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 .
This office action is in response to the Applicant’s communication filed on 06/26/2025.
The applicant’s arguments have been considered but are moot in view of new ground(s) of rejections necessitated by the applicant’s amendment.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1, 3 – 5, 8 – 12, 14, 17, 19, 21 – 23 and 26 – 30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claims 1, 17 and 19 each recites the limitation "the antenna" twice in the amended portion. There is insufficient/unclear antecedent basis for this limitation in each of the claims. Does “the antenna” in the amended portion refer to the previously recited “an antenna array”, or “a first antenna” or something else?
Claims 3 – 5, 8 – 12, 14, 21 – 23 and 26 – 30 are also rejected as being dependent from the rejected base claims.
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.
Claims 1, 4, 5, 8 – 10, 12, 17, 19, 22, 23 and 26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 5550550 (Das) in view of US 20180219587 (Huo), US 5777526 (Kawasaki) and further in view of US 20120095149 (Sawanoi).
Regarding claims 1 and 17, Das teaches “A mobile device (Although disclosed as satellite transmitter system (see at least title and col. 3 line 53), recitation of “mobile device” in the preamble appears to be merely a statement of intended use or environment in which the device is used and thus this recitation does not have to be given patentable weight because the recitation occurs in the preamble. A preamble is generally not accorded any patentable weight where it merely recites the purpose of a process or the intended use of a structure, and where the body of the claim does not depend on the preamble for completeness but, instead, the process steps or structural limitations are able to stand alone. See In re Hirao, 535 F.2d 67, 190 USPQ 15 (CCPA 1976) and Kropa v. Robie, 187 F.2d 150, 152, 88 USPQ 478, 481 (CCPA 1951). “[a]n intended use or purpose usually will not limit the scope of the claim because such statements usually do no more than define a context in which the invention operates.” See Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc. v. Schering-Plough Corp., 320 F.3d 1339, 1345 (Fed. Cir. 2003).
Alternatively, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date of the application to utilize disclosed by Das structure in a mobile device. Doing so would have expanded the usage of the disclosed structure with its benefits (such as keeping the different transmitters of the device equally loaded during dynamic traffic conditions and thus minimizing the prime power requirements, see col. 1 lines 22 – 25) for additional type of devices.) comprising:
a transceiver configured to generate a radio frequency input signal (implicit for a wireless device);
a front end system (shown in FIG 1 with corresponding description; also see Sketch 1 below which represents Das’s FIG 1 with the Examiner’s comments) including a multi-throw switch (col. 4 lines 7 – 11: A single pole 4 throw, zero phase difference, switch (SW) is connected to the output of each power amplifier so that the output of each power amplifier is transmitted to the feed elements of each output beam.), three or more delay lines (Col. 4 lines 48 – 58: each switch is connected, through a separate phase shifter, to respective antenna. Col. 4 lines 15 – 18: The phase shifters can be extensions of equal length connecting lines by one, two or three quarter wavelengths at an operating frequency. Therefore, each of the four phase shifters connected to the upper switch represents a delay line), and a power amplifier configured to amplify the radio frequency input signal to generate a radio frequency output signal (shown as power amplifier 1)…” “…the multi-throw switch having an input electrically connected to an output of the power amplifier (col. 4 lines 7 – 11: A single pole 4 throw, zero phase difference, switch (SW) is connected to the output of each power amplifier); and
an antenna array including a first antenna configured to transmit the radio frequency output signal (see explanation in the Sketch 1 below. Since the claim does not state that any other antennas besides the “first antenna” are included in the array, within the concept of broadest reasonable interpretation, all of the antenna elements shown in FIG 1 may be mapped to the recited “a first antenna”), the first antenna configured to receive the radio frequency output signal through a selected delay line chosen from the three or more delay lines (this follows from the operation of the system: depending on the position of the upper multi-throw switch, one of the delay lines will be selected to transmit the signal from the output of the power amplifier 1 to the antenna), the three or more delay lines including a first delay line directly connected between a first signal feed of the first antenna and a first output of the multi-throw switch, a second delay line directly connected between a second signal feed of the antenna and a second output of multi-throw switch, and a third delay line directly connected between a third signal feed of the antenna and a third output of the multi-throw switch (see Sketch 1 below showing positions of all recited components).”
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Das does not disclose physical structure of the circuitry and thus does not disclose that “the power amplifier formed on a semiconductor die that is attached to a package substrate of a multi-chip module.”
