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 § 102
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(s) 1-2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Yoshitomi (US 2021/0005908).
In re claim 1, Yoshitomi teaches a fuel cell (20); a fuel-cell DCDC converter that adjusts a voltage output from the fuel cell (40); a battery (154); a battery DCDC converter (156) that adjusts a voltage output from the battery; and a vehicle body that supports the fuel cell, the fuel-cell DCDC converter, the battery, and the battery DCDC converter (fig. 1), wherein the fuel cell is disposed in the vehicle body in front of the fuel-cell DCDC converter, the battery, and the battery DCDC converter (fig. 1, 3).
In re claim 2, Yoshitomi teaches the fuel-cell DCDC converter, the battery, and the battery DCDC converter are disposed in a vehicle-body central side and a vehicle- body rearward side (fig. 1 – rearward of the vehicle front).
In re claims 3-4, the examiner takes official notice that the use of cooling devices disposed in a vehicle forward of and in the vicinity was well known and conventional in the art at the time of invention and would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art (see, for example, Matsumoto US 2019/0221876).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-7 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EREZ GURARI whose telephone number is (571)270-1156. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00AM-6:30PM.
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/EREZ GURARI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3615