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.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 12, 13, and 15-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Dammak (Dammak, et al., Industrial Crops & Products 144 (2020), pp 1-8) .
With respect to claims 1, 12, and 15, Dammak discloses blends of polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT) and PBAT grafted with maleic anhydride (PBAT-g--MA) (abstract) and teaches that the graft is an ester (page 3, second paragraph in “3.1 Mechanical properties”). Experimental formulations include a 40-60 wt % thermoplastic starch (TPS) and the remaining portion PBAT and PBAT-g-MA (Figure 1(b) and (c)).
With respect to claim 13, Dammak’s experiments include potato starch (page 2, “2.1 Materials”).
With respect to claim 16, Dammak discloses a blend of PBAT and PBAT-g--MA extruded into a film (page 2, second paragraph in “2.2 Blends preparation”).
With respect to claim 17, Dammak teaches that the amount of maleation is 1.5 (page 2, “2.3 Maleated PBAT”).
With respect to claims 18 and 19, in Figures 1(B) and (C), tensile strength is at least 5 MPa and strain (elongation) at break is greater than 400%.
With respect to claim 20, in Figure 1(A), Young’s modulus can be calculated from the slope of stress-strain curves. For example, the sample with a yield stress of about 8 MPa at a strain of about 10%, provides Young’s modulus of 80 MPa which is greater than 50 MPa.
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Dammak (Dammak, et al., Industrial Crops & Products 144 (2020), pp 1-8) in view of evidence provided by Enomoto (US 2026/0085184).
The discussion with respect to Dammak in paragraph 3 above is incorporated here by reference.
Dammak utilizes PBAT that is Ecoflex Blend C1200 (page 2, “2.1. Materials”), which has a number average molecular weight of 24500 as evidenced by Enomoto (paragraph 0173). Because a butylene adipate unit has a calculated molecular weight of 200 g/mol, a PBAT having a or d equal to 500 would have a molecular weight of at least 100,000. This molecular weight far exceeds the number-average molecular weight of Ecoflex Blend C1200 (evidenced by Enomoto). Given that PBAT inherently has comonomer units like claimed having an ester-linked maleic acid and further given that Dammak’s PBAT has a number average molecular weight of 24500/mol, the subscripts a, b, c, and d are also necessarily less than 500 and therefore are all fully within the claimed range of 1-500.
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 of this title, 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.
Claims 1, 3-6, 11-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yeo (KR 2021011186, machine translation) in view of Dammak (Dammak, et al., Industrial Crops & Products 144 (2020), pp 1-8).
With respect to claims 1, 3, 12, 16, Yeo discloses a biodegradable resin composition for a biodegradable film (paragraph 0018) comprising polyhydroxyalkanoate resin (PHA) and polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT) (abstract), wherein the resin composition comprises a compatibilizer such as one based on maleic anhydride to improve compatibility between PBAT, PHA, and another biodegradable resin such as thermoplastic starch (TPS) and thereby improve physical properties (paragraphs 0117, 0133-0134, and 0136).
Yeo fails to disclose including a polybutylene adipate terephthalate having maleic acid bonded via ester group at the terminal of the polybutylene adipate terephthalate.
Dammak discloses blends of PBAT and PBAT grafted with maleic anhydride (PBAT-g--MA) (abstract) and teaches that the graft is an ester (page 3, second paragraph in “3.1 Mechanical properties”). Dammak teaches that blends of PBAT and TPS are advantageously compatibilized with maleated PBAT over maleic anhydride compatibilizer in regards to stress-strain properties, tensile properties, and strain at break (Fig. 1), biodegradation (Fig. 5), and rheological (page 8, “4. Conclusions”).
Given that both Yeo and Dammak are drawn to biodegradable compositions comprising polybutylene adipate terephthalate and compatibilizer such as maleic anhydride and further given that Dammak teaches that PBAT grafted with maleic anhydride provides improved compatibilizing properties represented by mechanical, biodegradation, and rheological properties, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to utilize a PBAT grafted with maleic anhydride as the compatibilizer in the biodegradable blends taught by Yeo.
With respect to claim 4, Yeo teaches that the PHA can be 3-hydroxypropionate (paragraph 0043).
