DETAILED ACTION
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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) 17 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tsai (US Pub No 2015/0148211).
Regarding claim 17, Tsai discloses a medium transportation device transporting a medium onto which liquid is discharged (treated as intended use since no feature or structure is claimed), the medium transportation device comprising:
an uneven roller (20) of which a surface coming into contact with the medium is provided with a plurality of protrusions and recesses;
a facing roller (seen in fig. 1 noted a prior art) nipping the medium together with the uneven roller (the other 20, replacing 16 of fig. 1; and
a claw portion (seen in fig. 1 noted as prior art, 18) guiding the medium to be separated from the uneven roller, wherein
the uneven roller includes a shaft portion (shown in figure 3),
uneven regions (224, 225, 227) in which the protrusions and recesses are formed along a circumferential direction and a non-uneven region (22) in which the protrusions and recesses are not formed along a circumferential direction is formed at a portion of the uneven roller in an axial direction,
the non-uneven region is positioned between the uneven regions, and
the claw portion faces the non-uneven region (as shown in figure 1, fingers 18 fit in the roller so as to act as the sheets are to be folded).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to have modified used the roller taught by Tsai with the prior art disclosure of fig. 1 since the roller 20 is the improvement of Tsai invention to be applied to the device of fig. 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 1-16 is allowed.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Patrick Cicchino whose telephone number is (571)270-1954. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday, 8:30AM to 5PM.
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/Patrick Cicchino/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3619
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