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 .
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.
Claim Interpretation
As Applicant is free to be his or her own lexicographer and the disclosure clearly redefines the term storage medium/storage media to mean print sheet, the term “storage medium” in claim 1 is interpreted to mean “print sheet,” as opposed to the accepted meaning of “a device that stores digital information”.
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) 1 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sawamura et al. (US 5,596,395; “Sawamura”) in view of Tajiri (US 2015/0104213).
Regarding claim 1, Sawamura discloses an image forming apparatus (Fig. 19, Col. 6 lines 5-12), comprising:
(see Fig. 19) an image forming section including a photoreceptor 1, a charging section 2 that comes into contact with the photoreceptor 1 to charge the photoreceptor 1, an exposure section (optical imaging device) that forms an electrostatic latent image on the photoreceptor 1, a developing section 4 that supplies toner to the photoreceptor 1 to form a toner image corresponding to the electrostatic latent image, a transfer section 5 that transfers the toner image to a storage medium (paper), a toner concentration sensor 10 that detects concentration of the toner image transferred to the transfer section, (Col. 6 lines 5-50)
one or more controllers 104/30 that control the image forming section (Figs. 1, 2, & 10, Col. 8 line 53 - Col. 9 line 7, Col. 15 lines 11-29),
wherein at the time of start-up (i.e., when the power is turned on) of the image forming section, the one or more controllers perform predetermined determination processing (processing of Figs. 11-13) by which both a contact state between the photoreceptor 1 and the transfer section 5 (i.e., current transfer state) and a contact state between the photoreceptor 1 and the charging section 2 (i.e., current charging state) are determined (current charging and transfer states are represented by ‘0’, ‘1’, or ‘2’; Col. 9 lines 34-48),
when determining that the photoreceptor 1 is in the contact state with the transfer section 5 and the photoreceptor 1 is in the contact state with the charging section 2 (i.e., state ‘1’ and current charging state and current transfer state are both ON, “YES” in S20 Fig. 12; Col. 10 lines 4-16, Col. 12 lines 26-38), the one or more controllers determine normality and start up the image forming section, and then shift the apparatus to a predetermined standby state (“When the destination charging and transfer state is at the state of `1`; that is a state where the destination charging state and the destination transfer state are both ON, such destination charging and transfer state has been detected to be identical with the current charging and the transfer state in steps S3 and S4 in FIG. 11, which returns the operation to the main routine of the image forming apparatus.” Col. 13 lines 10-17), and
when determining that the photoreceptor is not in the contact state with the transfer section or the photoreceptor is not in the contact state with the charging section, the one or more controllers determine that abnormality has occurred and limit operation of the image forming section to a predetermined operation (flow of S1 - S3 -> S10 - S14 -> S16 of Fig. 11; Col. 9 line 49 - Col. 11 line 29; it is judged that the clutch is out of order, which implies limiting operation of the image forming section).
Sawamura does not disclose the entire structure of the image forming apparatus, and does not explicitly disclose a fixing section that thermally fixes the toner image to the storage medium.
Tajiri teaches providing a fixing section 14 that thermally fixes a toner image to a storage medium S within an image forming apparatus 50 (Fig. 1 [0055-0056]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to include a fixing section that thermally fixes the toner image to the storage medium, as taught by Tajiri, in the image forming apparatus of Sawamura. One would have been motivated to make this modification in order to ensure that the toner image sufficiently bonds to the storage medium, thereby promoting a high-quality final print.
Claim(s) 1-2 and 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kaku (US 2023/0341792) in view of Tajiri (US 2015/0104213).
Regarding claim 1, Kaku discloses an image forming apparatus 100 (Fig. 2), comprising:
an image forming section including (see Fig. 2) a photoreceptor 13 ([0027]), a charging section 14 that comes into contact with the photoreceptor to charge the photoreceptor (Fig. 4 [0027]), an exposure section 11 that forms an electrostatic latent image on the photoreceptor ([0027]), a developing section 12 that supplies toner to the photoreceptor to form a toner image corresponding to the electrostatic latent image ([0027]), a transfer section 21 that transfers the toner image to a storage medium (print sheet) ([0027]), a toner concentration sensor 43 that detects concentration (toner adhesion amount) of the toner image transferred to the transfer section ([0031]), and a fixing section 17 that thermally fixes the toner image to the storage medium ([0034]); and
one or more controllers 110/115 that control the image forming section (Fig. 3 [0026, 0036]),
wherein at the time of start-up of the image forming section, the one or more controllers perform predetermined determination processing (shown in Figs. 11-13) by which i.e., separation removal confirmation) are determined ([0047]),
when determining that flow of steps S31 through S47 in Fig. 12, then S51 -> S53 in Fig. 13) ([0051-0058]), the one or more controllers determine normality (Yes in S53) ([0057-0058]) and start up the image forming section (S57 through S67) ([0059-0061]), and then shift the apparatus to a predetermined standby state (S69) (bias voltages are lowered and driving is stopped; [0061]), and
when determining that No in S53 of Fig. 13), the one or more controllers determine that abnormality has occurred (separation removal error) and limit operation of the image forming section to a predetermined operation (separation removal failure is displayed on operation acceptor 105 and driving of the process unit is stopped) (S55; Fig. 13 [0058]).
