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.
Claims 1 and 3-5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tanibuchi (JP 2006-272515).
Regarding claim 1, Tanibuchi teaches a surface-coated cutting tool (p. 1, ¶ 1). Both the base and the coating are made of a hard material (p. 1, ¶ 2). Tanibuchi teaches a, average surface roughness of the flank face is 0.1-1.5 μm, the roughness of the rake face is 0.2-0.8 μm, and the roughness of the cutting edge is 0.1-0.3 μm (p. 5, ¶ 6); with exemplary thicknesses of 1.1 μm, 0.4 μm, and 0.2 μm for the flank face, rake face, and cutting edge, respectively (p. 6, ¶ 7). This corresponds with the claimed macroscopic roughnesses, and the roughnesses of the rake and flank surfaces is greater than that at the cutting edge (which is presumed to reflect a roughness within a range of 100 μm from the cutting edge). Tanibuchi further teaches the coating layer has needle-shaped particles with a minor axis in a direction perpendicular to the surface, and the abundance ratio of these particles in the rake and flank face are greater than the abundance ratio in the cutting edge portion (p. 1, ¶ 7). The presence of these particles corresponds to a microscopic roughness, and since the rake and flank faces contain more of these particles, one of ordinary skill in the art would expect the microscopic roughnesses of the rake and flank faces to be higher than those at the cutting edge, absent objective evidence to the contrary. See MPEP 2112.
Regarding claim 3, since the claim does not give an objective measure of what ‘gradual’ means, any change in roughness can be considered gradual.
Regarding claim 4, Tanibuchi teaches a composition of the hard coating layer is TisAltWuCovCwNxOySz, where all subscripts are between 0 and 1 inclusive (p. 4, ¶ 2). This includes the claimed composition and overlaps the claimed ranges, creating a prima facie case of obviousness. See MPEP 2144.05 I.
Regarding claim 5, Tanibuchi teaches the thickness of the hard coating film is at least 0.01 to 1 μm (p. 3, ¶ 1), which overlaps the claimed ranges, creating a prima facie case of obviousness. See MPEP 2144.05 I.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 2 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: The prior art of record does not teach or suggest the claimed macroscopic and microscopic roughness values or the graded roughness profile. Fukano (JP 2005-279821) teaches a cutting tool with relative roughnesses at the flank and rake surfaces, but does not teach or suggest the claimed macroscopic and microscopic roughnesses on the rake and flank surfaces.
Conclusion
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/XIAOBEI WANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1784
