DETAILED ACTION
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
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) 1-3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nakanishi (U.S. Publication No. 20020015589) in view of Todo (JPH11295787). Nakanishi teaches a camera, comprising: a circuit board 50 including a contact connected to a trigger element 53; a discharge tube 41 configured to discharge electricity; a housing 42 accommodating the discharge tube, the housing being attached to the circuitboard; a reflector 43, the reflector being urged toward the housing (by 46) and attached to the housing (by 431/432); and a wire 45 having a first end electrically connected to the contact on the circuit board (fig. 11) and a second end with an exposed conductor (fig. 7), wherein the housing includes a receiving portion receiving the reflector (see fig. 4), and a sidewall of the housing includes a first holder 42d guiding the wire inside the housing and holding the wire to have the second end of the wire held between the reflector and the receiving portion. The applicant should note that the language in italics is considered an intended use.
Nakanishi teaches the salient features of the claimed invention except for the sidewall locating the receiving portion on a sidewall located lateral to the receiving portion and extending perpendicular to the circuit board. There are a limited number of sidewalls and it would be a matter of design choice for one of ordinary skill in the art to choose which of the sidewalls should contain the receiving portion depending on the shape and configuration of the camera and location of the circuit board. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to utilize the features of a sidewall located lateral to the receiving portion and extending perpendicular to the circuit board for the purpose of efficient use of space depending on component configuration.
Nakanishi teaches the salient features of the claimed invention except for the reflector being conductive. Todo teaches in ¶2 that it was known to use a conductive reflector. The applicant should also note that figures 1-6 of Todo teaches holding the wire to have the second end of the wire held between the reflector and the receiving portion. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to utilize the features of Todo for the purpose of ensuring the trigger wire remains engaged to trigger the flash tube.
Regarding claim 2, Nakanish teaches the housing has an opening 42c adjacent to the first holder in the sidewall, and the opening extends between the sidewall and the receiving portion. See fig. 3 and ¶64.
Regarding claim 3, Nakanishi teaches a second holder holding the wire between the first end and a portion of the wire held by the first holder. See the arrow in annotated fig. 5 below.
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Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 4 is 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. Petruchik (U.S. Patent No. 6075948) teaches a triggering electrode connected to the circuit board and the back of the reflector. 森沢 太平 (JP7-23342) Teaches a circuit board in a horizontal orientation (as opposed to vertical) with respect to the flash unit.
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/CHRISTOPHER E MAHONEY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2852
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