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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 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.
Claim(s) 10-12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the article “Colorful Photonic Pigments Prepared by Using Sag Black and White Materials” published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering by Sakai et al. (hereinafter Sakai) submitted in the IDS filed on 04/26/2023.
With respect to claim 10, Sakai teaches silica fine particles having a coating of a complex of iron and tannic acid referred to as Fe-TA to obtain pigments having various colors (see Introduction, Results and Discussion, pages 14933-14934). Sakai teaches by adjusting the thickness and amount of Fe-TA, which has a black color, the vividness of the color, and the color, of the pigment can be controlled (see pages 14934-14936). Furthermore, Sakai teaches the thickness and the amount of the Fe-TA, which is coated onto the silica fine core particles, is adjusted by the number of the repetition of the process to apply Fe-TA on the core (see Results and Discussion, pages 14934-14936). Moreover, Sakai teaches one of the reasons of applying Fe-TA coating, which is in black color, is that it has shown the black substance absorbs light in the whole visible light region, and thus, the influence of the noncoherent scattering can be suppressed (page 14934, left column) as a result, such products exhibits vivid colors, and that this coloring phenomenon has been referred to as “structural color” or “photonic color” (see page 14934, left column).
In addition, Sakai teaches a method of applying a black film formed of TA and Fe3+ to silica fine particles in which a water suspension of silica fine particles was irradiated with ultrasonic waves to product a uniformly dispersed suspension of silica fine particles and mixed with an aqueous solution of FeCl3 (see Methods, page 14939).
The reference, also, teaches applying Fe-TA on a glass plate, and in that process, Sakai teaches adjusting the pH using aqueous NaOH (see page 14934, right column). Therefore, even though the reference may not require the use of aqueous NaOH in the process of applying the same material, i.e. Fe-TA, onto silica fine particles, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to have recognized aqueous NaOH could also be used in adjusting the pH of the process of the application of Fe-TA onto silica fine particles motivated by the fact that Sakai teaches the use of NaOH, which is a basic compound, and the coating material in both processes is the same, i.e. Fe-TA, and the substrate materials are not too different because one is glass, which is known to comprise silica, and the other is silica fine particles.
Additionally, Sakai teaches the step of washing the coated material, including the coated fine silica particles (see page 14939 and Figure 2).
Considering the fact that according to Sakai, the coating and its thickness determine the color of the coated silica particles, inevitably the particle diameter of fine silica particles correspond to a wavelength of the structural color.
Moreover, Sakai is taken to read on having “uniform particle diameter” for the core silica particles especially in light of the fact that Figure 4 shows systems, each of which has one particular diameter. According to Figure 4, one system has a particle size of 200 nm, another a particle size of 250 nm, and yet another has a particle size of 300 nm; the reference does not disclose a range of particle sizes for each system but that the reference discloses one particular diameter for each system.
With respect to claim 11, Sakai teaches a mixing ratio of FeCl3 to TA of from 0.77 to 3.1 (see page 14934, right column). Although Sakai may not literally disclose a ratio of the number of moles of the Fe to the number of moles of the core particle to be 5.41x10-4 or more or a ratio of the number of moles of the tannic acid to the number of moles of the core particles to be 3.61x10-4 or more, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have the claimed ratios in, at least, some overlapping ranges motivated by the fact the amount of iron can be as high as more than three times the amount of tannic acid; this is in light of the fact that the claimed ratio of Fe to the core is higher than claimed the ratio of the tannic acid to the core. Also, the claimed ratios recite 5.41x10-4 “or more” and 3.61x10-4 “or more”.
With respect to claim 12, as noted above, Sakai clearly teaches repeating the Fe-TA coating operation and the fact that the color of the coated core particles is adjusted by adjusting the thickness of the Fe-TA coating (see page 14934, both left and right columns).
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/PEGAH PARVINI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1731