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 .
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.
Claims 1 and 5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kurosaka et al. (US PG Pub 2018/0109075) in view of Verschuuren et al. (CN 101904020 A).
Regarding claim 1, Kurosaka et al. disclose: a method for designing a phase modulation layer of a light emitting element as an iPMSEL including a light emitting portion and the phase modulation layer optically coupled to the light emitting portion, the method comprising: a generation step for generating a design pattern of the phase modulation layer (6), wherein the phase modulation layer includes a base layer (6A) and a plurality of different refractive index regions (6B) having different refractive indices from the base layer and distributed two-dimensionally in a plane perpendicular to a thickness direction of the phase modulation layer (Fig. 2, [0077]-[0083]), and the generation step includes: a first step of generating a first design pattern that is a pattern for designing the different refractive index regions so that a distribution of the different refractive index regions becomes a distribution according to an optical image output from the light emitting element and that includes bright spots corresponding to bright spots of the optical image (Fig. 2, [0080]-[0083]).
Kurosaka et al. do not disclose: and a second step of generating a second design pattern from the first design pattern by dividing the first design pattern generated in the first step into a plurality of regions and thinning out at least one of a plurality of bright spots included in each of the regions.
Verschuuren et al. disclose: a light-emitting region area divided into sub-volumes. at least some of these sub areas are provided with different photonic crystal (PC), the difference of the photonic crystals is that the corresponding lattice parameters (including the following further explanation of lattice type, lattice spacing, (Extract collecting a fraction having a filling rate) and lattice orientation) different from each other. sub region acts as a plurality of different light sources, wherein each light source has a different radiation pattern (or radiation)… reduces bright spot ([0009], [0010]). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the device of Kurosaka by generating a second design pattern from the first design pattern by dividing the first design pattern generated in the first step into a plurality of regions and reducing the bright spots in order to emit a more uniform far field light pattern.
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Fig. 2 of Kurosaka
Regarding claim 5, Kurosaka as modified disclose: a first formation step for forming a light emitting portion (4) on a substrate (1); and a second formation step for forming a phase modulation layer (6) optically coupled to the light emitting portion based on the second design pattern generated by the method for designing a phase modulation layer according to claim 1 (Kurosaka, Fig. 2, [0077]-[0083], see the rejection of claim 1).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 3, 4 and 6 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 2 is allowable as the prior art fails to anticipate or render obvious the claimed limitations including “…wherein the first design pattern is a pattern on a wave number space corresponding to the optical image, and in the second step, four bright spots two-dimensionally adjacent to each other on the wave number space are set as the one region, and the second design pattern is generated by thinning out two of the four bright spots.”
Claim 3 is allowable as the prior art fails to anticipate or render obvious the claimed limitations including “…wherein the first design pattern is a pattern on a wave number space corresponding to the optical image, and in the second step, four bright spots two-dimensionally adjacent to each other on the wave number space are set as the one region, and the second design pattern is generated by thinning out three of the four bright spots.”
Claim 4 is allowable as the prior art fails to anticipate or render obvious the claimed limitations including “…wherein, in the first step, in the first design pattern, a design region corresponding to 1st-order light of the optical image and a design region corresponding to −1st-order light of the optical image are separated from each other.”
Claim 6 is allowable as the prior art fails to anticipate or render obvious the claimed limitations including “…wherein, in the first step, when a virtual square lattice is set in the plane, the first design pattern is generated so that a center of gravity of each of the different refractive index regions is arranged away from a corresponding lattice point and has a rotation angle according to a phase distribution corresponding to the optical image around the lattice point and a lattice spacing a of the virtual square lattice and an emission wavelength λ of the light emitting portion satisfy conditions for M-point oscillation, and in the second formation step, on a reciprocal lattice space of the phase modulation layer, in-plane wave number vectors in four directions each including a wave number spread corresponding to an angular spread of the optical image are formed, another second phase distribution is superimposed on a first phase distribution as the phase distribution so that a magnitude of at least one of the in-plane wave number vectors is smaller than 2π/λ, and the phase modulation layer including the plurality of different refractive index regions is formed by using a phase distribution obtained by the superimposition.”
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Noda et al. (US PG Pub 2004/0247009) disclose: two-dimensional photonic crystal surface-emitting laser comprising a two-dimensional photonic crystal, having media different in refractive index arrayed in a two-dimensional cycle, disposed in the vicinity of an active layer that emits light by the injection of carriers, wherein the two-dimensional photonic crystal consists of square lattices having equal lattice constants in perpendicular directions, and a basic lattice consisting of a square with one medium as a vertex has an asymmetric refractive index distribution with respect to either one of the two diagonals of the basic lattice to thereby emit light in a constant polarizing direction (Abstract). Hirose et al. (US PG Pub 2013/0121358) disclose: a semiconductor surface light-emitting element of this invention is provided with a photonic crystal layer 6 obtained by periodically forming a plurality of holes H in a basic layer 6A comprised of a first compound semiconductor of the zinc blende structure and growing embedded regions 6B comprised of a second compound semiconductor of the zinc blende structure, in the holes H, and an active layer 4 to supply light to the photonic crystal layer 6, in which a principal surface of the basic layer 6A is a (001) plane and in which side faces of each hole H have at least three different {100} facets.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to XINNING(TOM) NIU whose telephone number is (571)270-1437. The examiner can normally be reached M-F: 9:30am-6:00pm.
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/XINNING(Tom) NIU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2828
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