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 .
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.
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.
Claim(s) 19 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Athley et al. (US. Pub. No. 2017/0012346 A1; hereinafter “ATHLEY”) in view of Korisch et al. (US. Pub. No. 2007/0205955 A1; hereinafter “KORISCH”).
Regarding claim 19, ATHLEY teaches a base station antenna (see ATHLEY, fig. 1) comprising:
a plurality of radiating elements (see ATHLEY, fig. 3, antennas 9-12);
a downlink radio frequency (RF) feed network that is configured to filter downlink portions of different frequency bands and that couples the filtered downlink portions of the different frequency bands to the arrays (see ATHLEY, fig. 3, downlink ports 19-22, filter 32, to ports A-D, para. [0063], freq band f2); and
an uplink RF feed network that couples uplink portions of the different frequency bands to the arrays and that is separate from the downlink RF feed network (see ATHLEY, fig. 3, uplink ports 14-17, para. [0063], f1).
ATHLEY is silent to teaching that wherein a plurality of radiating elements is a plurality of arrays of radiating elements.
In the same field of endeavor, KORISCH teaches a base station antenna wherein a plurality of radiating elements is a plurality of arrays of radiating elements (see KORISCH, fig. 5, arrays 12a-d).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teaching of ATHLEY with the teaching of KORISCH in order to improve radiating efficiency and antenna array performance (see KORISCH, para. [0004-5]).
Regarding claim 20, the combination of ATHLEY and KORISCH teaches the base station antenna of Claim 19, wherein the downlink and uplink RF feed networks comprise downlink and uplink multiplexers, respectively (see KORISCH, fig. 5, RF matrix 102, para. [0035]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-17, 31, and 32 are allowed.
Claim 21 is objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1, 17 and 19 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WEN WU HUANG whose telephone number is (571)272-7852. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 10-6.
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/WEN W HUANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2648