DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after 16 March 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Amendments
Status of Claims
The amendment, filed on 21 January 2026, is acknowledged.
Claims 1-3 have been amended.
Claims 4-14 have been cancelled.
New claims 15-19 have been added.
Claims 1-3 and 15-19 are pending in the instant Office Action.
Newly submitted claims 15-19 are directed to an invention that is independent or distinct from the invention originally claimed for the following reason: In the response to Election/Restriction Requirement on 18 August 2025, Applicant elected without traverse the product of an anti-pathogen filter, claims 1-7. New claims 15-19 are drawn to a method of inactivating or killing pathogens, which is distinct from the originally elected invention.
Since applicant has received an action on the merits for the originally presented invention, this invention has been constructively elected by original presentation for prosecution on the merits. Accordingly, claims 15-19 are withdrawn from consideration as being directed to a non-elected invention. See 37 CFR 1.142(b) and MPEP § 821.03.
To preserve a right to petition, the reply to this action must distinctly and specifically point out supposed errors in the restriction requirement. Otherwise, the election shall be treated as a final election without traverse. Traversal must be timely. Failure to timely traverse the requirement will result in the loss of right to petition under 37 CFR 1.144. If claims are subsequently added, applicant must indicate which of the subsequently added claims are readable upon the elected invention.
Should applicant traverse on the ground that the inventions are not patentably distinct, applicant should submit evidence or identify such evidence now of record showing the inventions to be obvious variants or clearly admit on the record that this is the case. In either instance, if the examiner finds one of the inventions unpatentable over the prior art, the evidence or admission may be used in a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) of the other invention.
Claims 1-3 are under consideration in the instant Office Action.
Objections Withdrawn
Objections to Claims
Applicant’s cancellation of claims 4-6 has rendered moot the objections to the claims set forth in the Office Action mailed on 21 October 2025. Accordingly, the relevant objections are withdrawn.
Rejections Withdrawn
Rejections pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 103
The rejection of claims 1-3 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is withdrawn in view of Applicant’s amendments to the claims and in favor of the new grounds of rejection below. The rejection of claims 4-7 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is rendered moot in view of Applicant’s cancellation of the claims.
New Grounds of Rejection
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.
Claim 2 is 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.
Claim 2 was amended to recite Cu cloth layers, wherein a given layer is placed at a 45 degree offset “in the diagnostic direction” from the adjacent layer (bold added for emphasis). The meaning of “diagnostic direction” is unclear from the claim language and the specification does not provide further clarification, rendering the claim indefinite. For the purpose of examination, the 45 degree offset is considered to be a 45° rotation around an axis that is perpendicular to the surface of the Cu cloth layers.
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.
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Carredo (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2021/0154610 A1, published on 27 May 2021) in view of Juang (Sci. Rep. 2018, 8 (13910), 1.).
Carredo teaches air filters with porous copper layers, which have natural antimicrobial properties, for “improving the quality of air breathed in by people” (Abstract). The air filters comprise at least one porous copper layer configured to “capture suspended air particles passing through” (para. [0045] and claim 1). In one embodiment, the copper in the filter is in the form of a foam, either sintered or open-cell, which can be compressed to modify pore sizes and density, airflow, and other filtering properties (para. [0027] and [0046] and claim 3). In another embodiment, Carredo teaches that their copper filters may be made from copper cloths (para. [0015], [0025], [0046], and [0055], claim 2). Finally, Carredo teaches a face mask containing the air filter and that the copper can be introduced to the filter via coating (para. [0045] and [0050] and claims 6 and 11).
Carredo does not teach the morphology of the copper coating on the filter. This deficiency is offset by the teachings of Juang.
Juang teaches a method of direct bonding (111)-oriented copper-to-copper, involving ambient conditions, producing nanotwinned copper (Abstract). Traditional methods of direct Cu-to-Cu bonding include ion beam bombardment under ultrahigh vacuum, which is costly and prevents mass production, and noble metal passivation followed by annealing, which is similarly costly and time-consuming (pg. 1, para. 1). (111)-oriented and nanotwinned Cu has been a focus of recent study because it has been demonstrated to bond at 150-200 °C under ordinary vacuum (10-4 to 10-3 torr) (pg. 1, para. 2). Juang teaches a method of direct bonding (111)-oriented copper without the need of vacuum, requiring only 5 minutes and no additional annealing (pg. 1, para. 3). Utilizing thermal compression bonding at a pressure of 162 MPa and a temperature gradient, wherein one segment of copper to be bound is at 100 °C and the other is at 400-450 °C, a well-bonded interface is achieved which possesses few voids (pg. 2, Cu-to-Cu direct bonding under a temperature gradient).
It would have been prima facie obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, prior to the filing of the instant application, to combine the teachings of Carredo and Juang to arrive at the invention of claim 1 because combining prior art elements according to known methods yields predictable results. Carredo teaches an antimicrobial filter comprising copper, which may be in the form of a foam or stacked layers of cloth, has pores that can be manipulated via compression, and that the filter may be coated with copper. In view of the teachings of Juang, an ordinary artisan would be motivated to make the copper coating on the filter (111) nanotwinned Cu because Juang teaches the coating can be produced via a quick, ambient pressure method of bonding copper surfaces with low defect appearance, which is compatible with the copper filter body taught by Carredo and desirable due to its relatively easy production. Further, Carredo does not teach Miller indices or planes of copper to be used in filters, so a person of ordinary skill would be motivated to use the teachings of Juang to provide missing information. As result, there is a reasonable expectation of success in arriving at the invention of instant claim 1 in view of the teachings of Carredo and Juang.
