DETAILED ACTION
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.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim 1, 2, and 4-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Yoon et al. (US 2023/0071674; relying on foreign priority date of March 23, 2020).
Example 25 in Table 6 of Yoon et al. discloses a superabsorbent polymer film prepared from a monomer composition comprising acrylic acid (70 mole % neutralized with KOH), an internal crosslinking agent, 0.85 parts by weight of hydroxyethyl cellulose thickener, 40 parts by weight of glycerin as moisturizing agent, a polymerization initiator, 2 parts by weight of CaCO3 polyvalent metal salt, and solvent. The monomer composition without the polyvalent metal salt has a viscosity of 902 mPa-s at 25 ºC (paragraph [0259]), and it is reasonable to expect the monomer composition containing a minor quantity of polyvalent metal salt to exhibit comparable viscosity. A film is prepared by coating a substrate with the monomer composition, irradiating the monomer composition with UV light while drawing the monomer composition with tension of 60 N/m, thus conducting polymerization at 30 ºC to 80ºC to form a hydrogel polymer film, then drying the hydrogel polymer film at 9ºC to obtain a superabsorbent polymer film (paragraphs [0256]-[0258] and [0260]-[0262]). Data in Table 7 reveals that the superabsorbent polymer film has an initial absorption rate of 68 s, a centrifuge retention capacity (CRC) of 24.7 g/g, and extractables content (EC) of 4.4 %.
Claim 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Nasution et al. (Proceedings of 1st International Conference on Chemical Science and Technology Innovation, 1 January 2019, p 166-120).
Nasution et al. teaches a superabsorbent polymer film prepared from sodium carboxymethyl cellulose and 0.7 wt % of Al2(SO4)3•8H2O; see Section 2.2.2.
Claim 3 is objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims. Yoon et al. (US 2023/0071674) does not teach use of the aluminum-containing polyvalent metal salts recited in claim 3.
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/RIP A LEE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1762 March 31, 2026