On the other side, Huo in FIG 4 with corresponding description in paragraphs 0060 – 0061 teaches physical structure of a radio frequency module that comprises “the power amplifier (RFICs 410 may integrate function blocks such as power amplifiers, phase shifters.) formed on a semiconductor die (RFICs 410 may also be an RFIC die.) that is attached to a package substrate (It may be clearly seen from FIG 4 that the RFIC 410 is attached to the substrate layer 412 or to a printed circuit board (PCB) layer 414, each of which may be mapped to “a package substrate”) of a multi-chip module (FIG. 4 illustrates a side view of an exemplary beamforming (BF) module 400, however, a top view of the entirety of the device shows plurality of beamforming (BF) modules 308 (see paragraphs 0052 and 0054), representing “a multi-chip module”).”
Therefore, since Das does not disclose the physical structure of the circuitry, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date of the application to utilize the physical structure disclosed by Huo, in the device of Das simply to fill in where Das is silent yielding predictable results, since, according to the Supreme Court, “[t]he combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007).
Further, Das does not disclose that “each of the three or more delay lines having substantially equal physical length and each attached to the package substrate of the multi-chip module using an epoxy with a different concentration of fiber glass to achieve a different dielectric constant and a different delay for each of the three or more delay lines.”
As stated in Das, col. 4 lines 15 – 18, the phase shifters can be extensions of equal length connecting lines by one, two or three quarter wavelengths at an operating frequency. In other words, Das teaches using actual delay lines of different length.
On the other side, Kawasaki in FIG 2 and col. 5 lines 40 - 51 provides similar teaching of delay lines having different length resulting in different delay. The problem with such an arrangement is large amount of space taken by the transmission lines. However, in FIG 3 and col. 5 line 64 – col. 6 line 2 Kawasaki discloses a different embodiment in which the microstrip transmission lines 142 and 152 have the same length. Col. 6 lines 3 – 8 and FIG 4 explain that the microstrip transmission lines 142 and 152 shown in FIG. 3 are constituted by respective strip conductors 21 and 22 having the same width w, but respective dielectrics 23 and 24 have different relative dielectric constants εr. Col. 6 lines 9 – 49 explain that such an arrangement, even though the transmission lines have the same width and length, result in different propagation time of signals along the transmission lines, and thus different delay, because of difference in the relative dielectric constants εr used for each transmission line. Additional examples of transmission line implementations having different dielectrics are given in FIG 5, 6, 8 – 11 and 16 with corresponding description.
In other words, Kawasaki teaches the “delay lines having substantially equal physical length.”
Next, with respect to the limitation that each delay line is “attached to the package substrate of the multi-chip module using an epoxy with…” “…a different dielectric constant and a different delay for each of the three or more delay lines”, this is shown and described in the embodiment of FIG 16A-B and col. 15 lines 19 – 40 of Kawasaki: FIG. 16A is a cross sectional view showing a microstrip transmission line device before the microstrip transmission line component 120 shown in FIG. 14 is mounted. “Substrate” is represented by the dielectrics 121 and 127 shown to have the same properties including εr = 5.0 and being previously attached to a copper ground plane conductor 123. The substrate has an opening, shown as 120, for installation of an additional microstrip delay line 124. FIG. 16B shows the microstrip transmission line device on which the microstrip transmission line component 120 having transmission line 124 shown in FIG. 14 is mounted. The component 120 with transmission line 124 (“delay line”) is thus “attached to the package substrate … using [a dielectric material] with a different dielectric constant” being εr = 9.0. Although in this specific example all of the dielectrics are made of alumina composite, col. 9 lines 42 – 47 state that instead of alumina composite other proper materials may be selected in accordance with the characteristics of signals to be transmitted and operation environments, including glass epoxy. Thus, when the explicitly disclosed alumina composite is replaced with glass epoxy, in the embodiment of FIG 16, the delay lines are “attached to the package substrate … using an epoxy with a…” “…different dielectric constant”. Lastly, although in the example of FIG 16 there are two lines having the same dielectric constant and one line having a different dielectric constant, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date of the application to utilize dielectric constants according to the required delay time for each transmission line. Therefore, if all transmission lines have requirement to have different delay times, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date of the application to utilize glass epoxies having different dielectric constants which would result in different delay times for each transmission line, as follows from Kawasaki’s teaching and resulting in meeting the limitation “a different delay for each of the three or more delay lines”.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date of the application to utilize disclosed by Kawasaki package substrate composed of a plurality of types of dielectric base materials having different dielectric constants so that each delay line is positioned at the top of the material having different dielectric constant, and all the delay lines have the same length instead of the delay lines differing in length disclosed by Das. Doing so would have allowed to reduce the amount of space taken by the delay line arrangement (see Kawasaki, col. 4 lines 9 – 12 and col. 7 line 67 – col. 8 line 4). This would have also been a mere replacement of one type of delay line arrangement with a different type also well-known in the industry yielding predictable results, since the court stated in KSR, "when a patent claims a structure already known in the prior art that is altered by the mere substitution of one element for another known in the field, the combination must do more than yield a predictable result." KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 127 S.Ct. 1727, 1740 (2007) (citing United States v. Adams, 383 U.S. 39, 50-51 (1966)).
