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
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) 16-23, 26-27, 32 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lunt (US 20160118077) in view of Yasuda (US 6221455 )
Lunt discloses
16. A data carrier comprising
a plastic substrate 202 having first and second opposite surfaces and a thickness of at most 500 μm (par. 23: 30 μm),
wherein the first surface of the substrate is coated with a first coating, a material of the first coating being different from a material of the substrate (par. 24),
wherein the first coating (i.e. recording layer 204) comprises a plurality of laser-ablated first recesses encoding information (Fig. 2, par. 24, 30).
Lunt discloses that the recording layer may comprise a metal, a metal alloy, a metal oxide, a metalloid, or any combination thereof (abstract)
Lunt is silent to wherein the material of the first coating comprises one or a combination of the following materials: a metal nitride, a metal carbide, or a metal boride
Yasuda discloses recording layer 4, 6 comprising at least a dielectric protective film that is a nitride, oxide, or sulfide of metals such as Al or semiconductor material (c14: 17-23)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective date the invention was made to incorporate the teachings of Yasuda so that the material may exhibit only limited absorption in the laser light wavelength range.
17.16, wherein the thickness of the substrate is at most 200 μm (Lunt, par. 23).
18.16, wherein a thickness of the first coating is at most 1 μm (Lunt, par. 24: 50 nm).
19.16, wherein each first recess in the first coating has a depth of at most 100 nm (Lunt, par. 24: 50 nm).
Re claims 20, 22, 23, although not expressly stated, features of these claims are considered an obvious extension of the prior art’s teachings since the changing of size is an obvious expedient and can be of design choice. MPEP 2144.04.
21.16, wherein each first recess in the first coating has a depth which is substantially equal to a thickness of the first coating (Lunt, Fig. 2)
26.16, Lunt is silent to wherein the substrate comprises one or a combination of the following materials: polycarbonate, polyethylene naphthalate, polyester, fluoroethylenepropylene, ethylene-propylene-copolymer, ethylene-tetrafluoroetheylene, perfluoroalkoxy polymer, polyetherimide, polyether sulfone, polyethylene terephthalate, polyimide, polymethypentene, polytetraluoroethylene, polyvinylidene fluoride.
However, Lunt also disclose
[0023] The substrate 202 may comprise materials that are not subject in any substantial way to age degradation effects. The substrate 202 may be any material compatible with use in optical information storage. For example, the substrate 202 may be polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate or any other polyester films. Other plastics or polymers may also be used.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective date the invention was made to extend the teachings of Lunt so that a polymer of choice can be used.
27.16, wherein the data carrier is wound up in a roll (Lunt, Fig. 4).
32. A method of reading information out of a data carrier comprising a plastic substrate having first and second opposite surfaces and a thickness of at most 500 μm, wherein the first surface of the substrate is coated with a first coating, a material of the first coating being different from a material of the substrate, wherein the first coating comprises a plurality of laser-ablated first recesses encoding the information, the method comprising:
illuminating the data carrier with a light of a first wavelength (Fig. 5, par. 33);
detecting the light as transmitted through the data carrier and/or as reflected by the data carrier; and analyzing the detected light in order to decode the information encoded in the first recesses of the data carrier (Fig. 3-5, par. 50).
Lunt is silent to wherein the material of the first coating comprises one or a combination of the following materials: a metal nitride, a metal carbide, or a metal boride
Yasuda discloses recording layer 4, 6 comprising at least a dielectric protective film that is a nitride, oxide, or sulfide of metals such as Al or semiconductor material (c14: 17-23)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective date the invention was made to incorporate the teachings of Yasuda so that the material may exhibit only limited absorption in the laser light wavelength range.
Claim(s) 25, is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lunt (US 20160118077) / Yasuda (US 6221455 ) in view of Koops (US 7939164)
Re claim 25.16, Lunt is silent to wherein the metal nitride comprises CrN, CrAlN, TiN, TiCN, TiAlN, ZrN, AlN, VN, Si.sub.3N.sub.4, ThN, HfN, BN; the metal carbide comprises TiC, CrC, Al.sub.4C.sub.3, VC, ZrC, HfC, ThC, B.sub.4C, SiC; the metal boride comprises TiB.sub.2, ZrB.sub.2, CrB.sub.2, VB.sub.2, SiB.sub.6, ThB.sub.2, HfB.sub.2, WB.sub.2, WB.sub.4;
Koops discloses FIG. 2 shows the process of evaporation, with pulverization beforehand, of the polymer matrix of the pigment layer 3 at the point where the laser strikes. The striking of the laser light 2 on the pigment layer 3 converts the laser light 2 into heat, which acts on the surface of the pigment layer 3. The polymer matrix, as a result of absorption of the laser light 2, is converted locally into a plasma 33, also called a plasma cloud.