Kaku fails to disclose determining a contact state between the photoreceptor and the transfer section and when determining that the photoreceptor is not in the contact state with the transfer section the one or more controllers determine that abnormality has occurred and limit operation of the image forming section to a predetermined operation.
Tajiri teaches a similar image forming apparatus 50 (Fig. 1 [0036]), wherein one or more controllers 45 (Fig. 1 [0037]) perform predetermined determination processing (processing of Fig. 14) by which a contact state between a photoreceptor 1 and a transfer section 7 (via contact/separation of primary transfer member 5 and photoreceptor 1) isi.e., flag 43a sends ON signal during full color printing; Fig. 15 [0095]) with the transfer section, the one or more controllers determine normality and start up the image forming section (flow of S11-S14 in Fig. 19; [0109-0110]), and when determining that the photoreceptor is not in the contact state with the transfer section (i.e., flag 43a does not send ON signal during full color printing; Fig. 15 [0095]), the one or more controllers determine that abnormality has occurred (flow of S11-S13 -> S15 in Fig. 19; [0109-0110]) and limit operation of the image forming section to a predetermined operation (during the occurrence of the error, a message such as "PLEASE CONTACT SERVICE PERSON" is displayed together with an arrow code (number in a plurality digits), so that it is possible to stop the operation of the apparatus main assembly 50a; [0108]).
Based on the teachings of Tajiri, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to configure the image forming apparatus of Kaku such that its controller(s) could determine a contact state between the photoreceptor and the transfer section, and when determining that the photoreceptor is not in the contact state with the transfer section, the controller(s) determines that abnormality has occurred and limits operation of the image forming section to a predetermined operation. One would have been motivated to make this modification in order to prevent the situation where a toner image is not transferred or a lifetime of parts is shortened (Tajiri [0009]).
Regarding claim 2, modified Kaku teaches the image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein (see Kaku) when determining normality (Yes in S53) ([0057-0058]) as a result of the determination processing, the one or more controllers do not perform the determination processing from a next start-up of the image forming apparatus (When the separation removal confirmation has already been performed, that is, when the process unit 30 is not new (No in Step S23), the controller 110 skips the process of separation removal confirmation by the separation removal confirmer 135 and executes the process of image quality adjustment by the image quality adjuster 131. That is, the controller 110 proceeds to the process in Step S57 illustrated in FIG. 13. See [0050] and Figs. 11 and 13), and when determining that abnormality has occurred, the one or more controllers perform the determination processing from the next start-up of the image forming apparatus (if Yes in S23, the determination processing will be repeated; Figs. 11-13 [0050-0051]).
Regarding claim 6, modified Kaku teaches the image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein (see Kaku) the image forming section forms images according to toner images of a plurality of colors (Kaku Fig. 1 [0028]), when supplying power to the image forming section for start-up, the one or more controllers perform predetermined determination processing of determining both a mounted state of the transfer section and the contact state between the photoreceptor and the charging section for the toner images of the respective colors (Kaku [0068]), and when determining as a result of the determination processing that abnormality has occurred in only one color image, the one or more controllers do not start up the image forming section or limits operation of the image forming section to a predetermined operation (“separation removal confirmation may be performed for each separation mechanism” [0075], as such, when it is determined that an abnormality occurs in only one color image, limiting the start up would occur in the same manner as if there were only 1 separation mechanism that registered an abnormality).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-5 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Prior art of record does not disclose or suggest the claimed “in the determination processing, the one or more controllers control the charging section, the exposure section, the developing section, and the transfer section to transfer a predetermined patch toner image to the transfer section, and then cause the toner concentration sensor to detect concentration of the patch toner image, and determine, based on the detection result, the contact state between the photoreceptor and the transfer section and the contact state between the photoreceptor and the charging section” (emphasis added) in combination with the remaining limitations of claims 3-5.
Prior Art
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Otsuka (US 2023/0266692) teaches determining a contact/separation determination mode to determine a state of contact between a charging roller and drum.
Hatano (US 2022/0244671) teaches determining a primary transfer separation operation error between primary transfer rollers and an intermediate transfer belt.
Conclusion
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/CARLA J THERRIEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2852