Ex Parte Sakaida

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Oct 31, 2017

11567910 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 31, 2017)

United States Patent and Trademark Office
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O.Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www.uspto.gov
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
11/567,910 12/07/2006 Atsuo Sakai da 04483.0004FP01 8418
23552 7590 11/02/2017
MERCHANT & GOULD P.C.
P.O. BOX 2903
MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55402-0903
EXAMINER
LAM, HUNG Q
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2883
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/02/2017 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address(es):
US PT023552@ merchantgould .com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte ATSUO SAKAIDA
Appeal 2017-002827
Application 11/567,910
Technology Center 2800
Before PETER F. KRATZ, BEVERLY A. FRANKLIN, and
WESLEY B. DERRICK, Administrative Patent Judges.
KRATZ, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
This is a decision on an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from the
Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 7, 8, and 13—28. We have jurisdiction
pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 6.
Appellant’s claimed invention is directed to an inkjet head and an
inkjet printer wherein the inkjet head includes a flow path unit including,
inter alia, plural pressure chambers formed in a second surface which
communicate with ink ejection ports formed in a first surface, a plurality of
actuator units, each with a parallelogram shape and defined by two sets of
opposing sides, wherein the two sets of opposing sides are inclined with
respect to two contour lines of the flow path unit, which contour lines extend
in the longitudinal direction of the flow path unit, and wherein each actuator
Appeal 2017-002827
Application 11/567,910
unit faces two or more of the pressure chambers (see claims 1, 7, 8; Spec.
12,1. 4—15; Figs. 2, 3).
Further details are evident from a review of the appealed claims.
Claim 1 is illustrative and reproduced below:
1. An inkjet head comprising:
a flow path unit having a first surface and a second surface
opposite from the first surface, the flow path unit comprising:
a plurality of pressure chambers formed in the second surface
which communicate with respective ink ejection ports formed in the first
surface and are arranged in a matrix pattern in a first direction and a second
direction which are intersecting with each other along a plane;
a common ink chamber which communicates with the plurality
of pressure chambers; and
an ink supply port which supplies an ink to the common ink
chamber; and
a plurality of actuator units, each of which is configured to
apply a pressure to the ink in a number of pressure chambers of the plurality
of pressure chambers and to be driven to eject the ink from a number of ink
ejection ports of the ink ejection ports, wherein:
each of the plurality of actuator units has a parallelogram shape
defined by two sets of opposing sides, the two sets of opposing sides of each
of the plurality of actuator units being substantially parallel to the first and
second directions, respectively;
the side of the actuator unit parallel to the second direction is
substantially parallel to that of an adjacent actuator unit and is shifted from
that of the adjacent actuator unit in the second direction;
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Application 11/567,910
each of the plurality of actuator units is placed on the second
surface of the flow path unit opposite from the first surface of the flow path
unit where the ink ejection ports are formed, and each of the plurality of
actuator units, the two sets of opposing sides of which are inclined with
respect to two contour lines of the flow path unit, faces two or more pressure
chambers of the plurality of pressure chambers;
the two contour lines are parallel with each other and extending in a
longitudinal direction of the flow path unit; and
centers of gravity of contours of the plurality of actuator units are
arranged on one substantially straight line which is parallel to the two
contour lines of the flow path unit.
The Examiner relies on the following prior art references as evidence
in rejecting the appealed claims:
Sakaida 2003/0122902 A1 Jul. 3,2003
Chikanawa 2005/0001877 A1 Jan. 6, 2005
The Examiner maintains the following grounds of rejection:
Claims 1, 7, 8, and 13—28 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Sakaida in view of Chikanawa.
We reverse the stated rejection for reasons identified by, and as
argued by, Appellant (App. Br.23—29; Reply Br. 3—5).
It is well settled that the burden of establishing a prima facie case of
non-patentability resides with the Examiner. See In re Piasecki, 745 F.2d
1468, 1472 (Fed. Cir. 1984).
Here, the Examiner’s reliance on a combination of Sakaida taken with
Chikanawa to underpin the stated obviousness rejection falls short of
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presenting a prima facie case of obviousness for the subject matter required
by any of the rejected claims.
In particular, the Examiner finds that Sakaida’s actuator units “have
only one set of opposing sides inclined with respect to two contour lines of
the flow path unit (see figs. 21A and 21B, actuator units 261)” (Ans. 2). In
other words, Sakaida fails to teach that each actuator unit of an inkjet head
has both of two sets of opposing sides inclined with respect to two contour
