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 .
Status of the Claims
Examiner acknowledges receipt of Applicant’s amendments and arguments filed with the Office on April 7th, 2026 in response to the Non-Final Office Action mailed on January 9th, 2026. Per Applicant's response, Claims 1-3 & 5-6 have been amended and Claims 8-9 have been newly-added. All other claims have been left in their previously-presented form. Consequently, Claims 1-9 now remain pending in the instant application. The Examiner has carefully considered each of Applicant’s amendments and/or arguments, and they will be addressed below.
Claim Objections
Claims 3 & 5-7 were objected to for minor informalities. Applicant’s amendments have remedied these issues, rendering the objections moot.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
Claims 1-7 were rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention. Applicant’s amendments have remedied these issues, rendering the rejections moot.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed April 7th, 2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Applicant has amended Claim 1 to now recite “the first and second openings being spaced more than 90 degrees from each along the rotation direction”. Applicant’s amendments are rendered obvious by the prior art. Please refer to the updated rejections below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1-5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over WO 2021/152767 to Kanatani (attached to previous office action).
In regards to independent Claim 1, and with particular reference to Figures 1-7, Kanatani discloses:
1. A gear pump or gear motor (10; Fig. 1; see also Abstract) comprising: a drive gear (20) and a driven gear (22) that mesh with each other (para. 14), the drive gear having teeth (52; Fig. 4) and the driven gear having teeth (54; Fig. 4); and a side plate (28) arranged to be opposed to the drive gear and the driven gear (Figs. 1 & 7), one of the drive gear and the driven gear being a first gear (inherent), a suction passage (16) through which a fluid flows (para. 13), a discharge passage (18) through which a fluid having a higher pressure than the fluid flowing through the suction passage flows (para. 13), a mesh area in which the drive gear and the driven gear mesh with each other (clearly seen in Fig. 3; the area surrounding 46), and a rotation trajectory area (gear storage chamber 14) being arranged on a rotation trajectory of the teeth of the first gear in a rotation direction of the teeth of the first gear (apparent in Fig. 2), the suction passage, the rotation trajectory area, the discharge passage, and the mesh area being arranged sequentially in order (it is apparent in Fig. 2 that the suction passage, the rotation trajectory area, the discharge passage, and the mesh area are formed sequentially in order), and the side plate (28) including a first opening (64) opposed to the mesh area (Fig. 3), a second opening (66) opposed to the rotation trajectory area (Fig. 3), and a feed passage (30) communicating with the first opening and the second opening (Figs. 3 & 7; see also paras. 22-25), the first and second openings being spaced more than 60 degrees from each other along the rotation direction (best shown in Fig. 7).
While Kanatani discloses the vast majority of Applicant’s claimed invention, including the first and second openings being spaced from each other along the rotation direction (best shown in Fig. 7), he does not specify that they are spaced “more than 90 degrees from each other”, as claimed. In this instance, Kanatani discloses the claimed invention except for a spacing of greater than 90 degrees. However, it would have been an obvious matter of design choice to have provided such a spacing between the two openings, since applicant has not disclosed that a greater-than-90-degrees spacing solves any stated problem or is for any particular purpose and it appears that the invention would perform equally well with the (approximately) 70 degree spacing provided in Kanatani. The courts have held that where the only difference between the prior art and the claimed invention is the recitation of relative dimensions of the claimed device, the device having the claimed relative dimensions would not perform differently than the prior art device and is therefore not patentably distinct (See MPEP § 2144.04 - Paragraph IV.A). Furthermore, it has been held by the courts that where the general conditions of a claim are disclosed in the prior art, discovering the optimum or workable ranges (see In re AIler, 105 USPQ 233) or an optimum value of a result effective variable (see In re Boesch, 617 F.2d 272, 205 USPQ 215 (CCPA 1980)) involves only routine skill in the art. Please note that while the claimed spacing is shown in Applicant’s Figure 5, the Applicant has failed to disclose any criticality for the claimed limitation. A change in dimension is generally recognized as being within the level of ordinary skill in the art, absent any showing of unexpected results. Furthermore, Kanatani clearly teaches a spacing of the two openings having a similar form and function, and therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention was made to have Kanatani’s two openings be spaced more than 90 degrees, since utilizing such a spacing would require only routine skill in the art to utilize and produce predictable results (i.e. the unloading of the fluid that is trapped between the drive and drive gears, as recognized by Kanatani).
