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 § 103
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.
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, 7-15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bilski et al (US 2020/0180017).
As to claims 1, 13, and 14, Bilski et al. disclose a dispensing device comprising:
A housing having one inlet opening for admitting cooling medium
Control unit to control pressure
A switching valve which is disposed in the housing and specified to open and close the dispensing opening
Switching valve has a sleeve filled with working fluid and proximal to the dispensing opening is closed in a fluid-tight manner by a closure,
Wherein the closure has a switching element moveably mounted outside of the sleeve, and one sealing element, which is disposed on the switching element
The switching element is displaceable relative to the sleeve.
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Bilski et al. fail to teach the switching element is moveable mounted in the sleeve, instead as shown in the annotated figure, the switching element is along the sleeve. However, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to either have the switching element inside or along the sleeve, since it produced the same result of sealing the dispensing opening. Therefore, such modification is merely a design choice.
As to claim 7, wherein the sleeve has a bar-type (11) guiding element which runs along the longitudinal axis of the sleeve.
As to claim 8, the dispensing opening is a nozzle.
As to claim 9, the housing and the sleeve is concentric.
As to claim 10 and 11, the working fluid can be gas or liquid.
As to claim 12, a spring element (16) to move the switching element from closing to opening.
As to claim 15, sliding sealing element is annular seal.
Inquiry
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/LEN TRAN/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3763
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