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 § 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 and 4 – 11 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by JP 2015183061A to Satoshi, Mihara hereinafter “Satoshi”. A machine translated copy of Satoshi is included with this action.
Satoshi is directed to improving the workability of dry type (fumed) silica and the manufacturing of rubber compositions for tires.
Regarding claims 1 – 2, 4 – 11 and 13, Satoshi teaches the manufacture of a masterbatch in the Table 2, Example 1, [0045] where the masterbatch comprises 30 parts of silica (fumed), 7.2 parts of silane coupling agent, 2 parts of a processing aid and 10 parts of an oil (lubricant). This corresponds to 60.97% fumed silica, 14.63% silane coupling agent, 4.06 % processing aid and 20.33% of an oil. This is listed in the pre-mixing process of Table 2. Sixty, 60 parts of this masterbatch is combined with 100 parts of (SBR/BR) rubber. SBR = styrene butadiene rubber and BR = butadiene rubber. This amounts to 36.58 phr fumed silica, 8.78 phr silane coupling agent and 12.20 phr oil. These values are all within the ranges claimed. This step is listed as the kneading process in Table 2.
Satoshi teaches that the nitrogen adsorption specific surface area of the dry silica (fumed silica) is >160 and <500 m2/g (page 4, paragraph 6).
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) 3 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over JP 2015183061A to Satoshi, Mihara hereinafter “Satoshi”. A machine translated copy of Satoshi is included with this action.
Satoshi is directed to improving the workability of dry type (fumed) silica and the manufacturing of rubber compositions for tires.
Regarding claim 3, Satoshi teaches that the diene rubber used may include natural rubber, isoprene rubber, acrylonitrile butadiene rubber, butyl rubber, ethylene propylene diene rubber, chloroprene rubber and the like (page 7, paragraph 3).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill to use natural or isoprene rubber in the tire compositions using the masterbatch process to incorporate the fumed silica as this is directly taught by Satoshi.
As to claim 12, Satoshi is silent as to the hardness and crosslink density of the rubber material. Both Satoshi and 18/697034 are directed to reducing the rolling resistance of a pneumatic tire (page 3, para 2, page 9, para 4) and the spec at [0002]. Satoshi teaches at (page 9, para 4) that the smaller the value of the tan δ at 60C equates to the smaller the rolling resistance and the better the fuel consumption. Therefore, as both Satoshi and the application are dedicated to reducing the rolling resistance of pneumatic tires it would be obvious to one of ordinary skill to engineer the required properties such as loss tangent tan δ at 60C, hardness and crosslink density that form the requirements for a pneumatic tire with reduced rolling resistance.
Prior Art of Record
JP 2015183061 A to Satoshi.
Conclusion
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PAS 9/18/26
/PETER A SALAMON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1759
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