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 § 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, 4-5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nakashima et al (US 2020/0313318) in view of Tamaru et al (US 2021/0331633).
Re claim 1, Nakashima et al disclose a wire harness (1) comprising:
an electric wire (2a, 2b) that includes a core wire (22a, 22b) and an insulating coating (21a, 21b) that covers the core wire;
a protective cover (3) that covers a periphery of the insulating coating,
the protective cover and the insulating coating are integrally formed (Fig 2), but does not disclose a tube through which the electric wire is passed and that includes a bend, and a portion of the insulating coating at a position corresponding to the bend has an increased thickness and functions as the protective cover.
Re claim 4, wherein: the electric wire is one of a plurality of electric wires (2a, 2b), and the protective cover covers a periphery of the insulating coating of at least an electric wire out of the plurality of electric wires (Fig 2), but does not disclose the plurality of electric wires are passed through the tube, the protective cover covers the electric wire closest to an inner bend side of the bend.
Re claim 5, wherein the electric wire is one of a plurality of electric wires (Fig 2),
the protective cover covers a periphery of the insulating coating of each electric wire of the plurality of electric wires (Fig 2), but does not disclose the plurality of electric wires are passed through the tube.
Tamaru et al disclose a tube (20) through which electric wire (18) is passed (Fig 2) and that includes a bend (30) (Fig. 3), and
a portion (22) of an insulating coating (34) at a position corresponding to the bend has an increased thickness (22) and functions as the protective cover (Fig 3), the protective cover covers the electric wire closest to an inner bend side of the bend (Fig 3). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to include the tube with the bend and the increased thickness with the electric wire of Nakashima et al for protecting the wire.
Communication
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/HUNG V NGO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2841
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