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 .
Double Patenting
Claims 1-20 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of copending Application No. 18/533,618.
The claims of the copending application define a loader including a cab and a door panel shiftable between open and closed positions that includes a top margin disposed (i.e. tilted) forward of a bottom margin, but fails to explicitly disclose the door panel as being transparent. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to make the door panel (if not already) of a transparent material, since it has been held to be within the general skill of a worker in the art to select a known material on the basis of its suitability for the intended use as a matter of design choice. In re Leshin, 125 USPQ 416.
In regard to claims 7, 9, 17 and 19, the copending application claims define a loader (supra), but fails to define the door panel as having a forward tilt angle between about 80 and 87.5 degrees relative to a for-aft travel axis (see claims 7 and 17) or a forward tilt distance between about 6% and 10% of the height of the door panel (see claims 9 and 19), as claimed. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the door panel defined by the copending application claims to have a forward tilt angle between about 80 and 87.5 degrees relative to a for-aft travel axis (see claims 7 and 17) or a forward tilt distance between about 6% and 10% of the height of the door panel (see claims 9 and 19), since it has been held that when the general conditions of a claimed are already disclosed in the prior art, discovering the optimum or workable ranges involves only routine skill in the art. In re Aller, 105 USPQ 233.
This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection.
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
The Yamashita et al. reference pertains to loader including a cab with a door panel having similarities to that of Applicant’s.
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/STEVEN O DOUGLAS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3612
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