Drawings
The drawings are objected to as failing to comply with 37 CFR 1.84(u)(1). “Where only a single view is used in an application to illustrate the claimed invention, it must not be numbered and the abbreviation "FIG." must not appear.”
Claim Objections
Claim 4 is objected to because of the following informalities: "the second compound represented" should be corrected to "the second compound is represented".
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.
Claims 1-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2017/0098778 A1 to Oh et al. in view of Lee et al., Dyes and Pigments 101 (2014) 221-228.
Regarding claim 1, Oh et al. discloses an OLED wherein the EML comprises 3 different host materials and a phosphorescent dopant and wherein the 3 host materials include an electron-transporting compound (e.g., having a mono- or di- or tri-azine group), a hole-transporting compound (e.g., containing a carbazolyl group), and a compound having both electron-transporting group and hole-transporting group [0196]. Examples of these host materials include
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378
492
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398
496
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276
470
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,
respectively. Note that the first and second host materials are the same as the first and second compounds, respectively, of the claimed composition, but the third host material is different from the third compound. However, Lee et al. discloses that triphenylene derivatives having a carbazolyl group or a dibenzothiophenyl group are good bipolar host materials for green phosphorescent OLEDs as they possess both electron-transporting property (from the triphenylene) and hole-transporting property (from the dibenzothiophene). An example of the derivatives is
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290
208
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.
This compound is representative of the claimed third compound. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time the instant invention was filed to modify the device disclosed by Oh et al. by replacing the 3rd host material with the bipolar host material disclosed by Lee et al. and expect a favorable outcome, especially for green phosphorescent OLED’s. Claim 1 is accordingly unpatentable for being obvious. See MPEP § 2143(I)(B). So are claims 2-10 and 12-14. The features of claim 11 can be seen from Example 1 in Table 1 by Oh et al. (p. 160).
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to VU ANH NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)270-5454. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:00 AM-5:00 PM.
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/VU A NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1762
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