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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
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.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
CLAIMS 1 and 23 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sacre et al. (EP 2699004 A1) in view of Masuda (JP 2014076695 A).
CLAIM 1 Sacre teaches discharging system for a hopper (1), the discharging system comprising;
an outlet (27) on a lower part of the hopper for discharging the dredged material (fig. 1, 2A); and
at least one water jet valve ("nozzles", 35-40) for fluidizing the dredged material while discharging (D1, par. 41).
Sacre fails to teach a plurality of sensors.
Masuda teaches one or more sensors (detectors 601), which can be of different kinds (D2, par. 20), such as a pressure sensor - a part of a pressure sensor for a column of sand or dredged material is implicitly positioned at the bottom of the sand column, so at a bottom wall of the ship. Moreover, Masuda discloses in par. 10 to fluidize the material with spray means, the spraying control being dependent on the detectors. And this in order to speed up unloading (par. 10). It would have been obvious for one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the system of Sacre with the sensors of Masuda for the purpose of operational efficiency.
The method steps of CLAIM 23 are inherent to use of the system disclosed by Sacre.
The limitations of CLAIMS 2, 3, 5-7, 9, 11, 12, 14-17, 19 AND 20 are taught by the combination of Sacre and Masuda.
Conclusion
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/TARA MAYO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3671
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