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
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 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kitani et al. (JP 2010117623A) in view of Shibano et al. (JPH11133626A). Regarding claim 1, Kitani et al. disclose “a development brush to be rubbed with a photosensitive resin flexographic printing plate precursor so as to remove, for development, an uncured portion of photosensitive resin from the photosensitive resin flexographic printing plate precursor (paragraph 1), wherein the development brush has a plurality of brush bristles implanted on a base material (paragraph 11: planar brush), wherein each of the plurality of brush bristles has a diameter of 80 to 250µm (paragraph 11).” Kitani et al. fail to specifically disclose “wherein the development brush has a density of brush bristles of 22% or more and 37% or less, wherein the density is defined by a proportion of a cross-sectional area of the plurality of brush bristles to an area of a surface of the base material in which the plurality of brush bristles are implanted,” but do disclose that the brush density affects the development time (paragraph 11). Shibano et al. disclose a similar brush system wherein fibers are implanted on a flat plate (paragraph 13) and further discloses that the density of the bristles is a parameter which affects the development speed and/or the unevenness of the development (paragraphs 2 and 3), but that increasing the bristle density too much results in unwanted effects, such as scumming (paragraph 3). It has been held that when the general conditions are disclosed in the art, it is not inventive to discover the optimum or workable ranges through routine experimentation. See MPEP §2144.05. Therefore, at the time of the filing of the invention, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art, through routine experimentation, to set the density of the brush bristles to 22% or more and 37% or less in order to achieve the optimum or workable density which balances the development speed, and/or unevenness in development, and/or the amount of scumming. Regarding claim 2, Kitani et al. further disclose “wherein each of the plurality of brush bristles has a length from an end which is not implanted in the base material to the base material of 10 mm or more and 25 mm or less (paragraph 28).” Additionally, Shibano et al. also disclose bristle lengths of from 2 to 50 mm (paragraph 13). Regarding claim 3, Kitani et al. further disclose “wherein a material for the plurality of brush bristles is a polyester resin and/or a polyamide resin, and/or an olefin resin (paragraph 11).” Regarding claim 4, Kitani et al. further disclose “a developing device for removing, using the development brush according to claim 1, an uncured portion from a photosensitive resin flexographic printing plate precursor (paragraphs 9 and 11).” Regarding claim 5, Kitani et al., as modified, disclose all that is claimed, as in claim 4 above, except “wherein a brush pressure of the development brush applied during development of the photosensitive resin flexographic printing plate precursor is 0.5 to 5 mm.” However, Katani et al. do disclose that the brush pressure can be used to increase the development speed, but that too much pressure results in decrease in reproducibility of highlight halftone dots (paragraph 4). Therefore, the pressure of the brushes is a results-effective variable. Therefore, at the time of the filing of the invention, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to, through routine optimization, set the brush pressure to between 0.5 to 5 mm in order to determine the optimum or workable range of pressure. Regarding claim 6 and 7, Kitani et al. further disclose that the brush and apparatus of claims 1 and 4 above are used in producing a flexographic pate and developing a flexographic printing plate precursor (see paragraph 1).
Conclusion
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/JOSHUA D ZIMMERMAN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2853
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