lines of the flow path unit as required by all of the appealed claims as
contended by Appellant (App. Br. 25; Reply Br. 2, 3, 6, 7).
To make up for this determined deficiency in the teachings of Sakaida
with respect to the subject matter required by Appellant’s appealed claims,
the Examiner turns to Chikanawa. The Examiner relies on Chikanawa for
allegedly teaching that “actuator units can be arranged to increase resolution
by tilting/rotating and shifting the units ([0082)], Chikanawa fig. 10C” (Ans.
4; see Non-Final Act. 8—9).
The Examiner determines that: “[t]his teaching can be applied to the
Sakaida inkjet head shown in fig. 21A to increase resolution and resulting in
two sets of opposing sides of the actuator units being inclined with respect to
two contour lines of the flow path unit” (Ans. 4; see Ans. 2).
In particular, the Examiner maintains that (Non-Final Act. 10):
It would have been obvious to the one having ordinary
skill in the art at the time the invention was made to use/apply
the teachings of Chikanawa et al. in configuring the
actuators of Sakaida et al. in order to obtain a geometry
arrangement of the plurality of actuators such that each of the
two sets of opposing sides of each of the plurality of actuator
units to be inclined/angled with respect to two parallel contour
lines extending in a longitudinal direction of the flow path unit
as taught by Chikanawa et al., therefore, “the resolution in the
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Application 11/567,910
sub-scanning direction that is particularly important for the line
head can be readily increased” (Chikanawa, [0082]).
However, Chikanawa teaches that line head resolution can be
increased by using plural nozzle heads arranged and fixed on a holding
frame as compared to the case when only one nozzle array is used in the
cited paragraph (| 82), not that each actuator unit of an inkjet head should
have both of two sets of opposing sides inclined with respect to two contour
lines of the flow path unit for increasing line resolution and wherein each
actuator unit faces two or more of the pressure chambers.
As argued by Appellant, the Examiner has not established that the
cited disclosures of Chikanawa, including Figure 10C as originally filed,
would have incentivized one of ordinary skill in the art to reconfigure the
actuators of Sakaida based on the cited disclosures of Chikanawa relating to
employing plural nozzle heads in a certain arrangement to increase
resolution and in a manner that that would have resulted in an inkjet head
corresponding to the inkjet head required by Appellant’s claims (App. Br.
23-27; Reply Br 3-5).
The Examiner does not directly counter Appellant’s contentions
rejecting the Examiner’s enhancements of the actual teachings of Chikanawa
in presenting a modified Figure 10C in the Non-Final Action and concerning
a lack of a teaching in Chikanawa concerning the actuator shape and the lack
of a flow path unit having contour lines as claimed in Chikanawa (Ans. 4;
Non-Final Act. 9; see App. Br. 26).
In essence, the Examiner has not furnished an adequate explanation as
to why one of ordinary skill in the art would have modified the inkjet head
of Sakaida based on the cited teachings of Chikanawa in a manner so as to
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Application 11/567,910
arrive at the claimed subject matter. In this regard, “rejections on
obviousness grounds cannot be sustained by mere conclusory statements;
instead, there must be some articulated reasoning with some rational
underpinning to support the legal conclusion of obviousness” being asserted.
In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (quoted with approval in
KSRInt'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007)).
After all, rejections based on § 103(a) must rest on a factual basis with
these facts being interpreted without hindsight reconstruction of the
invention from the prior art. See In re Warner, 379 F.2d 1011, 1017 (CCPA
1967).
The Supreme Court of the United States explained the obviousness
inquiry, as follows:
Often, it will be necessary for a court to look to interrelated
teachings of multiple patents; the effects of demands known to
the design community or present in the marketplace; and the
background knowledge possessed by a person having ordinary
skill in the art, all in order to determine whether there was an
apparent reason to combine the known elements in the fashion
claimed by the patent at issue.
KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. at 418. Furthermore, the Court
stated: “a patent composed of several elements is not proved obvious
merely by demonstrating that each of its elements was, independently,
known in the prior art.” Id. “Although common sense directs one to look
with care at a patent application that claims . . . the combination of two
known devices according to their established functions, it can be important
to identity a reason that would have prompted a person of ordinary skill. . .
to combine the elements in the way the claimed new invention does.” Id.
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Applying these principles, we reverse because the Examiner has
provided, merely a conclusory statement with respect to applying teachings
of Chikanawa for reconfiguring the actuator units of Sakaida, not the
required articulated reasoning with rational underpinning for the reasons
argued on pages 23 through 27 of the Appeal Brief and pages 3 through 5 of
the Reply Brief.
DECISION
The Examiner’s decision to reject the appealed claims is reversed.
REVERSED
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