Lastly, Kawasaki does not teach using an epoxy with “…a different concentration of fiber glass to achieve…” a different dielectric constant.
Sawanoi in Table 2 under paragraph 0107 provides data for different “concentration of fiber glass” in a printed circuit board (see paragraph 0002) showing that this difference results in difference in dielectric constant. For instance, the example 101 having concentration of SiO2 54.9% results in dielectric constant being 7.00 at 1 MHz, while the example 102 having concentration of SiO2 76.1% results in dielectric constant being 4.26 at 1 MHz.
Therefore, since Kawasaki does not disclose how to implement glass epoxy having different dielectric constant, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date of the application to utilize materials having “different concentration of fiber glass” thus resulting in different dielectric constant, as disclosed by Sawanoi, simply to fill in where Kawasaki is silent with respect to physical implementation of the material, yielding predictable results, since, according to the Supreme Court, “[t]he combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007).
Regarding claim 19, this claim is rejected because of the same reasons as set forth in the rejection of claim 1 because they have similar limitations.
Claim 19 additionally recites that an antenna array is “attached to the package substrate”. This is disclosed by Huo: substrate layer 412 may hold one or more antenna elements 462. As follows from FIG 4, the antenna elements 462 are also indirectly attached to the printed circuit board (PCB) layer 414. Paragraph 0064: Antenna elements 462 may include, but not limited to, phased array antennas. Either of the substrate layer 412 or the printed circuit board layer 414 corresponds to the recited by the claim “package substrate.”
Regarding claims 4 and 22, Das teaches “wherein the selected delay line tunes the first antenna (Indeed, as follows from col. 4 line 19 – col. 5 line 36, the selectable phase shifters/delay lines perform phase shifting in order to steer/shape the antenna beams. Therefore, selected delay line “tunes” the “first antenna” to properly point the beam in the required direction).”
Regarding claims 5 and 23, Das teaches “wherein the input of the multi-throw switch is directly connected to the output of the power amplifier (this arrangement may easily be seen from FIG 1 and the Sketch 1 above).”
Regarding claims 8 and 26, Das teaches “wherein the front end system provides a plurality of radio frequency output signals to the antenna array to form a transmit beam by beamforming (the beamforming is covered in col. 4 line 59 – col. 5 line 8. It is inherently includes providing “a plurality of radio frequency output signals to the antenna array”).”
Regarding claim 9, Das teaches or fairly suggests “wherein each antenna of the antenna array (“each antenna” is mapped to each of the respective combinations 1, 2, 3, and 4, each having four antenna elements, as shown in Das’s FIG 1 and Sketch 1 above) has a corresponding delay line of the three or more delay lines that is individually selectable (combination 1 of antenna elements has an associated phase shifter comprising “first delay line” as may be seen in the Sketch 1 above; combination 2 of antenna elements has an associated phase shifter comprising “second delay line” as may be seen in the Sketch 1 above; combination 3 of antenna elements has an associated phase shifter comprising “third delay line” as may be seen in the Sketch 1 above; and combination 4 of antenna elements also has an associated phase shifter comprising a delay line (not marked in Sketch 1 but shown as the bottom phase shifter connected to the “multi-throw switch”) as may be seen in the Sketch 1 above) to tune the antenna array (implemented as beamforming as disclosed in col. 4 line 59 – col. 5 line 36).”
Regarding claim 10, Das teaches “wherein the selected delay line provides a phase adjustment for the beamforming (the beamforming including phase adjustment by selection of appropriate phase shifters is covered in col. 4 line 59 – col. 5 line 8.).”
Regarding claim 12, Das in combination with Kawasaki teaches “wherein the three or more delay lines are implemented as a plurality of transmission lines (Das, col. 4 lines 15 – 18: lines by one, two or three quarter wavelengths at an operating frequency.) each having a different dielectric constant (as was explained in the rejection of claim 1 above, Kawasaki, FIG 3 and col. 5 line 64 – col. 6 line 2: the microstrip transmission lines 142 and 152 have the same length. Col. 6 lines 3 – 8 and FIG 4 explain that the microstrip transmission lines 142 and 152 shown in FIG. 3 are constituted by respective strip conductors 21 and 22 having the same width w, but respective dielectrics 23 and 24 have different relative dielectric constants εr.).”
