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 .
Summary
Claims 1 – 15 are pending in this office action. All pending claims are under examination in this application.
Priority
The current application filed on December 20, 2024 is a 371 of PCT/IL2023/050642 filed June 21, 2023, which in turn claims priority to European patent application EP22180435.4 filed on June 22, 2022.
Information Disclosure Statement
Receipt of the Information Disclosure Statement filed on December 20, 2024 is acknowledged. A signed copy of the form PTO/SB/08 is attached to this office action.
Specification
The disclosure is objected to because of the following informalities: The term flufenacetat is used throughout the specification. This appears to be incorrect; the term should read flufenacet instead.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Objections
Claim 3 is objected to because of the following informalities: flufenacetat should be flufenacet.
Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claims 1-3, 7 and 9-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pollet et al. WO2021191618A1, published 2021-09-30 in view of Haikal et al. WO2009102689A2, published 2009-08-20 and BBCH, published 2011.
Note: Pollet et al. is cited on the IDS. A copy of Haikal et al. is not being furnished because the pdf is too big for the PTO’s systems and it cannot be uploaded.
Pollet et al. WO2021191618A1, published 2021-09-30 teach metamitron applied along with another herbicide including an anilide herbicide such as diflufenican (claim 7), see page 2, line 7 , flufenacet (claim 3) page 2, line 8, mefenacet (claim 3) page 2, line 8, and a pyridine herbicide such as picolinafen (claim 7), page 2, line 9. On page 21, lines 34-35 they teach that the herbicides may be applied sequentially. They teach treatment of many crops including corn (equivalent to maize), rice (page 18, line 28) and other cereal crops such as wheat, see page 19, line 11.
Haikal et al. WO2009102689A2, published 2009-08-20 uses post-emergent herbicide pre-emergence and more of the same or another one post-emergence. At page 18, seven lines up from the bottom, they teach that one of the recognized post-emergent herbicides is the trazinones, an example of which is metamitron, see page 21, line 7. They teach picolinafen as a pyridine herbicide at page 21, line 4.
BBCH teaches standardized nomenclature for various stages of plant development. Stage 00 to 12 includes sprouting/germination and leaf development; stage 09-15 includes coleoptile penetrates soil through more than 3 leaves unfolded. Clearly, stages 00 through 03 are pre-emergence and stages 09-15 are post-emergence.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, prior to the instant effective filing date, to apply metamitron pre-emergent and another herbicide such as mefenacet post-emergence since Pollet et al teach sequential application of herbicides. It would have been further obvious to quantify the time of application more finely than pre-emergence and post-emergence; the BBCH scale provides a standardized way to express the time of application. The labeling of the time of application would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art due to the advantage of then being able to specify exactly want pre-emergence and post-emergence are intended.
With regard to claims 12 and 13, Pollet et al. teach treatment of many crops including corn (equivalent to maize), rice (page 18, line 28) and other cereal crops such as wheat, see page 19, line 11. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, prior to the instant effective filing date, to use the treatment method of Pollet et al. in view of Haikal et al. and BBCH on the named cereal plants with the expectation of beneficial results.
With regard to claim 14, Pollet et al. teach weeds including Alopecurus myosuroides Huds. (blackgrass, ALOMY), Lolium multiflorum Lam. (Italian ryegrass, LOLMU). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, prior to the instant effective filing date, to use the treatment method of Pollet et al. in view of Haikal et al. and BBCH to treat ALOMY with the expectation of beneficial results.
Claims 4-6 and 8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pollet et al. WO2021191618A1, published 2021-09-30 in view of Haikal et al. WO2009102689A2, published 2009-08-20 and BBCH, published 2011 as applied to claims 1-3, 7 and 9-15 above, and further in view of Kumar et al. WO 2019106528 A1, published 2019-06-06.
Note: A copy of Kumar et al. is not being furnished because the pdf is too big for the PTO’s systems and it cannot be uploaded.
The teachings of Pollet et al., Haikal et al. and BBCH are outlined above.
Kumar et al. teach many herbicides that can be used in combination including prosulfocarb, pendimethalin and clomazone. In accordance with the teachings of Pollet et al., the choice of herbicide to use with metamitron; Kumar et al. provide many herbicides from which to select whichever one is desired.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, prior to the instant effective filing date, to select any of the herbicides of Kumar et al. to use with the metamitron of Pollet et al. with the expectation of effectively preventing and/or killing weeds.
The specification seems to allege that application of metamitron pre-emergence and another herbicide post-emergence provides unexpectedly superior results. Examiner does not agree with this. Pollett et al. teach that herbicides may be applied at different growth stages; this is also implied by the fact that some herbicides are better at pre-emergent weed control and others are better at post-emergent weed control. It would be expected that, if some of the weeds survive pre-emergent application of herbicide that application of a post-emergent herbicide to the leaves of the weeds would take care of the rest. This seems totally expected.
Conclusion
No claim is allowed.
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/Robert A Wax/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 1615
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