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) 21, 30, 33 and 38-40 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Fuchs (U.S. 7336165) in view of Hartung (CZ 200902).
Fuchs teaches a smoke detector comprising a base 20, a cover 40 and a body 30, the cover 40 having a planar body with an annular shape (see fig. 4a), wherein the cover includes tabs 47 which engage with tabs 37 of the body.
However Fuchs does not explicitly teach the cover being replaceable with another cover, the another cover including at least one feature different than that of the cover, and the at least one feature enabling operation of a sensor in operating conditions different than those for which the cover was previously installed.
Hartung teaches a flow monitor 2 comprising a removable adapter 32, and a replaceable adapter with different design features such as reduced flow cross-section (see page 7).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify the device of Fuchs with the teaching of Hartung in order to provide wider range of application.
Regarding claim 40, Fuchs further teaches wherein the sensor is configured to detect an environmental condition at the smoke detector (see column 2, line 3).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 22-29, 31, 32 and 34-37 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
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JAMEL E WILLIAMS whose telephone number is (571)270-7027. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Thursday, 10am-4pm.
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/JAMEL E WILLIAMS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2855
