DETAILED ACTION
The following Office action concerns Patent Application Number 18/986,132. Claims 1-30 are pending in the application.
Claims 4, 8, 27-30 have been withdrawn from consideration as being drawn to non-elected inventions or species.
The applicant’s amendment filed July 31, 2026 has been entered.
Election/Restrictions
A restriction requirement was sent to the Applicant on June 2, 2026. The Applicant was required to elect among several groups of inventions. The Applicant responded to the restriction requirement on July 31, 2026 and elected Group I, claims 1-26, without traverse.
In a telephone interview with Mr. Joseph Crimaldi on August 12, 2026, the applicant further elected a species of sodium bicarbonate and a species of citric acid, with traverse. No reason was given for the traversal.
Accordingly, claims 4, 8, 27-30 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to non-elected inventions or species.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 13-26 are allowable over the closest prior art of Burt et al (US 2004/0116317). The reference does not teach or suggest that the toilet training product contains borosilicate microspheres or that the amount of low density additive is 10-30 % by weight.
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 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.
Claims 1-3, 5-7, 9-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over Burt et al (US 2004/0116317) in view of Halpern et al (US 4,092,381) as an information reference.
Burt et al teaches a toilet cleaning composition (par. 4, 6). The composition comprises sodium bicarbonate (par. 13), citric acid (par. 11), corn starch (par. 77), and polymer microsponge (par. 81). The microsponge is composed of polymer microspheres (Table 2). Polymer microsponges are known in the art to have a density of about 0.13 to 0.23 g/cm3, which is less than the density of water (Halpern et al, col. 4, lines 48-60).
The amount of bicarbonate is 10-80 wt % (par. 14). The amount of acid is 20-80 wt % (par. 12). The amount of starch (binder) is 0.1-10 wt % (par. 78).
The toilet cleaning composition is capable of being used for toilet training because is contains all of the components of the claimed toilet training product.
Examiner’s Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to William Young whose telephone number is (571) 270-5078. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday, 8:30 AM to 5 PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Angela Brown-Pettigrew, can be reached at 571-272-2817. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000./WILLIAM D YOUNG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1761 August 14, 2026
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