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.
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.
Claim(s) 1-3 and 5-9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over to Shan in view of Sadot (cited in the prior office action) in view of US 2022/0005845 to Pezeshiki et al.
Examiner previously indicated as allowable the independent claims below and cited allowable subject matter as partially being the fingers shown in figures 4-6.
Shan discloses in the abstract and figures, an optical data link comprising:
an array of microLEDs (paragraph 72 describes dimensions in conventionally defined “microLED” ranges), comprised of GaN (paragraph 77), connected in parallel (paragraph 31), for generating light, to carry data (paragraph 102), in a wavelength range between 420 nm and 500 nm (paragraph 44), inclusive, the microLEDs driven with a current density of about 30 A/cm^2 (paragraph 48);
a receiver including a photodetector with a lateral structure (paragraph 102); and
a plastic optical fiber for carrying the light to the receiver (paragraph 102).
As to newly added claims regarding a lateral boundary, the prior art discloses a general lateral boundary seen in figure 1 (also see response to arguments above).
As to claim 5, a P-I-N semiconductor LED is disclosed (abstract).
As to claim 6, paragraphs 2, 40 and 48 describe driving the LEDs with high boosted currents which would inherently include driver circuitry.
As to claim 7, equalization circuitry is not mentioned.
However, Shan fails to explicitly disclose the bandwidth or the core diameter of the associated optical fiber link. Shan discloses the general use case of the device in paragraph 102 to include point-to-point optical communications and plastic fibers (POF) for short data transfer. Either of these would typically include the bandwidth range claimed (3dB bandwidth greater than 1 Gb/s) and utilize fibers with core diameters in the range of 100μm - 1000μm since the microLEDs are also in this range. Further, the device utilizes blue LED light (paragraph 44) which is in the bandwidth range claimed.
As to claim 3, the photodetector sizing is not disclosed.
As to prior claim 4’s specific duplex data-link, this is not disclosed.
Claims 8-9 relate to length.
Sadot teaches commonly known wavelength ranges and fiber core diameters used in the generally disclosed applications in Shan (column 1, paragraphs 2-3 and column 5, lines 25-29) with figure 1c depicting the POF with a general size in the range of 50um.
As to claims 2 and 14-15, the range claimed is disclosed in figure 5.
As to claim 4, a duplex link is shown in figure 1c.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to recognize that although Shan fails to explicitly disclose the claimed ranges for bandwidth and fiber size, such variables could be selected from known applications such as taught by Sadot and selecting the claimed diameters would be a matter of design choice to optimize packaging and transmission from the LEDs.
Shan in view of Shadot fails to disclose the alternating p-type and n-type fingers.
Pezeshiki discloses these fingers in figure 2B to reduce a detector size (paragraph 31).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to alter the P-I-N structure of Shan in view of Shadot with the taught fingers in Pezeshiki to reduce the detector size.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 2022/0349751 (7; figure 1).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Eric K Wong whose telephone number is (571)272-2363. The examiner can normally be reached M-Tu, Th-F 8A-6P.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Thomas Hollweg can be reached on 571-270-1739. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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ERIC K. WONG
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2874
/Eric Wong/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2874
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