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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group I, in the reply filed on March 18 is acknowledged.
Claims 4-5 and 8 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to nonelected inventions, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on March 18.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
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.
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Bruno (U.S. Patent No. 5,776,239, 1998).
Regarding claim 1, Bruno discloses particles having a rutile structure (Bruno, Col. 13, line 28 - Col. 14, line 15), comprising:
a core including tin and titanium (Bruno, Col. 14, lines 1-3, white powder is mostly rutile; Col. 13, lines 61-65, particles contain tin),
a shell including titanium (Bruno, Col. 14, lines 1-3, white powder is mostly rutile, and there is no reason to expect that the surface would not include titanium),
wherein a crystallite diameter of the particles is about 15 nm (Bruno, Col. 14, lines 1-3),
the particles contain about 96% by weight of titanium oxide in terms of TiO2 (Bruno, Col. 13, lines 61-65, tin-doped titanium dioxide having a SnO-2 content of about 4%, implying 96% TiO2),
the particles contain about 4% by weight tin oxide in terms of SnO2 (Bruno, Col. 13, lines 61-65).
Bruno does not explicitly teach that a proportion of tin in the core is 0.1-6.5 at% and that a proportion of tin in the shell is less than 0.1 at%. However, the instant Specification teaches that, in tin-doped titanium dioxide nanoparticles, when there is a sufficient amount of tin for the particles to be rutile-phase, the shell does not contain tin (Specification, [0014], Table 3). The shell of Bruno’s particles would therefore necessarily have less than 0.1 at% tin. In addition, where the instant Examples teach SnO2-doped rutile TiO2 nanocrystallites similar to Bruno’s (Instant Specification, Tables 1-3, Examples 1-6, 94-99.7% TiO2), the core has 11% by mass of SnO2 (Instant Specification, Table 1), which corresponds to 6.2 at% tin on a metals basis. Therefore, a proportion of tin in the core of Bruno’s particles necessarily falls within the claimed range of 0.1-6.5 at% tin.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZACHARY J. BAUM whose telephone number is (571)270-0895. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:30-5:00.
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/ZACHARY JOHN BAUM/Examiner, Art Unit 1736
/ANTHONY J ZIMMER/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 1736
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