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 .
Response to Amendment
Claims 13, 16-20, and 22 are amended due to the applicant's amendment.
Claims 1-24 are pending.
The objection to the abstract as set forth in the previous Office action is overcome due to the applicant's amendment.
The rejection of claim 13 under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as set forth in the previous Office action is overcome due to the applicant's amendment.
The rejection of claims 1-24 under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Voges et al. US-20150270506-A1 in view of Hatwar et al. US-20100288362-A1 and Li et al. CN-108033886-A as set forth in the previous Office action is maintained.
Response to Arguments
The applicant’s arguments on pages 27-29 of the reply dated 12/19/2025 with respect to the claims 1-24 under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Voges et al. US-20150270506-A1 in view of Hatwar et al. US-20100288362-A1 and Li et al. CN-108033886-A as set forth in the previous Office Action have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant's argument – The applicant argues on page 27 and 29 that the examiner's opinion is an assertion based on impermissible hindsight.
Examiner's response -- In response to the applicant's argument that the examiner's conclusion of obviousness is based upon improper hindsight reasoning, it must be recognized that any judgment on obviousness is in a sense necessarily a reconstruction based upon hindsight reasoning. But so long as it takes into account only knowledge which was within the level of ordinary skill at the time the claimed invention was made, and does not include knowledge gleaned only from the applicant's disclosure, such a reconstruction is proper. As discussed above and outlined below, the rejections take into account only knowledge which was within the level of ordinary skill at the time the claimed invention was made, and does not include knowledge gleaned only from the Applicant's disclosure.
Applicant's argument – The applicant argues on page 28 that Voges and Li and silent on the tandem structure as claimed and a one of ordinary skill in the art would have no motivation to use the specific tandem structure as claimed.
Examiner's response – As discussed in the rejection of record, the motivation to modify the device of Voges to including the tandem structure in provided by Hatwar and is to obtain desired white light emission with improvement in features such as drive voltage, voltage stability during operation, efficiency and long device lifetime, as taught by Hatwar,
Applicant's argument – The applicant argues on page 28 that Voges and Li teach a large quantity of compounds that could possibly be used in the hole transport layer but give no preference among them and the compounds of Li differ from the exemplary arylamine compounds of Voges and the arylamine compounds of Li differ from those taught by Voges.
Examiner's response – As discussed in the rejection of record, the motivation to select the compounds of Li is provided by Li, which is the benefit of high efficiency and long service life. Further, Voges specifically recites that generally, the hole transport compound may be a triarylamine compound, and the invention of the prior art is not limited to or defined by only those embodiments disclosed in the examples. A reference may be relied upon for all that it would have reasonably suggested to one having ordinary skill the art, including nonpreferred embodiments. See MPEP § 2123. Finally, selecting a compound from a list of specifically recited compounds of Li possessing beneficial properties taught by Li is well within the ambit of one having ordinary skill in the art and would have been obvious because it would have been a choice from a finite number of identified, predictable solution
Applicant's argument – The applicant argues bridging pages 28 to 29 that it would not have been obvious to combine the triarylamine compounds to Hatwar.
Examiner's response – Hatwar is not relied upon to teach specific hole transporting material and is instead relied upon to teach a tandem layer structure which may comprise any suitable hole transporting compound. One having ordinary skill in the art would expect that by using the material(s) taught by Voges and Li one would arrive at a functional organic light emitting device.
For at least the reasons discussed above, the rejection is respectfully maintained.
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.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Voges et al. US-20150270506-A1 (hereinafter "Voges") in view of Hatwar et al. US-20100288362-A1 (hereinafter "Hatwar") and Li et al. CN-108033886-A (hereinafter "Li-CN", see also the English language machine translation referred to herein as "Li-MT").
It is noted that Voges et al. US-20150270506-A1 is equivalent to KR-20180034692-A, which is cited in the IDS of 01/31/2022.
Regarding claims 1-5, and 8-24, Voges teaches an organic light emitting device comprising the layer structure: anode / a p-doped hole-transport layer A', comprising at least one p-dopant and a hole-transport material matrix / at least one hole-transport layer A, comprising at least one hole-transport material / at least one p-doped hole-transport layer B, comprising at least one p- dopant and at least one hole-transport material matrix / at least one hole-transport layer C, comprising at least one hole-transport material / at least one emitting layer / electron-transport layer / electron-injection layer / cathode (¶ [0012]-[0016], ¶ [0023]-[0024], ¶ [0026], ¶ [0111]).
Voges teaches that the hole-transport layer B preferably has a thickness of 5 to 50 nm (¶ [0052]), the p-dopant is preferably present in hole-transport layer B in a concentration of 0.1 to 20% by vol. (¶ [0051]), the hole-transport layer C preferably has a thickness of 5 to 50 nm (¶ [0057]), and that the hole-transport layer B comprises the same compound as hole-transport material matrix as hole-transport layer C does as hole-transport material (¶ [0063]). Voges teaches that the p-dopant may be a compound D-10
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(¶ [0050]), which meets the claimed Formula E.
The p-doped hole-transport layer B corresponds to the claimed first dopant material-doped layer and the hole-transport layer C corresponds to the first dopant material undoped layer and one having ordinary skill in the art would recognize that their combination corresponds to the first hole transport layer and overlaps with the claimed ranges of wherein the thickness of the first hole transport layer ranges from 250 Å to 700 Å, and 10% to 50% of the thickness of the first hole transport layer is doped with a first doping material and wherein the first doping material-based layer comprises the first compound and 5 to 15 parts by weight of the first dopant material. A prima facie case of obviousness exists where the claimed ranges overlap or lie inside ranges disclosed by the prior art. See MPEP § 2144.05.
