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 .
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 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.
Claim(s) 1-29 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li, Jr. et al, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2014/0255100 in view of KR100284438.
Li discloses a composite geotextile. Th geotextile comprises a nonwoven fabric and a woven fabric wherein the nonwoven fabric is needle punched through the woven. See paragraph 0011. The fibers of the nonwoven which extend through the woven fabric are heat bonded to the woven. See paragraph 0016 and paragraph 0030. Li teaches selecting the size of the needles and the size of the fibers to provide an opening size distribution that is needed for the target application. See paragraph 0040. The nonwoven can have a basis weight of 6-8 osy. See paragraph 0040. The woven fabric can be formed from yarns or slit films of high modulus polymeric materials. See paragraph 0041. The woven can have a basis weight of 5.8 osy. See paragraph 0041.
Li teaches the method of forming the nonwoven, forming the woven and then needle punching to combine the layers and then fusing the fibers which extend through the woven.
Li differs from the claimed invention because it does not disclose the claimed denier and basis weights of the fabric layers and does not disclose the particularly claimed properties such as ultraviolent retention, biaxial adhesion strength, biaxial wide width tensile strength, abrasion resistance, and impact energy.
However, KR ’438 discloses a geosynthetic material comprising a woven layer and a nonwoven layer. The nonwoven layer can comprise polymeric fibers having a denier of 5-10 and a weight of 20-25 gsm.
Therefore, it would have been obvious, both in view of the teaching of Li of selecting fiber denier size and in view of the teach of KR ‘438 to have selected fiber deniers and basis weights as claimed in order to provide a structure having the desired strength and porosity. With regard to the particularly claimed properties, since Li teaches incorporating UV stabilizers, it would have been obvious to have added sufficient UV stabilizers to provide the desired degree of stability to the fabric. It further would have been obvious to have selected fiber deniers, basis weights and amount of needling and degree of fusion which produced the properties of adhesion strength, tensile strength, abrasion resistance and impact energy, recognizing that one of ordinary skill would have known that the fiber denier, the basis weight of the fabric layers, the degree of entangling due to needle punching as well as the degree bonding of the nonwoven extending layer would control fabric strength, adhesion strength, abrasion resistance and impact energy.
With regard to the limitation that the composite fabric is a bi component composite fabric, the two claimed layers are present in Li and are considered to constitute the claimed composite fabric. The instant claims employ open language and do not preclude the presence of other elements which can be bonded to the claimed composite fabric.
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/ELIZABETH M IMANI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1789