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Carredo (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2021/0154610 A1, published on 27 May 2021) and Juang (Sci. Rep. 2018, 8 (13910), 1.) as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Polignone (U.S. Patent No. 12,233,290 B2, priority to 1 April 2021), Stanley et al. (Eng. Reports 2021, 4, e12491., hereafter referred to as Stanley), and LaGrange et al. (Appl. Phys. Lett. 2013, 102, 011905., hereafter referred to as LaGrange).
Carredo and Juang have been described above, and particularly relevant to claim 2, Juang further teaches that ambient pressure, low temperature bonding requires highly (111)-oriented nt-Cu (pg. 9, nt-Cu test using top/bottom dies).
Carredo and Juang do not teach the orientation of Cu cloth layers, fixing of cloth layers with solder, nor annealing prior to coating. These deficiencies are offset by the teachings of Polignone, Stanley, and LaGrange.
Polignone teaches a multi-layer face mask that mitigates the issues in masks arising from aligned layers by offsetting adjacent layers (Title and col. 2, lines 26-33). In multi-layered face masks, alignment of openings in layers leads to a user pushing and pulling air through said openings, “largely eliminating the benefit of having more than one filter layer (col. 2, lines 26-29). Polignone teaches that adjacent mask layers turned 45-degrees relative to each other improve the efficacy of the multi-layered mask (col. 2, lines 34-62 and Fig. 3). The 45 degree rotation is along an axis perpendicular to the plane of the filter layer and is considered equivalent to the “45 degree offset in the diagnostic direction” recited in instant claim 2.
Stanley teaches a review of connectors and joining technologies for electronic textiles (e-textiles), challenges in the field, and possible solutions (Abstract). E-textiles deliver benefits to users, such as sports performance data collection, warming users during winter activities, and allowing users to feel music via haptic actuators, but Stanley notes that e-textiles must meet the needs of clothing – primarily being flexible, bend and stretching repeatedly while withstanding multiple washes (pg. 2, para. 3-4). To join e-textiles that comprise copper, Stanley teaches that solder is “a standard and widely used electronics joining technology” which can be performed with “easily accessible handheld equipment” and scaled up to meet manufacturing needs (pg. 7, 3.2 Soldering).
LaGrange teaches topography of nanotwinned copper (nt-Cu) and the impact annealing has on the grain boundary networks of (111)-aligned nt-Cu (Abstract). LaGrange found that changes in the morphology of nt-Cu occurred in as little as 1 hour of annealing, which resulted in “the small fraction of grains not aligned along the primary (111) direction presumably being consumed” (pg. 011905-3, right col., para. 2). The resulting highly (111)-oriented nt-Cu possessed a smooth appearance with parallel intercolumnar boundaries (pg. 011905-3, right col., para. 2).
It would have been prima facie obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, prior to the filing of the instant application, to modify the invention rendered obvious by the teachings of Carredo and Juang with the teachings of Polignone, Stanley, and LaGrange to arrive at the invention of claim 2 because combining prior art elements according to known methods yields predictable results. The teachings of Carredo and Juang rendered obvious an antimicrobial filter comprising copper, which may be in the form of stacked layers of cloth, has pores that can be manipulated via compression, and coated with (111)-oriented nt-Cu. In view of the teachings of Polignone, a person of ordinary skill would be motivated to offset adjacent copper cloth layers by 45 degrees along an axis that is perpendicular to the plane of the layer because Polignone teaches that this orientation improves the efficacy of the filter as compared to aligned layers. The ordinary artisan would further be motivated use solder to adhere adjacent copper layers because Stanley teaches this method of adhesion to be appropriate for e-textiles containing copper. Carredo does not teach an adhesion method of adjacent copper layers, so one of ordinary skill would further be motivated to use the teachings of Stanley to fill a gap in information.
Finally, in view of the teachings of LaGrange, an ordinary artisan would be motivated to anneal the copper filter prior to bonding the (111)-oriented nt-Cu to the exterior because Juang teaches that highly (111)-oriented copper better enables the ambient pressure, low temperature bonding and LaGrange teaches that 1 hour of annealing (111) nt-Cu removes grains that are not properly aligned. As result, there is a reasonable expectation of success in arriving at the invention of instant claim 2 in view of the teachings of Carredo and Juang, and further in view of the teachings of Polignone, Stanley, and LaGrange.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Carredo (U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2021/0154610 A1, published on 27 May 2021) and Juang (Sci. Rep. 2018, 8 (13910), 1.) as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of LaGrange (Appl. Phys. Lett. 2013, 102, 011905.).
Carredo and Juang have been described above, and particularly relevant to claim 3, Juang further teaches that ambient pressure, low temperature bonding requires highly (111)-oriented nt-Cu (pg. 9, nt-Cu test using top/bottom dies).