Claims 3 and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 5550550 (Das) in view of US 20180219587 (Huo), US 5777526 (Kawasaki) and US 20120095149 (Sawanoi) as applied to claims 1 and 19 above, and further in view of US 20190319663 (Shimura).
Regarding claims 3 and 21, Das does not teach “wherein the first antenna is a patch antenna.”
Das teaches usage of the antenna array for beamforming (see col. 4 line 59 – col. 5 line 36).
Shimura teaches usage of patch antenna arrays in mobile devices. Specifically, FIG 2 and paragraph 0034: in order to perform beam forming, the mobile station 10 has an array antenna 100 having a plurality of antenna elements. Also paragraphs 0044. Further, paragraph 0045: As the planar antenna, patch antenna elements can be used. The patch antenna elements are formed on the surface of the substrate 61 that is a dielectric.
In other words, Shimura teaches usage of patch antennas in the beamforming array.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date of the application to utilize patch antennas forming an antenna array, as disclosed by Shimura, to implement the antenna of Das to merely replace one type of antenna with another, since the court stated in KSR, "when a patent claims a structure already known in the prior art that is altered by the mere substitution of one element for another known in the field, the combination must do more than yield a predictable result." KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 127 S.Ct. 1727, 1740 (2007) (citing United States v. Adams, 383 U.S. 39, 50-51 (1966)).
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 5550550 (Das) in view of US 20180219587 (Huo), US 5777526 (Kawasaki) and US 20120095149 (Sawanoi) as applied to claim 8 above, and further in view of US 20120299765 (Huang).
Regarding claim 11, Das does not teach “wherein the front end system further includes a switching attenuator that provides a gain adjustment for the beamforming.”
Huang in FIG 5B with corresponding description teaches a beam former 443 (corresponds to “the front end system”) which includes phase shifter per each antenna element. It also includes an attenuator per each antenna element. The attenuator is a 31.5 dB/0.5 dB step 6-bit digital attenuator (“a switching attenuator that provides a gain adjustment for the beamforming” since it is positioned within the beam former 443).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date of the application to utilize disclosed by Huang switching attenuators per each antenna element, in the system of Das. Doing so would have allowed to control the amplitude of the radiated signal and, together with the variable phase shifter, to control the RF beam radiated by the antenna.
Claims 14 and 30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 5550550 (Das) in view of US 20180219587 (Huo), US 5777526 (Kawasaki) and US 20120095149 (Sawanoi) as applied to claims 1 and 19 above, or alternatively in further view of JP 2002151905 (Ikeda).
Regarding claims 14 and 30, Das in combination with Huo and Kawasaki teaches or fairly suggests “wherein the three or more delay lines are formed as parallel lines on the package substrate of the multichip module (indeed, as explained in the rejection of claim 1 above, recited by the claim “three or more delay lines” are mapped to shown in FIG 1 of Das plurality of phase shifters connected to the output of the upper switch comprising delay lines and implemented as disclosed by Kawasaki equal length delay lines and being parallel to each other, as shown in Kawasaki, FIG 3.).”
Additionally or alternatively, Ikeda in FIG 11 also teaches parallel arrangement on a substrate of three delay lines.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date of the application to utilize disclosed by Ikeda multiple switchable delay lines arranged in parallel, in the device of Das simply as design choice with predictable results since, according to the Supreme Court, “[t]he combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007).
Claims 27 – 29 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 5550550 (Das) in view of US 20180219587 (Huo), US 5777526 (Kawasaki) and US 20120095149 (Sawanoi) as applied to claims 1, 17 and 19 above, and further in view of US 20190067813 (Igura).
Regarding claims 27 – 29, Das does not teach “wherein the first antenna is rectangular patch antenna, the rectangular patch antenna having a first side that includes the first signal feed, the second signal feed, and the third signal feed.”
In the rejection of claim 1 above, “the first antenna” was mapped to all of the antenna elements shown in Das’s FIG 1 (also see Sketch 1 above).
Igura in FIG 11 and paragraph 0120 describes a configuration in which a phase shifter 1102 is connected to each of a plurality of antenna elements of a patch array antenna 1101. Please see Sketch 2 (which is a portion of Igura’s FIG 11) below showing mapping of claims 27 – 29 onto the teaching of Igura.
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Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date of the application to utilize patch antenna elements with respective signal feeds forming the first antenna, as disclosed by Igura, to implement the antenna of Das to merely replace one type of antenna with another, since the court stated in KSR, "when a patent claims a structure already known in the prior art that is altered by the mere substitution of one element for another known in the field, the combination must do more than yield a predictable result." KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 127 S.Ct. 1727, 1740 (2007) (citing United States v. Adams, 383 U.S. 39, 50-51 (1966)).
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
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/GENNADIY TSVEY/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2648