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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claims 9-10 and 16-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
The terms “slow-cooling process” and “slowly cooled” in claims 9 and 16 are relative terms which renders the claims indefinite. The terms “slow” and “slowly” are not defined by the claims, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention. It is unclear as to what is encompassed in “slow” or what rate(s) are in the scope of the claims or outside the scope of the claims. This may be overcome by using the temperature ranges set forth in Paragraph 49 of the originally filed specification. Claims 10 and 17-20 are included in this rejection as they depend upon a rejected claim.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-8 and 11-15 are allowed.
Claims 9-10 and 16-20 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: The closest prior art to the instant claims is that of Araie et al. (US 2019/0061001). Araie teaches a method of forming a layered system by repeated melting and solidifying metal material (Paragraph 7) including martensitic steel (Paragraph 8) having a martensitic starting temperature and a thermal treatment at a first temperature T1 and a second temperature T2 (Paragraph 10). No general teaching of temperatures is provided and only a specific example using SUS 420 J2 is disclosed (Paragraph 120) where the manufacturing temperature is 70 °C and is cooled to 29 °C (Paragraph 121). These temperatures are significantly outside that which is claimed.
Matsumoto (US 2020/0023436) teaches three-dimensional manufacturing of an article by irradiation (abstract) using SUS420J2 with a martensitic transformation start temperature of 100 °C (Paragraph 56). As such, the instant claims would not have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art.
Other art to be made of record is that of Fujita et al. (US 2003/0096136), Mazumder et al. (US 6,925,346), and Yamamoto (US 2021/0213686) all teach additive manufacturing demonstrating the level of ordinary skill in the art.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SETH DUMBRIS whose telephone number is (571)272-5105. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 6:00 AM - 3:30 PM.
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SETH DUMBRIS
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 1784
/SETH DUMBRIS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1784
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