DETAILED ACTION
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 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lynch (2022/0185683) in view of Zheng (CN 111732329 machine translation provided). Lynch teaches a method for manufacturing an insulating board, the method comprising providing a tray 608 having a bottom surface and plurality of side walls 606, placing on the bottom surface of the tray a plurality of seeds in a first layer, placing a plurality of seeds in a second layer on top of the first layer, a center of each seed in the second layer being horizontally offset from a center of each seed of the first layer, placing a plurality of seeds in a third layer on top of the second layer, a center of each seed in the third layer being horizontally offset from a center of each seed of the first layer and the second layer, and heating the tray to transform the seeds into a plurality of hollow structures (figure 6, [0159]-[0160]). However, Lynch doesn’t specify printing of the seeds in this embodiment. Lynch teaches in another embodiment wherein seeds are deposited as first layer using a hopper, basically mimicking a printing method, before a second layer is deposited (figure 7, [0162]-[0163]). Zheng also teaches a method for making an insulating board comprising a foaming agent that expands and forms hollow structures within the glass article, the method comprising printing each layer of a glass mixture comprising glass powder and foaming agent. Zheng teaches the printing can be 3D printing, which allows for flexibility in producing any desired shape and controlling the porosity of the insulating board (whole reference). Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to have utilized 3D printing to produce the layers of seeds in the method of Lynch as 3D printing allows for the ease and flexibility in providing the desired arrangement of seeds, as taught by Zheng.
Conclusion
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/QUEENIE S DEHGHAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1741