DETAILED ACTION
Notice to Applicant
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
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.
Claims 1-6 are pending.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
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 1, 3, 4, and 6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Saitoh et al. US Patent 5,204,653.
As per claims 1, 3, 4, and 6, Saitoh et al. discloses in Figs. 8 and 9a a magnetic device (Col. 1 lines 8-11, electromagnetic induction device) comprising a magnetic core (e.g. split-type core assembly 50) comprising:
as per claim 1, a first core (e.g. top split core segment 51) including a first opposing surface (e.g. split end face 54 of the top split core segment 51); and a second core (e.g. bottom split core segment 51) including a second opposing surface (e.g. split end face 54 of the bottom split core segment 51), wherein the first opposing surface and the second opposing surface are aligned so as to form at least a part of a closed magnetic circuit (Fig. 9a; The split end faces 54 contact one another to form closed assembly 50.) consisting of the first core and the second core, the first opposing surface and/or the second opposing surface has an arithmetic mean roughness Ra (Col. 8 lines 58-62; The split end face 54 of each of the segments 51 has a surface roughness varying from 20 µm to 100 µm.); and
as per claim 3, wherein a gap (related Fig. 2 and Col. 10 lines 9-20, gap G) is formed between the first opposing surface and the second opposing surface.
However, Saitoh et al. does not disclose the arithmetic mean roughness Ra being 7 µm or more and less than 65 µm.
Saitoh et al. further discloses that the surface roughness varies from 20 µm to 100 µm (Col. 8 lines 58-62 of Saitoh et al.). Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have designed the faces of each of the segments 51 within the core assembly of Saitoh et al. to have had any known surface roughness between 20 µm to 100 µm, such as for example a surface roughness of 20 µm, as being a well-known obvious design consideration of yielding expected results based on the exemplary teachings of Saitoh et al.
As an obvious consequence of the modification, the combination would have necessarily included: as per claim 1, the arithmetic mean roughness Ra being 7 µm or more and less than 65 µm (i.e. 20 µm which is between 7 and 65 µm); and as per claim 4, wherein the gap is larger than the arithmetic mean roughness Ra of the first opposing surface and/or the second opposing surface (Col. 4 lines 47-52 of Saitoh et al.; Particles 10 fill gaps G, where particles 10 have a size 30 µm which is larger than 20 µm surface roughness.).
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Saitoh et al. US Patent 5,204,653 in view of Nakahata et al. US 2021/0005364.
As per claim 2, Saitoh et al. discloses the magnetic core according to claim 1, but does not disclose wherein the first core and/or the second core comprises laminated soft magnetic alloy layers.
Saitoh et al. further discloses in Col. 1 lines 13-16 that the split core segments are made of soft magnetizable material. Nakahata et al. exemplarily discloses in Fig. 2 a magnetic core 10 comprising a plurality of soft magnetic layers 12 laminated together. Before the effective filing date, it would’ve been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have replaced the generic soft magnetizable material of Saitoh et al. with the specific laminated soft magnetic layers of Nakahata et al. as being an obvious art substitution of equivalence. As an obvious consequence of the modification, the combination would have necessarily included: wherein the first core and/or the second core comprises laminated soft magnetic alloy layers.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 5 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RAKESH PATEL whose telephone number is (571)272-0961. The examiner can normally be reached 9AM-5PM EST M-F.
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/RAKESH B PATEL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2843
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