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 .
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.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wu [6546925], further in view of Skeie [4826007].
With respect to claim 1, Wu discloses: A multifunctional oven, comprising an oven body (1) and a grill (3) detachably connected to the oven body, characterized in that: extension platforms (35) are hinged (at 315) on the oven body; the extension platforms are flipped to be close to or away from the oven body [see abstract]; the oven body is provided with positioning assemblies (353) for positioning the extension platforms [col 3, line 19-44]; the extension platforms are provided with accommodating grooves (316); when the extension platforms are horizontal, the accommodating grooves are located below the extension platforms [see FIG 6]; the extension platforms are provided with a plurality of through holes (355, 351B); the plurality of through holes are distributed towards a direction away from the oven body [see FIG 3]; the through holes are in communication with the accommodating grooves [see FIG 3].
Wu however does not show the flip plates as claimed.
Skeie makes up for these deficiencies by teaching:
{cl. 1, cont’d} flip plates (32) are rotatably connected in the through holes (30); rotation axes of the flip plates are perpendicular to hinge axes of the extension platforms; and the flip plates are provided with clamping members (31) [see FIG 4, col 3, line 49-col 4, line 18].
The modification would involve adding element 32 of Skeie to the area 35 of Wu in order for the element 32 to act as a further clamp to secure any cooking utensils.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the invention of Wu with the teachings of Skeie because Skeie provides a known arrangement that allows for compact portability of cooking equipment.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-8 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. Modifying the applied prior art would require impermissible hindsight reasoning to arrive at the claimed invention because a secondary reference would need changes made to show obviousness, e.g. the flip plate assembly requires a resilient member, which is not shown in Skeie.
Conclusion
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/AVINASH A SAVANI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3762
7/21/2026
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