Hola

klislas@macf.com.mx
February 23, 2010

VIA E-MAIL: rsantucci@flhlaw.com

Mr. Ronald R. Santucci
FROMMER LAWRENCE & HAUG LLP
745 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10151
U. S. A

Re: Mexican Patent Application No. MX/a/2005/005567
Based upon PCT/US2003/038968
Applicant: ALBANY INTERNATIONAL CORP.
Our ref: 083-PAT

Dear Ronald R. Santucci:

According to yourkind instructions related to the report of the official action, please be informed that said official action has a non-extended final term to expire on March 19, 2010.

1. In order to comply with Article 17 of the IPL, wherein it is stipulated that for determining that an invention is new and result of an inventive activity it will be considered the state of the art in the filing date of thepatent application or depending on the case, of the recognized priority, we wish to inform you that there were found following relevant documents which affect the novelty and/or inventive step of your invention:

Doc 1: US 5, 806, 155 (Henning Gregory) of September 15, 1998.
Doc 2: US 5, 613, 527 (Zimmermann Daniel) of March 25, 1997.

Said documents of category “Y” respectively refer to anapparatus and method for hydraulic finishing fabrics of continuous filaments (Doc 1) and conformation fabric which has flattened cross filaments (Doc 2), therefore your current invention lacks of novelty and inventive step because the structural technical features that you wish to protect are evident in documents Doc1 and Doc 2.

2. Likewise we would like to comment you that after having analyzedsaid relevant documents and your current invention, we have noted that current claim 1 does not include all structural technical features in detail, such as the use and shape of said flattened filaments for support fabric due to the fact is not clear, concise and complete since it does not claim the entirety of the elements that comprising the flattened filaments i. e. how the parts that form theinvention are placed, the function carried out by each one of them, and the relation existing between them, in order to precise the patentable matter of your invention. Further the use of flattened filaments for support fabric is merely one of several possibilities from which a skilled person would select. The same reasoning applies to the subject matter of independent claim 15 which relates toa method of producing a support fabric for a hydronentangling process since the subject matter does not contain the “steps” which comprising a method of producing a support fabric and elements and/or devices which interact to carry out each step of said method.
Claim 23 does not contain the technical features necessary to define a product i. e the structural components which comprising a productclaim.

3. For submitting a new set of claims you should take into account the following:

Independent Claims should be worded in a form to include two parts, defining in the “preamble” the technical features which have been disclosed in documents Doc 1 and Doc 2, for indicating that belong to the state of the art; and precise in the “characterizing” part the matter which has not beendisclosed by cited documents D1 and D2, in order to precise the patentable matter of your invention, complying with Article 12 of the Agreement of the Rules for filing applications with the IMPI.

Likewise you should claim in the subsequent claims to claim 1, only embodiments of the invention, and keep a logical dependency with the independent or dependent claims related in a form to precise theadditional features to be protected and comply with Article 29, paragraphs VI and VII of the IPLR.

Therefore you should point out the differences existing between the matter disclosed in documents Doc 1 and Doc 2, and your invention and depending on the case to make the necessary amendments in the present set of claims for which according to article 55 of the IPL.

Additionally we would like to...