With respect to claims 5 and 6, Yeo teaches that the PHA includes copolymers of lactic acid (lactide) and 3-hydroxypropionate (paragraph 0043).
With respect to claim 11, Yeo teaches that the PHA has molecular weight of 50,000-1,200,000 g/mol (paragraph 0063).
With respect to claim 13, Dammak’s experiments include potato starch (page 2, “2.1 Materials”).
With respect to claim 14, Yeo teaches that the ratio of PHA to PBAT is 40-99:1-60 (paragraph 0017).
With respect to claims 15, Dammak exemplifies formulations including 40-60 wt % thermoplastic starch (TPS) and the remaining portion PBAT and PBAT-g-MA (Figure 1(b) and (c)).
With respect to claim 17, Dammak teaches that the amount of maleation is 1.5 (page 2, “2.3 Maleated PBAT”).
With respect to claim 18, Yeo discloses tensile strength of 5-30 MPa (paragraph 0198).
With respect to claim 19, Yeo discloses elongation of 100-600% (paragraph 0200).
With respect to claim 20, Yeo discloses that the composition exhibits “excellent mechanical properties” such as tensile strength (paragraph 0022) but fails to explicitly disclose a Young’s modulus of 50 MPa or more.
Nevertheless, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to prepare a film having claimed Young’s modulus given that Yeo teaches that the mechanical properties are excellent.
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yeo (KR 2021011186, machine translation) in view of Dammak (Dammak, et al., Industrial Crops & Products 144 (2020), pp 1-8) and further in view of evidence provided by Enomoto (US 2026/0085184).
The discussion with respect to Yeo and Dammak in paragraph 4 above is incorporated here by reference.
Dammak utilizes PBAT that is Ecoflex Blend C1200 (page 2, “2.1. Materials”), which has a number average molecular weight of 24500 as evidenced by Enomoto (paragraph 0173). Because a butylene adipate unit has a calculated molecular weight of 200 g/mol, a PBAT having a or d equal to 500 would have a molecular weight of at least 100,000. This molecular weight far exceeds the number-average molecular weight of Ecoflex Blend C1200 (evidenced by Enomoto). Given that PBAT inherently has comonomer units like claimed having an ester-linked maleic acid and further given that Dammak’s PBAT has a number average molecular weight of 24500/mol, the subscripts a, b, c, and d are also necessarily less than 500 and therefore are all fully within the claimed range of 1-500.
Claim 7-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yeo (KR 2021011186, machine translation) in view of Dammak (Dammak, et al., Industrial Crops & Products 144 (2020), pp 1-8) and further in view of Kang (US 2020/0270649).
The discussion with respect to Yeo and Dammak in paragraph 4 above is incorporated here by reference.
With respect to claim 7, Yeo discloses that PHA can include 3-hydroxypropionate-lacticde copolymer but fails to disclose that the PHA is a block copolymer of 3-hydroxypropionate and lactic acid.
Kang discloses a block copolymer of 3-hydroxypropionate and lactic acid are less brittle than random copolymers and therefore improve the problems of random copolymers (paragraphs 0004-0005).
Given that Yeo teaches that Yeo and Kang teach 3-hydroxypropionate and lactic acid copolymers and further given that Kang teaches that block copolymers h of 3-hydroxypropionate and lactic acid have improved properties over random copolymers, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to utilize a block copolymer of 3-hydroxypropionate and lactic acid as the PHA of Yeo.
With respect to claims 8 and 9, Kang teaches that the block copolymers include at least 10 mol % of lactate (i.e., lactic acid) (paragraph 0063) and exemplifies copolymers having a weight average molecular weight of 50,900 g/mol (paragraph 0093, Table 2). Based on this example, the block copolymer includes a lactic acid component of at least 5,900 g/mol.
With respect to claim 10, Kant does not explicitly disclose the sum of the crystallinities of the PLA block and poly(3-hydroxypropionate) block, however, it does show in Figure 4 how the Tg and Tm properties of the blocks in the copolymer correspond to PLA and 3HP homopolymers. Because of the block nature of the copolymer, the crystallinity is expected to overlap with the claimed range. The random copolymer of Figure 5 does not exhibit the claimed crystallinity.
Conclusion
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/Vickey Nerangis/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1763
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