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 § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-13 + 15-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102a1 as being anticipated by Piao et al (CN 115403630 A).
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[p14/17].
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Claim(s) 1-13 and 15-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102a1 and 102a2 as being anticipated by Wang et al (WO 2023221346 A1, CN 114891042 A).
Wang discloses OLEDs comprising a compound including one example:
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[p16].
Which reads on the claimed formula 1 and specifically the claimed Formula 5-1 in claim 13 wherein X23 to X28 are C, R23 is t-butyl, R11 and R12 are hydrogen, Y1 is C and R41 and R42 thereon are methyl, R1 is hydrogen, t11 is 1, L10 is a single bond, R10 is F, M1 is Ir, R31 and R32 are septyl groups, and R33 is hydrogen.
Wang discloses that the compound is useful as an emitting material in an OLED [p14], and that the OLED includes an anode, a cathode, an emitting layer comprising the inventive compound and a host, and the claimed hole transport and electron transport layers [p42].
Other Relevant Prior Art
The relevant art includes Piao et al (CN 115403630 A), which discloses the compound
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used in an OLED. This compound 199 would read on the claimed compounds except that (in the language of the claimed Formulae 1A and 1B) there is no ring formed from the bonding together of R21 and R22, R22 and R23, or R23 and R24, and there is a ring formed by the bonding together of the R11 and R12 substituents of the X11 and X12 variables. The claims and specification are very explicit when an R-type substituent is optionally joined together with another in order to form a ring, and neither the claims nor the specification indicate that R11 and R12 may be joined together to form a ring. The compound of Piao, therefore, lies outside the scope of the claimed compounds and is not an obvious variant thereof.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 14 is 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the closest prior art Wang et al (WO 2023221346 A1, CN 114891042 A), discussed above, discloses the compound:
Every embodiment of claim 14, on the other hand, includes CF3, SiMe3, or GeMe3 as the substituent R10, rather than the -F of the above compound of Wang, and either does or does not include a phenylene group as L10:
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Given that only the one compound of Wang reads on the claims, and that most of the compounds include a different core structure (naphtho group condensed with the pyridine rather than the claimed benzo-5-membered ring structure condensed with the pyridine ring), it would require excessive hindsight on the part of the office to arrive at the claimed compounds.
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MICHAEL M. DOLLINGER
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 1766
/MICHAEL M DOLLINGER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1766
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