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 .
Election/Restrictions
Claim 11-20 are allowable. The restriction requirement between Species A-D, as set forth in the Office action mailed on 03/12/2026, has been reconsidered in view of the allowability of claims to the elected invention pursuant to MPEP § 821.04(a). The restriction requirement is hereby withdrawn as to any claim that requires all the limitations of an allowable claim.
Specifically, the restriction requirement of 03/12/2026 is withdrawn.
In view of the above noted withdrawal of the restriction requirement, applicant is advised that if any claim presented in a divisional application is anticipated by, or includes all the limitations of, a claim that is allowable in the present application, such claim may be subject to provisional statutory and/or nonstatutory double patenting rejections over the claims of the instant application.
Once a restriction requirement is withdrawn, the provisions of 35 U.S.C. 121 are no longer applicable. See In re Ziegler, 443 F.2d 1211, 1215, 170 USPQ 129, 131-32 (CCPA 1971). See also MPEP § 804.01.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 11-20 are allowed.
Claims 2, 6, and 7 are 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.
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) 1, 3-5, and 8-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang et al. (US Pub. 20230086139, Wang) in view of Chou et al. (WO2020082753A1, with reference made to provided machine translation, Chou).
As per claim 1, Wang teaches (in figure 1) an imaging lens, comprising: a first lens (first lens element E1), a second lens (second lens element E2), a third lens (third lens element E3), a fourth lens (fourth lens element E4), a fifth lens (fifth lens element E5) and a sixth lens (sixth lens element E6) with refractive powers arranged in order from an object side to an image side of the imaging lens, wherein a total number of lenses with refractive powers of the imaging lens is at most eight; and an aperture stop (stop S1) dividing the lenses with refractive powers to define a first lens group (first lens element E1 and second lens element E2) between the object side and the aperture stop, and the first lens group having a negative refractive power (combined focal length of -19.88 calculated from the values given in table 1); and the imaging lens satisfies the conditions of 90°<DFOV<140° (105 degrees, see table 1 and paragraph 97), Fno<1.6 (equal to 1.57, see table 1) and LT/EFL<5.0 (equal to about 4.44 calculated from the values of table 1), DFOV is a maximum diagonal field of view of the imaging lens, EFL is an effective focal length of the imaging lens, and LT is a distance measured along an optical axis between two outermost lens surfaces with refractive powers at opposite ends of the imaging lens.
Wang does not teach wherein the imaging lens is configured to focus only in a wavelength range of infrared light.
However, Chou teaches (in figure 1) providing an infrared filter (infrared filter L5) in a lens system order to filter out the influence of visible light on imaging in order to improve image quality (paragraph 49).
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide an infrared filter as suggested by Chou in order to improve image quality.
As per claim 3, Wang teaches (in figure 1) that the aperture stop (stop S1) is disposed between the first lens (first lens element E1) and the third lens (third lens element E3) (see figure 1).
As per claim 4, Wang teaches (in figure 1) that a total track length of the imaging lens is smaller than 60mm (equal to about 29.777, calculated from values given in table 1 and paragraph 107).
As per claim 5, Wang teaches (in figure 13-14) an imaging lens, comprising: a first lens (first lens element E1), a second lens (second lens element E2), a third lens (third lens element E3), a fourth lens (fourth lens element E4), a fifth lens (fifth lens element E5) and a sixth lens (sixth lens element E6) with refractive powers arranged in order from an object side to an image side of the imaging lens, wherein a total number of lenses with refractive powers of the imaging lens is at most eight; and an aperture stop (stop S1) dividing the lenses with refractive powers to define a first lens group (first lens element E1 and second lens element E2) between the object side and the aperture stop, and the first lens group having a negative refractive power (combined focal length of -8.567 calculated from the values given in table 13); and the imaging lens satisfies the conditions of 90°<DFOV<140° (97.4 degrees, see table 13), Fno<1.6 (equal to 1.53, see table 13) and LT/EFL<5.0 (equal to about 3.82 calculated from the values of table 13), DFOV is a maximum diagonal field of view of the imaging lens, EFL is an effective focal length of the imaging lens, and LT is a distance measured along an optical axis between two outermost lens surfaces with refractive powers at opposite ends of the imaging lens wherein the imaging lens satisfies a condition of 0.2<IMH/LT<0.3 (equal to about .21, calculated from table 13 and the table following paragraph 200), and IMH is a maximum image height of the imaging lens.
Wang does not teach wherein the imaging lens is configured to focus only in a wavelength range of infrared light.
However, Chou teaches (in figure 1) providing an infrared filter (infrared filter L5) in a lens system order to filter out the influence of visible light on imaging in order to improve image quality (paragraph 49).
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide an infrared filter as suggested by Chou in order to improve image quality.
As per claim 8, Wang teaches (in figure 1) the first lens (first lens element E1), the second lens (second lens element E2), the third lens (third lens element E3), the fourth lens (fourth lens element E4), the fifth lens (fifth lens element E5) and the sixth lens (sixth lens element E6) respectively have refractive powers of negative, positive, negative, positive, positive, positive (see table 1 and paragraphs 82-87).
As per claim 9, Wang teaches (in figure 1) an imaging lens, comprising: a first lens (first lens element E1), a second lens (second lens element E2), a third lens (third lens element E3), a fourth lens (fourth lens element E4), a fifth lens (sixth lens element E6) and a sixth lens (seventh lens element E7) with refractive powers arranged in order from an object side to an image side of the imaging lens, wherein a total number of lenses with refractive powers of the imaging lens is at most eight; and an aperture stop (stop S1) dividing the lenses with refractive powers to define a first lens group (first lens element E1 and second lens element E2) between the object side and the aperture stop, and the first lens group having a negative refractive power (combined focal length of -19.88 calculated from the values given in table 1); and the imaging lens satisfies the conditions of 90°<DFOV<140° (105 degrees, see table 1 and paragraph 97), Fno<1.6 (equal to 1.57, see table 1) and LT/EFL<5.0 (equal to about 4.44 calculated from the values of table 1), DFOV is a maximum diagonal field of view of the imaging lens, EFL is an effective focal length of the imaging lens, and LT is a distance measured along an optical axis between two outermost lens surfaces with refractive powers at opposite ends of the imaging lens further comprising a seventh lens (fifth lens element E5) disposed between the fourth lens and the fifth lens.
Wang does not teach wherein the imaging lens is configured to focus only in a wavelength range of infrared light.
However, Chou teaches (in figure 1) providing an infrared filter (infrared filter L5) in a lens system order to filter out the influence of visible light on imaging in order to improve image quality (paragraph 49).
It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide an infrared filter as suggested by Chou in order to improve image quality.
As per claim 10, Wang teaches (in figure 1) an eighth lens (eighth lens element E8) disposed between the sixth lens (sixth lens element E6) and an image plane (IMG).
Conclusion
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/ALEXANDER P GROSS/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2871
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