DETAILED ACTION
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, filed October 21, 2025, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1 and 2 under 35 USC § 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn.
However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Oshima et al. (US 5,272,871 A) and Mitani (JP 2008008247 A).
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) 1 and 2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Oshima et al. (US 5,272,871 A), hereafter Oshima, in view of Mitani (JP 2008008247 A).
In regards to claim 1, Oshima discloses a treatment device for treating a blowby gas of a hydrogen engine (Third Embodiment; Fig. 10), the treatment device comprising: a catalyst unit (32) provided in an exhaust flow path for circulating an exhaust gas from the hydrogen engine (abstract), and configured to reduce a nitrogen oxide contained in the exhaust gas by using hydrogen as a reducing agent; a scavenging flow path (G) configured to circulate the blowby gas of the hydrogen engine (column 1, line 10-14) to circulate the blowby gas into the scavenging flow path; a hydrogen separation filter (F1) provided in the scavenging flow path, and configured to generate a hydrogen gas and a treated gas as a blowby gas obtained after removal of the hydrogen by separating hydrogen contained in the blowby gas from the blowby gas; and a hydrogen gas addition unit (V2) configured to add the hydrogen gas generated in the hydrogen separation filter to the catalyst unit (column 10, line 43-60).
Oshima does not disclose a scavenging pump provided in the scavenging flow path, and configured to scavenge the blowby gas from the hydrogen engine. Mitani discloses a hydrogen engine (Fig. 4) with a scavenging blowby path (72) and a pump (91) for forcibly inducing flow through the system. It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide the pump of Mitani in the scavenging flow path of Oshima in order to increase the flow of gases in the blowby passage.
Oshima as modified with Mitani does not disclose a hydrogen separation filter provided downstream of the scavenging pump. However, the location of the pump would have been an obvious design choice since the applicant has not provided why the location of the pump is of importance, and it’s known in the blowby art to provide a pump on either side of a filter in order to increase the flow of fluids through the system.
Regarding claim 2, Oshima as modified with Mitani discloses the scavenging flow path including a refluxing unit (V1) configured to reflux the treated gas generated in the hydrogen separation filter to an intake flow path of the hydrogen engine (Fig. 10).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 3 is 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
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/TEUTA HOLBROOK/
Examiner
Art Unit 3747
/GEORGE C JIN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3747
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