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) 12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yamamoto et al. (U.S. Patent Application Publication 2005/0167214), in view of Orchard (U.S. Patent Application Publication 2020/0353655). Yamamoto et al., hereafter “Yamamoto,” show that it is known to have a processing device for pressing a product (0017), comprising an upper die with curvature areas and a lower die with a curvature (elements 65, 64, 71-73), a plurality of upper heaters and an upper temperature sensor (elements 74, 75; 0066), and a plurality of lower heaters and a plurality of lower temperatures sensors (elements 82, 83; 0067). Yamamoto does not describe the die curvatures being variable. Orchard describes a device for pressing a product wherein the curvatures of an upper and lower die are variable (Figure 3; 0007, 0010-0016, 0030-0033). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to use Orchard’s variable curvature die surfaces in Yamamoto’s apparatus in order to create customizable complex shapes (see Orchard). Yamamoto does not show two temperatures sensors in his upper die. It would have been obvious to include a plurality of temperature sensors in Yamamoto’s upper die in order to increase the datapoints of temperature in the die and because there is art recognized suitability for a plurality of sensors, e.g. in his lower die. The examiner notes that the process steps of claim 12 do not further limit the claimed apparatus structure, and it is the position of the examiner that the claimed apparatus structure as suggested by Yamamoto and Orchard, as noted above, would be capable of carrying out such process steps.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 13-16 are 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.
Conclusion
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MONICA ANNE HUSON
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 1742
/MONICA A HUSON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1742