Carredo and Juang do not teach annealing the copper filter body. These deficiencies are offset by the teachings of LaGrange.
LaGrange has been described above.
It would have been prima facie obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, prior to the filing of the instant application, to combine the teachings of LaGrange with those of Carredo and Juang to arrive at the invention of claim 3 because combining prior art elements according to known methods yields predictable results. The teachings of Carredo and Juang rendered obvious an antimicrobial filter comprising copper, which may be in the form of a foam or stacked layers of cloth, has pores that can be manipulated via compression, and coated with (111)-oriented nt-Cu. In view of the teachings of LaGrange, an ordinary artisan would be motivated to anneal the copper filter prior to bonding the (111)-oriented nt-Cu to the exterior because Juang teaches that highly (111)-oriented copper better enables the ambient pressure, low temperature bonding and LaGrange teaches that 1 hour of annealing (111) nt-Cu removes grains that are not properly aligned. As result, there is a reasonable expectation of success in arriving at the invention of instant claim 3 in view of the teachings of Carredo and Juang and further in view of the teachings of LaGrange.
Response to Arguments
The Applicant’s arguments, filed on 21 January 2026, have been fully considered but are not persuasive.
In the section titled “B. The Office Action has not shown…” that spans pg. 6-9, Applicant argues that the Kamii reference does not teach a mask comprising a copper body and that the combination of the Kamii reference with the USTB and Juang references is improper. The rejection relying upon the teachings of the Kamii and USTB references has been withdrawn in favor of the new grounds of rejection above and the argument is therefore considered moot.
In response to Applicant’s argument that there is no teaching, suggestion, or motivation to combine the Carredo and Juang references in the para. that spans the bottom of pg. 9 and top of pg. 10, the Examiner recognizes that obviousness may be established by combining or modifying the teachings of the prior art to produce the claimed invention where there is some teaching, suggestion, or motivation to do so found either in the references themselves or in the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 5 USPQ2d 1596 (Fed. Cir. 1988), In re Jones, 958 F.2d 347, 21 USPQ2d 1941 (Fed. Cir. 1992), and KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007).
In this case, the Carredo reference teaches that copper can be introduced to a face mask filter via coating, but does not teach a specific method of coating nor details regarding the copper used in the coating. The Juang reference teaches a method of bonding copper that produces (111)-oriented nt-Cu on the surface and it would be within the capabilities of a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings to use a copper filter made of stacked cloths or copper foam, as taught by Carredo, with the teachings of Juang to produce a (111)-oriented nanotwinned Cu surface coating via a quick, ambient pressure method of bonding copper surfaces with low defect appearance. Applicant is reminded that "A person of ordinary skill in the art is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton." KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1397 (2007). "[I]n many cases a person of ordinary skill will be able to fit the teachings of multiple patents together like pieces of a puzzle." Id. at 420, 82 USPQ2d 1397. Office personnel may also take into account "the inferences and creative steps that a person of ordinary skill in the art would employ." (bold added for emphasis) Id. at 418, 82 USPQ2d at 1396.
In response to Applicant's argument in para. 3-4 of pg. 10 that the Examiner's conclusion of obviousness is based upon improper hindsight reasoning, as cited by the Applicant, any judgment on obviousness is in a sense necessarily a reconstruction based upon hindsight reasoning but is proper 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. See In re McLaughlin, 443 F.2d 1392, 170 USPQ 209 (CCPA 1971). Applicant asserts that coating with (111) nanotwin Cu or Cu6Sn5 scallop is “information gleaned entirely from Applicant’s own disclosure instead of the facts from the prior art”. This assertion is not supported by fact; see, for example, Juang teaching (111)-oriented nanotwinned copper bonding at the surface of a substrate (vide supra), Yang 1 (vide infra) teaching that Cu6Sn5 is a commonly formed intermetallic compound at the surface of substrates due to the use of lead free solder, Yang 2 (vide infra) teaching that Cu6Sn5 is commonly applied to copper as a “substrate finish” to inhibit intermetallic compound growth, etc. As a result, Applicant’s argument is not found to be persuasive.
Conclusion
No claims are allowed.
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Yang 1 (Intermetallics, 2012, 31, 177.) teaches the growth of Cu6Sn5 on the surface of copper substrates when lead free solder is used (Abstract and Introduction) and that integrity of solder joints can be enhanced by preparing the joints at higher temperatures (pg. 184, left col., para. 2).
Yang 2 (J. Alloys Compd. 2017, 701, 533.) teaches that intermetallic compounds frequently form at the solder/substrate interface of electronics, which can reduce the integrity of solder joints (Introduction, para. 1). To inhibit further intermetallic compound growth, Yang 2 teaches that a substrate finish of Cu6Sn5 can improve the integrity of solder joints (Introduction, para. 2) and that the Cu6Sn5 intermetallic compounds have a “scallop-type morphology” (pg. 536, left col., para. 1 and pg. 537, right col., final para.).
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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/S.J.S./
Examiner, Art Unit 1619
/GENEVIEVE S ALLEY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1617