DETAILED ACTION
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 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hirai et al. (US 20210309303) and Kwolek (US 20110187144)
Regarding claim 1, Hirai discloses a work vehicle, comprising: a body (body shown in figs 1-2); a travel device (travel device shown in fig 8a) attached to and supporting the body (fig 8a); a dash panel (31, 45) disposed forward of the driver's seat and the passenger's seat and having a front portion (45); an upper panel (60) disposed forward of the dash panel and having a back portion (63) (fig 6); and a coupler (12) attached to the front portion and the back portion and coupling the front portion to the back portion (fig 6), and wherein the front portion is over the back portion with a gap (annotated fig 6) present between a front end (46) of the front portion and the coupler and facing forward from the front end (fig 6).
Hirai is silent regarding the presence of a driver's seat on the body; a passenger's seat on the body and lateral to the driver's seat.
Kwolek teaches a driver's seat on the body; a passenger's seat on the body and lateral to the driver's seat.
Before the effective filling date, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Hirai and Kwolek before him or her, to modify the apparatus/method disclosed by Hirai to include a driver's seat on the body and a passenger's seat on the body and lateral to the driver's seat as taught by Kwolek in order to allow a driver and a passenger to seat.
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Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-7 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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/DANY E AKAKPO/Examiner, Art Unit 3672
08/07/2026
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