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.
Claim(s) 1 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Aoki et al (US 6,504,262) in view of Hayakawa et al (US 2019/0248308).
Re claim 1, Aoki et al disclose a wire harness arrangement structure comprising:
a wire harness (13A-F) having an electric wire group (14) comprising a plurality of electric wires and a plurality of pairs of connectors (15) electrically connected to both ends of the electric wire group (Fig 3); and
a fixing member (11) on which the wire harness is arranged,
wherein the pairs of the connectors have at least a pair of first connectors and a pair of second connectors (Fig 3);
the electric wire group has a first electric wire group comprising a plurality of first electric wires electrically connected at both ends to the pair of the first connectors (Fig 3), and a second electric wire group comprising a plurality of second electric wires electrically connected at both ends to the pair of the second connectors (Fig 3); but does not disclose the first electric wire group has a first sheath for bundling the plurality of the first electric wires and covering an outer circumference of the plurality of the first electric wires, and is arranged on the fixing member via the first sheath; and the second electric wire group has a second sheath for bundling the plurality of the second electric wires and covering an outer circumference of the plurality of the second electric wires, and is arranged on the fixing member via the second sheath.
Hayakawa et al teach the use of a sheath (7) for bundling the plurality of the first electric wires and covering an outer circumference of the plurality of the first electric wires (Fig 2a). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to include the first sheath with the first wire group and the second sheath with the second wire group for protecting the wire groups.
Claim(s) 2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Aoki et al (US 6,504,262) in view of Hayakawa et al (US 2019/0248308) as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of JP 4-300747.
The teaching as discussed above does not disclose wherein the fixing member is provided with fixing parts for fixing each of the first sheath and the second sheath.
JP 4-300747 teaches a fixing member (1) is provided with fixing parts (2) for fixing each of first wire group (5) and second wire group (5) to the fixing member. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to include the fixing parts with the modified first and second wire groups of Aoki et al for fixing the first and second sheaths to the fixing member.
Communication
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to HUNG V NGO whose telephone number is (571)272-1979. The examiner can normally be reached 9-5:30 M-F.
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/HUNG V NGO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2841
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