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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
In the Information Disclosure Statement filed 12 February 2025, citation no. 7 (EP 2688382A1) has been lined through because only a cover sheet of the foreign patent document has been filed. See 37 C.F.R. 1.98(a)(2).
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.
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 30, 33, 35-37, 39, 41, 43-45, 48 and 49 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Peterson et al. (US 2010/0300342 A1).
CLAIM 30 Peterson et al. ‘342 (“Peterson”) shows a seed meter (10) for metering a plurality of seeds, the seed meter comprising:
a seed meter housing (17) defining a seed inlet (connected to seed inlet conduit 32), a seed outlet (31), and a chamber therebetween (Fig. 10);
a metering element (22) mounted within the chamber;
a plurality of drain apertures (Fig. 10, between the spokes surrounding the center of 22) located in the seed meter housing (17); and
a dome (30) coupled to the seed meter housing (17), the dome extending over the plurality of drain apertures to prohibit rain ingress into the plurality of drain apertures ([0071]); and
CLAIM 33 wherein the seed meter is configured to transition between a seeding position (Figs. 2, 3) in which the dome is neither vertically positioned above nor below the plurality of drain apertures and a storage position (rotated to extend in a horizontal plane) in which the dome is vertically positioned above the plurality of drain apertures, wherein the dome prohibits rain ingress into the plurality of drain apertures in the storage position.
CLAIMS 35-37, 39, 41, 43-45, 48 and 49
The limitations recited there are taught by Peterson.
Allowable Subject Matter
CLAIMS 31, 32, 34, 38, 40-42, 46 and 47 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.
Conclusion
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/TARA MAYO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3671
/tm/
17 August 2026
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