DETAILED ACTION
For this Office action, Claims 1-20 are pending. Claims 19 and 20 are withdrawn from consideration due to a prior restriction requirement (see below).
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
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group I, Claims 1-18, in the reply filed on 13 February 2026 is acknowledged. Claims 1-18 will be examined within this Office action.
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.
Claims 1-2 and 10-16 are 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 1, upon which Claims X are dependent, recites a “method for separating selected ions in water”; however, no further steps are presented within Claim 1 regarding said separating. Ions are not recited again in instant Claim 1 in any way. This issue renders the claim indefinite, as the claim language is unclear whether the separation of selected ions is necessary or the method steps themselves are enough for a prior art reference to read on the claims. In other words, is selective separation of ions in water necessary for the method or not? Note that Claim 3 and its dependents are not rejection for these reasons, as Claim 3 addresses this issue (Claim 2 does not address the separation of ions and is thusly rejected for the same logic as Claim 1). Applicant is urged to address this issue in the response to this Office action. For purposes of this examination, the examiner will assume a separation of ions similar to that recited in Claim 3 is necessary to read on the claims.
Claim 15 is further rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) for reciting “separately transforming the top portion and the bottom portion into liquid water”, as the claim language is unclear when in the method such transformation should occur in order to read on the claim. Note that Claim 1 does not require separation of the separate portions before they are considered the top or bottom portion. For purposes of this examination, the examiner will assume that the transformation happens after the separation of the portions.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 3-9 are 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. Claims 3-9 are considered allowable for the same reasons as detailed below with respect to Claim 17, yet said claims are dependent on rejected Claim 2.
Claims 17 and 18 are considered allowable at this time. Ice VII—and particularly plastic Ice VII—is a very specific crystal structure of water/ice that is formed at very high pressures and high temperatures (see instant Claims 12 and 13; Figure 1; Paragraph [0003]). Forming Ice VII itself is rare within the prior art (see Mao et al., US Pat Pub. 2009/0108237, which discusses ice VII sample analysis; Figure 3; Figure 5; Paragraph [0010]; Paragraph [0014]; Paragraph [0016]), and plastic Ice VII is a form distinct from crystalline Ice VII (see Paragraphs [0002]-[0004] of instant specification), and the use of such a structure to separate ions is not seen or taught in the prior art. Since Claims 17 and 18 do not have the issues seen in Claim 1 and select dependents, the claims are considered allowable at this time.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Boyden et al. (US Pat Pub. 2010/00114348) recites frozen compositions and discusses different ice crystalline structures such as Ice XI (Figure 4; Paragraph [0325]; Paragraph [0327]; Table 1). Plastic Ice VII is not mentioned, and the reference is not considered analogous enough to the endeavor of the instant application to raise a ground of rejection.
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/RICHARD C GURTOWSKI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1773 03/04/2026