive manufacturing machines” ([0024]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have used a laser with a wavelength of 1064 nm for performing the SLM process described in Jansson since Jagdale discloses that this is the predominant wavelength used in commercial laser-based additive manufacturing and also specifically discloses that this wavelength is suitable when fusing a powder containing metal and graphene, as in Jansson.
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to John DeRusso whose telephone number is (571)270-1287. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday, 10:00 AM-6:00 PM ET.
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/John J DeRusso/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1744