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 .
Election/Restrictions
Claims 1-8 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected invention, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on 05/14/2026.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 9-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
Applicant has no disclosure as to the structures required to achieve the function of rotating the wedge lenses to a preset angle. The drawings present only schematic level representations of the wedge lenses and no actuator or control structure is shown. Similarly there is no description as to the actuation and control structure in the Specification that Applicant has possession of that achieves the function of the wedge lens being “rotatable within a preset angle with respect to the central axis.”
It is noted that, of course, one of ordinary skill in the art could obtain such a device through experimentation, thus there is no issue under enablement, but written description is an inquiry into the four-corners of the Specification which shows no evidence for any structure providing the claimed function.
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) 9-13 and 15-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2002/0196534 to Lizotte in view of US 20100097682 to Angeley and JP 2005302956 to Takeshi.
Lizotte teaches:
A method of manufacturing a substrate comprising , the method comprising: emitting a first laser beam in a first direction (annotated Fig. below) emitting a second laser beam (annotated Fig. below) in the first direction the beams spaced in a second direction perpendicular to the first direction (annotated Fig.); and aligning a region on a target surface (the region where the beams intersect the surface) where the first laser beam passing through a longitudinal optical system (52) is incident with a region on the target surface where the second laser beam passing through the longitudinal optical system is incident by rotating a first wedge lens (82) or a second wedge lens (84), wherein the first wedge lens is arranged between the first laser beam source and the longitudinal optical system to be in an optical path of the first laser beam and rotatable within a preset angle with respect to a central axis (Fig. 21, the angle it is at in the figure may be considered a “preset” angle achieved) in a third direction perpendicular to the first direction and the second direction (i.e. into and out of the page, see rotation Cag), and the second wedge lens is arranged between the second laser beam source and the longitudinal optical system to be in an optical path of the second laser beam and rotatable within a preset angle with respect to the central axis in the third direction(i.e. into and out of the page, see rotation). irradiating, onto the substrate the first laser beam and the second laser beam each having passed through the longitudinal optical system (Fig. 12). Wherein a cross-section of the first wedge lens in a plane perpendicular to the third direction has a wedge shape (Fig. 12, note this would be the plane of the page formed by the first/second direction vectors). wherein, in the cross-section of the first wedge lens in the plane perpendicular to the third direction, a width of a portion of the first wedge lens in a direction towards the second laser beam is greater than a width of a portion of the first wedge lens away from the second laser beam (since the selection of “a width of a portion” is arbitrary across the wedge, it is trivial that one may simply chose a width portion along each wedge that satisfies this limitation). Wherein a location of the first laser beam in the second direction on the target surface changes as the first wedge lens is rotated (¶ [0095]).
Lizotte fails to teach that the first and second laser beam are from a first and second offset source, instead teaching they are from a single source, the beam then passing through a splitter to produce a first and second offset beam. However, as is shown in Angeley it is, of course, known that instead of splitting a single beam multiple (i.e. first and second) in this case beams can simply be provided by separate offset laser sources (50a-50d) which are offset in a direction perpendicular to the direction of the beam travel (Fig. 2). As such it would have been nothing more than an obvious simple substitution to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of known methods to produce multiple beams to substitute the beam splitter of Lizotte with multiple offset laser sources, as taught by Angeley, to arrive at the claimed invention and this would have yielded nothing more than the predictable result of multiple beams.
Lizotte also fails to teach that the substrate is a polysilicon/amorphous silicon, however the use of laser methods to process amorphous silicon is known at least from Takeshi and it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify Lizotte such that the laser beams are used to process a polysilicon/amorphous silicon as this is a useful industrial process to employ laser processing methods in as shown by Takeshi.
Prior Art Rejections
Claims 14 and 20 are not rejected over prior art, but no indication of allowability is made at this time due to the outstanding issues under 35 USC §112(a).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WOODY A LEE JR whose telephone number is (571)272-1051. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 0800-1630.
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/WOODY A LEE JR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3761
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