In regards to Claim 2, the side plate further includes a third opening (76) opposed to the rotation trajectory area (Figs. 2 & 7) and arranged to be connected to the discharge passage (Fig. 2; paras. 29, 32), and the third opening is closer to the mesh area than the second opening as measured along the rotation direction of the first gear (it is apparent in Fig. 2 that one end of the third opening 76 is located closer to the mesh area in the rotation direction than the second opening).
In regards to Claim 3, with the third opening opposed to any one of a plurality of tooth spaces of the first gear (as shown in Fig. 3), the second opening (66) is opposed to a part of the rotation trajectory area different from a part in which the one of the plurality of tooth spaces is opposed to the third opening (this is apparent in Fig. 3).
In regards to Claim 4, the mesh area includes a closed area (46) surrounded by the teeth of the drive gear and the teeth of the driven gear (Figs. 2-3), and with the first opening opposed to the closed area (as shown in Fig. 5), the second opening and the third opening are opposed to different tooth spaces of the first gear (this is apparent in Fig. 5).
In regards to Claim 5, with the second opening opposed to any one of a plurality of tooth spaces of the first gear, the one of the plurality of tooth spaces opposed to the second opening and the suction passage are partitioned by at least one of the teeth (this is apparent in Figs. 2 & 4).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 8-9 are allowed.
Claims 6-7 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the best available prior art fails to disclose the gear pump or gear motor of claim 1, wherein the side plate includes a first side plate to be opposed to the first gear, and a second side plate configured to be fixed to the first side plate, an opposed surface of an outer surface of the first side plate opposed to the first gear includes the first opening and the second opening, and the feed passage includes a first passage section between the first side plate and the second side plate, a second passage section provided in the first side plate and communicating with the first passage section and the first opening, and a third passage section provided in the first side plate and communicating with the first passage section and the second opening, as recited in Claim 6.
The best available prior art, outside of Kanatani already applied above, is:
1. JPS54149002 to Teruyama
2. JP 2017/223122 to Tsuzuki
3. JP 2012077686 to Ishinaka
4. JP 2009030516 to Yokoi
5. US 4,311,444 to Shumate
6. US 4,239,468 to Smith
7. US 4,086,216 to Shumate
8. US 2,714,856 to Kane
While each of the above-noted references generally describe gear pumps similar to that claimed by Applicant, including the use of side plates on respective sides the drive/driven gears, none of the available prior art references disclose a first side plate to be opposed to the first gear, and a second side plate configured to be fixed to the first side plate, an opposed surface of an outer surface of the first side plate opposed to the first gear includes the first opening and the second opening, and the feed passage includes a first passage section between the first side plate and the second side plate, a second passage section provided in the first side plate and communicating with the first passage section and the first opening, and a third passage section provided in the first side plate and communicating with the first passage section and the second opening, as recited in Claim 6. Thus, none of these prior art references remedy the deficiencies in Kanatani. Applicant’s specification clearly depicts the arrangement of Claim 6 within Figure 4, and Applicant makes clear that with such a particular arrangement of side plates and corresponding feed passage structures, a rapid change in the pressure of the fluid in the tooth spaces can be reduced, which can reduce the vibration or noise generated in the gear pump or gear motor. Furthermore, Applicant states that damage to the components of the gear pump by cavitation can also be reduced. The prior art fails to disclose or render obvious Applicant’s particular side plate arrangement recited in Claim 6. Claim 7 is objected to for similar reasons, via its dependency upon Claim 6.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendments filed April 7th, 2026 have necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALEXANDER BRYANT COMLEY whose telephone number is (571)270-3772. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9AM-6PM CST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Mark Laurenzi can be reached at 571-270-7878. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ALEXANDER B COMLEY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3746
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