Voges does not disclose a device wherein an additional first auxiliary emission layer is present between the hole-transport layer C and the emitting layer. However, Voges teaches that additional layers may be present including additional hole-transport layers (¶ [0112]-[0113]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the pertinent art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to form an additional hole transport layer in the device of Voges between the hole-transport layer C and the emitting layer, because this would have been combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results. See MPEP 2143.I.(A).
This additional hole-transport layer layer corresponds to the claimed first auxiliary emission layer.
Voges does not disclose a device wherein the organic material layer between the anode and cathode comprises a first stack, a second stack, a third stack, and a fourth stack, wherein each stack comprises the duplicate layers as discussed above.
However, in the analogous art of OLEDs, Hatwar teaches an organic light-emitting device (Figure 1 and ¶ [0098]) comprising a first electrode (“anode 110”), a second electrode (“cathode 170”), a plurality of light-emitting units in the number of m disposed between the first electrode and the second electrode (“Nth EL units”) comprising at least one emission layer (¶ [0092]), and a plurality of charge generation layers in the number of m-1 disposed between two neighboring light-emitting units (“(N-1)th intermediate connector regions”) wherein m is an integer of 2 or more (“N is an integer greater than 1” see [0098]). Hatwar teaches wherein each Nth EL Unit may comprise a hole transport region, emission layer(s), and an electron transport region (Figure 3 and ¶ [0100]). Hatwar also teaches that the colors of the emission layers may be selected so as to obtain the desired properties. For example, Hatwar suggests that a white OLED can be achieved by including blue light emitting layers in combination with red and green emitting layers (¶ [0100]-[0101]). Hatwar teaches the device provides improvement in features such as drive voltage, voltage stability during operation, efficiency and long device lifetime (¶ [0014]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the pertinent art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to form a device comprising the stacked structure including light-emitting units of different colors and connector regions disclosed by Hatwar wherein each Nth EL Unit comprises the layer structure of Voges including blue light emitting layers in combination with red and green emitting layers, based on the teaching of Hatwar. The motivation for doing so would have been to obtain desired white light emission with improvement in features such as drive voltage, voltage stability during operation, efficiency and long device lifetime, as taught by Hatwar.
Voges does not disclose a device wherein the hole-transport material is a compound that meets the claimed Formula 1. However, Voges teaches that the hole-transport material is preferably a monotriarylamine compound.
Li teaches a fluorene compound that is a monotriarylamine compound for use in the hole transport layer of an organic light emitting device (Li-MT, page 1 of 9, line 37 and Li-CN, page 6; and Li-MT, page 3 of 9, lines 3-4). Li teaches that an organic light emitting device comprising the fluorene compound exhibits high efficiency and long service life (Li-MT, page 3 of 9, lines 6-7). Li teaches specific examples of the fluorene compound including
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(Li-CN, page 9).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the pertinent art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the device of Voges by forming the hole transport material out of the monotriarylamine fluorene compound as taught by Li. One would have been motivated to do so because Voges teaches that the hole transport material is preferably a monotriarylamine compound and Li teaches a monotriarylamine fluorene compound. The selection of a known material, which is based upon its suitability for the intended use, is within the ambit of one of ordinary skill in the pertinent art. See MPEP § 2144.07.
Additionally, Li teaches an organic light emitting device comprising the fluorene compound exhibits high efficiency and long service life and therefore forming the hole transport material in the device of Voges out of the compound of Li would yield the benefit of high efficiency and long service life, as described above.
The compound
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of Li is a compound of the claimed Formula 1 and corresponds to the claimed compound P-11.
Therefore, the modified device meets claims 1-5, and 8-24.
Regarding claims 6-7, Voges in view of Hatwar and Li teaches the modified device as discussed above with respect to claim 1.
Voges in view of Hatwar and Li does not disclose a device wherein the hole-transport material is a compound that meets one of claimed Formula 10 and 11 and one of Formulae 12 and 13. However, the compound of Li
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is a positional isomer of the claimed compound of Formulae 10-12.
Given the teachings of Li, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the pertinent art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to make the positional isomer of the compound
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wherein the amine nitrogen is meta-substituted instead of para-substituted and thereby arrive at a compound that meets the claimed Formulae 10 and 12. One of ordinary skill in the pertinent art would have been motivated to produce the positional isomer of the compound of Li in order to pursue the known options within their technical grasp and would expect the isomeric compounds to be useful in the hole transport layer of the device of Voges in view of Hatwar and Li and possess the properties taught by Li. A prima facie case of obviousness exists when chemical compounds have very close structural similarity and similar utilities. See MPEP § 2144.09 I. When compounds which are position isomers or homologs are of sufficiently close structural similarity, there is an expectation that such compounds possess similar properties. See MPEP § 2144.09 II.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
KR-20170134132-A teaches
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(page 29); and
KR-20170088650-A teaches
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(page 16).
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Elizabeth M. Dahlburg whose telephone number is 571-272-6424. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET, and alternate Fridays.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jennifer Boyd can be reached at 571-272-7783. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ELIZABETH M. DAHLBURG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1786