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) 1 and 2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over WO 2023/190939 (Hideaki) in view of JP 3236177 (Kikusui) and in further view of US PGPub 2018/0160718 (Liet)
In Re claim 1 Hideaki discloses an electrode slurry manufacturing apparatus comprising a material loading unit (626), a feeder unit (hopper into which feeder unit empties); and a multi-screw kneader (623), wherein: the material loading unit is configured to load a plurality of types of electrode materials collectively into the feeder unit.
Hideaki fails to disclose a feeder unit comprising a feeding blade and a spiral shaped blade.
Kikusui discloses an apparatus for mixing a material mixture comprising a feeder unit further comprising an inlet opening (top opening of hopper B01); an agitation chamber (Hopper B01) into which materials are loaded; a discharge opening (powder drop port B01a) disposed in a bottom part of the agitation chamber; a feeding blade (extrusion blade B061) mounted to a shaft disposed on the bottom part of the agitation chamber, and feeding material to the discharge opening and an agitation blade (B064) mounted to the shaft above the feeding blade.
Liet discloses a feeder vessel (mixing container 3) for mixing a mixture comprising a blade (take-up plate 9) mounted to a shaft disposed on the bottom part of an agitation chamber and a spiral blade (helix 7) disposed above the feeding blade and mounted to the shaft (shown in Figure 1).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date of the invention to modify the Hideaki apparatus by utilizing a feeder unit like the one taught in Kikusui, in order to thoroughly mix electrode components prior to the introduction to the multi-screw kneader. Furthermore, it would have been obvious to use a spiral blade above the feeding blade mounted on the shaft to agitate the components, since the substitution of one known element for another known element to achieve predictable results requires only ordinary skill in the art.
In Re claim 2 Liet discloses a spiral blade (7) connected to a shaft in a radial direction of the shaft (shown in Figure 1).
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.
Claim 6 is allowed.
Conclusion
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/JASON K NIESZ/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3753