As a result of the formation of the plasma 33 a reaction takes place between the titanium dioxide 31 and the carbon black 32, to give titanium carbide 34, which, as shown in FIG. 3, is deposited on the surface of the glass article 1.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective date the invention was made to incorporate the prior art teachings to use a desired metal as design choice.
Claim(s) 28 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lunt (US 20160118077) / Yasuda (US 6221455 ) in view of Mailloux (US 5466324)
Re claim 28.16, Lunt is silent to wherein the second surface of the substrate is coated with a second coating, a material of the second coating being different from the material of the substrate, wherein the second coating comprises a plurality of laser-ablated second recesses encoding information.
Mailloux discloses Instead of being read through the front leaf of the pouch, the bar code (and/or the serial number, if desired) may be designed to be read through a transparent or translucent back leaf. This may require left-right reversed printing on the back leaf, but has the advantage that the position of the bar code is not restricted by the size of the insert in the identification document (c11: 51-58)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective date the invention was made to incorporate the prior art teachings so that information can also be encoded and accessible on the back side of the substrate as desirable. The combined teachings would suggest that information could be desirable to be placed on the second surface. Thus, another recording layer could be placed on the second surface of the substrate to enable information to be encoded thereon. Moreover, rearrangement of parts, i.e. encoded information to the second side, is an obvious expedient. MPEP 2144.04.
Claim(s) 29, 31 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lunt (US 20160118077)/ Yasuda (US 6221455 ) in view of CN851 (CN 219831851)
Re claim 29, see also discussion regarding claims above.
Lunt is silent to a picosecond or a femtosecond laser to encode information.
CN851 discloses
The system principle structure is shown in FIG. 1, the photovoltaic glass 1 tracking identification system is provided with a laser 3, the laser 3 is used for applying an ultra-short pulse laser beam 4 on the smooth corner of the photovoltaic glass 1, the laser beam is not limited by the nanosecond laser 3 or picosecond laser 3, The laser beam generally has a wavelength of 355 nm or 532 nm, which will not affect the nature of the glass because the ultra-short pulse laser technology is not thermally ablated or "cold" ablated; The laser 3 can be arranged in an edge grinding process or a laser drilling process, and an ultra-short pulse laser beam 4 is applied so that the laser beam is processed into a character string or a bar code on the smooth substrate for a general processing time of 3-5 seconds.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective date the invention was made to incorporate the teachings of CN851 so that the ablation can be done using a picosecond laser.
31.29, further comprising: coating the second surface with a second coating, a material of the second coating being different from the material of the substrate; and generating a plurality of second recesses in the second coating by means of the laser ablation to encode information (Yasuda, Fig. 12: recording medium can be on both sides of combined substrate 2)
Claim(s) 30 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lunt (US 20160118077) / Yasuda (US 6221455 )/ CN851 (CN 219831851) in view of Morikawa (US 20170124443 )
Re claim 30.29, Lunt discloses [0033] In some embodiments, the ablation energy may be measured as a unit of energy per unit volume of material. For example, thicker layers of ablatable material may require a greater amount of energy to ablate … In some cases, a thicker layer of material may necessitate a longer or more intense exposure to ablation energy. Still other factors may include ambient temperature, humidity, the process by which the ablatable material was formed, the process by which the ablatable material was bonded to other materials in the ablatable media item, the type of ablation energy used in the process and the type and thickness of the reflective layer (when present)
Lunt is silent to wherein the substrate is transparent to a wavelength of a laser light used for the laser ablation, and wherein the laser ablation is performed with the laser light transmitted through the substrate.
Morikawa discloses laser source can be deployed on either side of the carrier to record data (Fig. 1-3)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective date the invention was made to incorporate the teachings of Morikawa so that the carrier can be recorded on a side of choice.
Claim(s) 33-35, is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lunt (US 20160118077) / Yasuda (US 6221455) in view of Morikawa (US 20170124443 )
33.32, wherein the substrate is transparent to the first wavelength and wherein the light as transmitted through the data carrier is detected (Morikawa, Figs. 1-3)
34.33, wherein the data carrier is illuminated from the second surface (see discussion regarding claim 33 above).
35.32, wherein the light as reflected by the data carrier is detected on the second surface (Lunt, par. 40: reflective layer is used to reflect energy when hit by the laser; thus when the laser is desired to be from the second surface of the substrate, it would have been obvious to arrange the reflective layer behind the recording layer with respect to the direction of the laser).
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments have been considered but are moot in view of new ground of rejection.
Conclusion
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/THIEN T MAI/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2876
