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 § 102
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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 1-2 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Kawanakako JP 2009-292598A (hereinafter “Kawanakako”).
Regarding claim 1, Kawanakako, with reference to FIGS. 7 and 12, discloses a sheet conveyance device comprising:
a skew detector (40a, 40b) that detects a skewed amount with respect to a conveyance direction of a sheet to be conveyed; and
a skew corrector (27b, 32, 33, 34, 28) that corrects skew feeding of the sheet,
wherein the skew corrector includes a guide member (27b) that supports the sheet along a width direction, and displaces the guide member so as to rotate a region in the width direction of the sheet supported by the guide member about an axis parallel to a conveyance direction according to a skewed amount of the sheet detected by the skew detector.
Regarding claim 2, wherein the guide member slackens and supports the sheet in a direction orthogonal to the conveyance direction, and a conveyance path length is changed by relatively changing a slack amount on both sides of the sheet in a width direction by displacement of the guide member (tilting of 27b results in tilting one side of a sheet upwards and the other side downwards).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-5 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
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
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/LUIS A GONZALEZ/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3653