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 .
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.
Election/Restrictions
Claims 7-10 withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected method of manufacturing a stacked luminescent device, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on 11/29/2024.
Applicant is reminded that upon the cancelation of claims to a non-elected invention, the inventorship must be corrected in compliance with 37 CFR 1.48(a) if one or more of the currently named inventors is no longer an inventor of at least one claim remaining in the application. A request to correct inventorship under 37 CFR 1.48(a) must be accompanied by an application data sheet in accordance with 37 CFR 1.76 that identifies each inventor by his or her legal name and by the processing fee required under 37 CFR 1.17(i).
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 4/10/2022 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 05/17/2023 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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.
Claim(s) 1,2,4,5,6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhang (US 20220045295 A1) in view of Hasegawa (JP 2005327735 A).
Regarding claim 1, Zhang discloses a stacked luminescent device, comprising:
A plurality of electroluminescent devices, vertically stacked with each other to form a staircase structure on a staircase region (Please see Fig. 6 & 7),
Wherein each electroluminescent device comprises
A substrate 1,
An encapsulation layer ITO,
And a quantum dot light-emitting diode (QLED) device sandwiched between the substrate and the encapsulation layer QD (RQD,GQD,BQD from);
Although Zhang shows much of the claimed invention, Zhang fails to expressly disclose each electroluminescent device further comprising a plurality of conductive lines, respectively connected to the plurality of QLED devices in the plurality of electroluminescence devices along the staircase structure.
Hasegawa teaches an electroluminescent device comprising a plurality of conductive lines (3206 & 3207), connected to the plurality of QLED devices (Paragraph [0437], Note: Hasegawa teaches a plurality of conductive lines connected to element electrodes in a display device, which for the sake of combination would be the QLED devices taught by Zhang) in the plurality of electroluminescence devices along the staircase structure, for the purposes of making an image forming apparatus with an increased screen size (Paragraph [0211]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the stacked luminescent device with each electroluminescent device further comprising a plurality of conductive lines, respectively connected to the plurality of QLED devices in the plurality of electroluminescence devices along the staircase structure as taught by Hasegawa, for the purposes of making an image forming apparatus with an increased screen size.
Regarding claim 2, the combination of Zhang and Hasegawa teach the stacked luminescent device of claim 1, wherein the plurality of electroluminescent devices comprises:
a first electroluminescent device (Zhang, Fig. 7, leftmost stack between dams 9 containing RQD) having a red quantum dot film RQD (Zhang, Fig. 7);
a second electroluminescent device (Zhang, Fig. 7, middle stack between dams 9 containing GQD) having a green quantum dot film GQD (Zhang, Fig. 7);
and a third electroluminescent device (Zhang, Fig. 7, rightmost stack between dams 9 containing BQD) having a blue quantum dot film BQD (Zhang, Fig. 7),
wherein the second electroluminescent device is disposed between the first electroluminescent device and the third electroluminescent device (Zhang, Fig. 7)
Regarding claim 4, the combination of Zhang and Hasegawa teach the stacked luminescent device of claim 1, further comprising:
A plurality of gold (Hasegawa, paragraph [0055], Note: Hasegawa teaches the use of gold for wiring layers) fingers disposed on an edge of a bottommost substrate 1 (Hasegawa, Fig. 98, Note: the combination of wiring taught by Hasegawa connects to the element electrode, corresponding to the electrode layer 21 taught by Zhang which rest on the bottommost substrate 1. The edge of the wiring is widened and elongated, like fingers, in Hasegawa Fig. 98)
Wherein the plurality of gold fingers are respectively electrically connected to the plurality of electroluminescent devices by the plurality of conductive lines (Note: this would be the case with the combination of Zhang and Hasegawa seen in the rejection of claim 1, as the widened and elongated fingers are parts of the wiring connecting to the electrode layer 21 from Zhang)
Regarding claim 5, the combination of Zhang and Hasegawa teaches the stacked luminescent device of claim 1, Zhang further teaching wherein one of the plurality of electroluminescent devices comprises:
A first electrode layer 21 and a second electrode layer 22;
A light emitting layer 40 disposed between the first electrode layer 21 and the second electrode layer 22 (Fig. 7);
A hole transport layer 3 disposed between the first electrode layer 21 and the light emitting layer 40 (Fig. 7, Note: Zhang assigns 3 to a layer capable of performing multiple functions, and in paragraph [0041]);
And an election transport layer 3 disposed between the second electrode layer 22 and the light emitting layer 40 (Fig. 7, Note: Zhang assigns 3 to a layer capable of performing multiple functions, and in paragraph [0041] Zhang teaches it may be an electron transport layer).
Regarding claim 6, the combination of Zhang and Hasegawa teaches the stacked luminescent device of claim 5, Zhang further teaching wherein the first electrode layer 21 comprises an anode or cathode (Paragraph [0041]), the second electrode layer 22 comprises a cathode or an anode (Paragraph [0041]), and the light emitting layer 40 comprises a quantum dot layer (Paragraph [0039]).
Claim(s) 3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhang (US 20220045295 A1) in view of Hasegawa (JP 2005327735 A) and further in view of Kawashima (US 20230005424 A1).
Regarding claim 3, the combination of Zhang and Hasegawa teaches the stacked luminescent device of claim 1.
Although the combination of Zhang and Hasegawa teaches much of the claimed invention, the combination of Zhang and Hasegawa fails to expressly teach each of the electroluminescent device has a bidirectional emission light toward above and below the electroluminescent device.
Kawashima teaches each of the electroluminescent devices having a bidirectional emission light toward above and below the electroluminescent device (Kawashima, paragraph [0068], Note: the light emitting element may be a bidirectional photodiode), for the purposes of reducing the number of components of an electronic device (Kawashima, paragraph [0007]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify stacked luminescent device of claim 1 taught by the combination of Zhang and Hasegawa with the each of the electroluminescent devices having a bidirectional emission light toward above and below the electroluminescent device as taught by Kawashima for the purposes of reducing the number of components of an electronic device (Kawashima, paragraph [0007]).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JEREMY ALEXANDER RINE whose telephone number is (703)756-5701. The examiner can normally be reached M-Th 8:30-5:30 EST First Fr Off.
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/JEREMY ALEXANDER RINE/Examiner, Art Unit 2817 /NICHOLAS J TOBERGTE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2817
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