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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after allowance or after an Office action under Ex Parte Quayle, 25 USPQ 74, 453 O.G. 213 (Comm'r Pat. 1935). Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, prosecution in this application has been reopened pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on April 8, 2026 has been entered.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-3 and 5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Greengate (GB 890422).
Upon further review, these claims are rejected as presented below. The application is reopened.
Re Claim 1, Greengate – a floating screen for a storage tank – discloses a liquid storage device comprising: a reservoir tank that is equipped on a vehicle and that stores a liquid [Page 1 Lines 12-21]; and a floating cover that floats on a liquid surface of the liquid in the reservoir tank and that covers at least a part of the liquid surface [Fig. 1], wherein the reservoir tank includes: a body configured to store the liquid [within wall A]; and a tank inlet having a smaller diameter than the body [Page 1 Lines 35-39, 58-60, and 66-70], and the floating cover has elasticity to such an extent that the floating cover can change from a stored state in which the floating cover can pass through the tank inlet to a deployed state [because of ring 3] in which the floating cover is spread along the liquid surface by elastic restoring force [Page 1 Lines 71-77].
Re Claim 2, Greengate discloses the floating cover has a float portion having a specific gravity smaller than a specific gravity of the liquid [in order to float on the liquid within the tank, the cover has less gravity than the liquid in the tank].
Re Claim 3, Greengate discloses the cover has an umbrella shape [Fig. 2], and the floating cover includes: a covering sheet [2] covering at least a part of the liquid surface; and a plurality of frames [5] arranged radially and to which the covering sheet is fixed [Fig. 2].
Re Claim 5, Greengate discloses in each of two horizontal directions intersecting each other, a dimension of the floating cover is substantially the same as or slightly smaller than an inner dimension of the reservoir tank [Fig. 1].
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 4 is objected to as being dependent upon rejected base claim 1, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Re Claim 4, the prior art discloses most of the claimed invention regarding reservoir tanks with inflow ports on side walls of a container. However, the prior art does not expressly disclose that the floating cover in the deployed state has a shape in contact with or proximal to a second side wall opposed to the first side wall at a position directly facing the inflow port in the inflow direction in a plan view.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ROBERT J HICKS whose telephone number is (571)270-1893. The examiner can normally be reached Mon - Fri 8:30-5:00.
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/ROBERT J HICKS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3736
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