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 § 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.
Claim(s) 1 and 3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Seng et al. (4248616) in view of Sherwood et al. (9938093) and further in view of Steele (4200412).
Regarding claim 1, the Seng et al. reference discloses a bulk material handling method at a glass manufacturing facility (see Abstract); wherein the bulk material is conveyed via conveyor (10) to hopper (14), but doesn’t disclose conveying bulk material directly from a mobile bulk material container via dense phase pneumatic conveying. The Sherwood et al. reference discloses a bulk material handling method, comprising: conveying bulk material directly from a mobile bulk material container (S; Fig. 6) into a stationary bulk material container (12; silos 1-6) via pneumatic conveying (see col. 5, lines 10-20). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date to employ a mobile bulk container to deliver material pneumatically to the Seng et al. system as, for example, taught by the Sherwood et al. reference, since mobile bulk containers delivering bulk materials via pneumatic conveyors are well-known in the art, conventional and would be obvious to try without unexpected results.
Further, as to dense phase conveying, the Steele reference discloses another bulk material system that pneumatically transports the material via dense phase (see Abstract). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date to further transport the bulk material via dense phase, since this type of bulk material transport is well-known in the art, conventional and would be obvious to try without unexpected results.
Regarding claim 3, the Sherwood et al. reference further teaches wherein the stationary container (i.e., silo 12) is one of a plurality of stationary bulk material containers (see plural silos in Figure 1) at the facility, each stationary container being configured to receive and store a different type of bulk material (i.e., sand or other proppant), a plurality of couplings (inherent; See end of conduit 13 in Figure 2A) being 13 located at the facility for coupling a feed conduit (H; hose shown in Fig. 6) of the mobile bulk material container (S) to a conduit system, and wherein the conduit system interconnects each stationary bulk material container with a single one of the couplings so that each coupling conveys only one of the different types of bulk material (inherent).
Claim(s) 2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Seng et al. (4248616), as applied to claim 1, and further in view of Lucas et al. (10294045).
Regarding claim 2, modified Seng et al. reference discloses the invention, but doesn’t disclose, before the conveying step, non-human verification that the bulk material is of a type intended to be stored in the stationary container. However, the Lucas et al. reference discloses another mobile bulk material transfer system having mobile bulk containers (32, 74), conveyors (72), hoppers and silo (12; see Figure 4). Lucas et al. further disclose RFID tags to provide non-human verification of bulk material type being delivered to silo (12; see col. 12, line 66 – col. 13, line 14). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date to further modify the modified Seng et al. device to have non-human verification (i.e., RFID) as, for example, taught by the Lucas et al. reference in order to enable the system to identify the type of material being delivered.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4 – 8 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.
The Gatham et al. (11358785) reference discloses a mobile bulk material transfer system (Figure 1B) that transfers material to a silo (112) and then to a plant (116).
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/TIMOTHY L MAUST/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3753
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