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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) rejected in the prior office action have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of US 2022/0043201.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2022/0043201 to Bickham et al. in view of US 2016/0252683 to Sasaki et al.
Bickham discloses in figures 1-2, and 6D, a multicore optical fiber comprising:
a glass optical fiber (paragraph 76) having a plurality of cores each extending along a central axis, and a cladding (inner cladding IC1…ICi) surrounding the plurality of cores, the plurality of cores including a first core with a high refractive index and a second core with a refractive index lower than that of the first core (c1… ci have different refractive index profiles with one being higher than the other in figure 7A); and
a coating (paragraph 76 describes one or more additional coatings) provided on an outer peripheral surface of the glass optical fiber, wherein
on a cross-section of the multicore optical fiber orthogonal to the central axis, an arrangement of centers of a plurality of portions that has a refractive index different from a refractive index of the cladding has no rotational symmetry about a center of the cross-section (Pattern in figure 6D with the included marker CM has no symmetry), and
the multicore optical fiber further comprises a mode leakage adjustment structure (CM) for reducing a difference between a cutoff wavelength of a residual higher-order mode in the second core and a cutoff wavelength of a residual higher-order mode in the first core (No structure is claimed as to how the function of reducing the difference between a cutoff wavelength and therefore at minimum the mode leakage structure is present).
However, Bickham fails to explicitly disclose a resin outer coating layer. It is noted that such layer materials are commonly known and used in the art.
Sasaki discloses such a known resin coating layer (100) both for facilitating the manufacturing using UV curing and to prepare the fiber to be stripped and mated with a connector (paragraph 49).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to use a resin layer as taught by Sasaki in Bickham since it has been held to be within the general skill of a worker in the art to select a known material on the basis of its suitability for the intended use as a matter of obvious design choice. In re Leshin, 125 USPQ 416. Further, it would have been obvious to use the resin material to facilitate manufacturing with the use of UV curing and to enable strippability for adding a connector.
Claim(s) 2-10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bickham in view of Sasaki.
Bickham in view of Sasaki discloses the invention as claimed with a shifted marker core (CM; figure 6D), refractive index profiles for the cladding as claimed (figure 7) and shifts of a core center (via doping), however, fails to explicitly disclose the values claimed. Bickham discloses altering characteristics in figures 7-13 to optimize a crosstalk relationship.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to alter such relationships as a matter of obvious design choice for the intended use to optimize optical transmission and to reduce crosstalk.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 2016/0347645 (asymmetric core profile with marker).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Eric K Wong whose telephone number is (571)272-2363. The examiner can normally be reached M-Tu, Th-F 8A-6P.
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ERIC K. WONG
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2874
/Eric Wong/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2874