DETAILED ACTION
The following Office action concerns Patent Application Number 18/897,372. Claims 1-20 are pending in the application.
Claims 3-5 and 7-20 are withdrawn from consideration as being drawn to non-elected inventions or species.
Election/Restrictions
A restriction requirement was sent to the Applicant on May 15, 2026. The Applicant was required to elect among several groups of inventions. The Applicant responded to the restriction requirement on July 15, 2026 and elected Group I, claims 1-12, without traverse. The applicant also elected a species of cathode material Li4+dCrFeNi2O8 with traverse. In traversing the restriction requirement, the Applicant argues that search and examination of all the species could be conducted without serious burden. However, the claims contain more than 30 species of cathode material. Searching all of them would be a serious burden for the examiner.
Accordingly, claims 3-5 and 7-20 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to non-elected inventions or species.
Allowable Subject Matter
Except for the § 112 rejection below, claim 6 is allowable over the closest prior art of Ceder et al (US 2024/0258515). The reference does not teach or suggest the specific cathode material Li4+dCrFeNi2O8.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. § 112 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
(b) CONCLUSION.-The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
(d) REFERENCE IN DEPENDENT FORMS.—Subject to subsection (e), a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
Claims 1, 2, 6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112(b) because the term “(+/- 0.05)” is indefinite. It is unclear what is required by this term. It is also unclear if the parenthesis indicate that the term is optional.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC §§ 102 and 103
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. § 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
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 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 2 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Bodoin et al (US 2026/0196498) in view of Chen et al (US 2022/0140316).
Bodoin et al teaches a positive electrode for a lithium battery comprising Li2TiVO4 (par. 45, Table 1).
Bodoin et al does not teach that the positive electrode is a cathode.
However, Chen et al teaches that the positive electrode is a cathode in a lithium battery (abstract). It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine the cathode of Chen et al with the positive electrode material of Bodoin et al in order to obtain a cathode of a lithium battery.
Examiner’s Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to William Young whose telephone number is (571) 270-5078. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday, 8:30 AM to 5 PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Angela Brown-Pettigrew, can be reached at 571-272-2817. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000./WILLIAM D YOUNG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1761 July 28, 2026
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