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
Claims 1-12 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected invention, there being no allowable generic or linking claim.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 7/24/26.
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.
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.
Claim(s) 13-15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hirata et al. JP 2016146446 in view of Hall et al. US 2018/0273412.
Claim 13, Hirata teaches a method of manufacturing a wafer from an ingot, comprising: a fragile layer forming step of applying, to an ingot, a laser beam having a wavelength transmittable through the ingot while positioning a focused spot of the laser beam in the ingot at a depth from an end face thereof that corresponds to a thickness of the wafer, thereby forming a fragile layer including modified regions and cracks developed therefrom in the ingot and after the fragile layer forming step, a cleaving step of propagating ultrasonic waves to the ingot through water and supplied to the end face of the ingot, thereby further developing the cracks to cleave the ingot along the fragile layer (fig. 1-12, par 14, 49-51). Hirata teaches the water being pure water which will inherently come from a water refining apparatus, but Hirata does not teach any particular structure of the water refining apparatus.
Hall teaches a water refining apparatus that includes a filter (150) for filtering water to remove solid particles therefrom (par 75), a sterilizing unit (120) disposed downstream of the filter and for irradiating the water with UV rays to sterilize the water, an ion exchange filter (140L) disposed downstream of the sterilizing unit and for performing an ion exchange on impurity ions contained in the water to remove impurities from the water, a dearating unit (160) for deaerating the water and a measuring unit (sensors) disposed downstream of the dearating unit for measuring a dissolved oxygen concentration in the water (fig. 1, par 58, 72, 77, 145, 156). Hall teaches the apparatus is used to produce ultrapure water for semiconductor fabrication operations (abstract). The method of Hirata is a semiconductor fabrication operation that requires pure water. Given the lack of a teaching in Hirata as to the structure of the water refining apparatus one of ordinary skill in the art would look to the prior art such as Hall for a suitable water refining apparatus. The claim would have been obvious because "a person of ordinary skill has good reason to pursue the known options within his or her technical grasp. If this leads to the anticipated success, it is likely the product not of innovation but of ordinary skill and common sense.” KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007). Additionally, the apparatus of Hall provides for providing ultrapure water that utilizes control systems to facilitate providing the ultrapure water using feedback and/or feedforward approaches (par 46).
Claims 14 and 15, Hirata further teaches the ingot is made of monocrystalline silicon carbide (par 3); and the end face lies not parallel to a c-plane of the silicon carbide and the fragile layer forming step includes an irradiating step of irradiating the ingot with the laser beam while moving the focused spot of the laser beam and the ingot relatively to each other along a direction parallel to a crossing line along which the c-plane of the silicon carbide and the end face cross each other and an indexing step of moving a position where the focused spot of the laser beam is to be formed and the ingot relatively to each other along a direction perpendicular to the crossing line and the irradiating step and the indexing step are alternately performed repeatedly in the fragile layer forming step (fig. 1-12).
Conclusion
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/BENJAMIN M KURTZ/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1779
