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 Amendment
The amendment filed on 6/10/2024 has been entered. Claims 1-20 are pending in the Application.
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.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Yang et al., CN 201354980 Y (all citations will be made to the English language translation provided by Espacenet).
Regarding claim 1, Yang discloses “A light-emitting diode (LED) backlight source, comprising a substrate (102, Fig. 3), at least one LED chip (104, Fig. 3), and at least one a driver integrated circuit (IC) (103, Fig. 3), wherein the substrate has a first side, the at least one LED chip and the at least one driver IC are disposed at intervals on the first side (seen in Fig. 3), M partitions (each partition referring to an IC chip and LED chips group set, seen in Fig. 3, there are 8 partitions) are disposed on the first side, one driver IC and N channels are disposed in each partition, and one driver IC controls X LED chips through one channel (¶ [0026] “LED driver chip 103 is a 4-bit driver chip, which is embedded between the LEDs to drive the four surrounding LEDs”), wherein M, N, and X are integers greater than or equal to 1 (in Fig. 3, there are M=8 partitions, N = 4 channels per chip, X = 4 LED chips), N is less than or equal to 6 (¶ [0026] N = 4), and an appearance of the driver IC is white (¶ [0013] “the packaging material of the LED driver chip is a white ceramic packaging material”).
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) 2-4 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang in view of Li et al., CN 204257643 U (all citations will be made to the English language translation provided by Espacenet).
Regarding claim 2, Yang discloses the invention of claim 1, as cited above, except “each of the at least one driver IC is encapsulated by a plastic packaging material, and the plastic packaging material is white plastic; or an outer surface of each of the at least one driver IC is coated with white glue.
Yang discloses the driver can be encapsulated in ceramic (¶ [0013]).
Li discloses an LED substrate with a driver IC (3, Fig. 1-3) that is encapsulated by a white plastic packaging material or coated with white glue (4, Fig. 1-3; ¶ [0059-0060]), or a rubber or a ceramic, thus exemplifying recognized equivalent structures.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to have the driver IC chip, as taught by Yang, be encapsulated by a plastic packaging material, such as taught by Li. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to have the driver IC chip be encapsulated by a white plastic material or white glue for simpler processing, starting from a liquid. Additionally, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to have the encapsulation be a plastic packaging material since the selection of any of these known equivalents would be considered within the level of ordinary skill in the art as evidenced by Li’s teaching.
Regarding claim 3, Yang in view of Li discloses the invention of claim 2, as cited above, and further discloses “the driver IC is encapsulated by the plastic packaging material, and the plastic packaging material is the white plastic, the plastic packaging material comprises a whitening agent, and the plastic packaging material comprises one of epoxy resin, epoxy resin mixture, silicone resin, or polyimide (Li, ¶ [0059-0060]).”
Regarding claim 4, Yang in view of Li discloses the invention of claim 2, as cited above, and further discloses “the outer surface of each of the at least one driver IC is coated with the white glue, the white glue is epoxy resin or silicone resin (Li, ¶ [0059-0060]).
Claim(s) 5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang in view of Krijin et al., US 2011/0163334 A1.
Regarding claim 5, Yang discloses the invention of claim 1, as cited above, and further discloses “a plurality of LED chips (seen in Fig. 3).”
However, Yang does not explicitly disclose “a center distance between adjacent LED chips is 4 mm to 30 mm.”
Yang is silent with the details of the layout of the LED chips and the specifics of their distance from each other.
Krijin discloses a light emitting device with a plurality of LED (101, Fig. 1) with a distance from each other in a range of 5mm to 20 mm (¶ [0039]).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to have the LEDs, as taught by Yang, have a distance from each other in a range of 5mm to 20mm, such as taught by Krijin. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to have select such a range for completing the details of the invention in selecting an appropriate distance between LEDs to emit a desired light output with a small enough distance to not appear uneven.
Claim(s) 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang in view of Hussell et al., US 2015/0282260 A1.
Regarding claim 6, Yang discloses the invention of claim 1, as cited above, except “each of the at least one LED chip is an LED flip chip.”
Yang is silent with regards to the electrical connection between the LED chips and the substrate.
Hussel discloses a light emitting device with a plrualtiy of LED that are connected to the substrate as a flip chip (¶ [0040]).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to have the LED chips, as taught by Yang, be flip chip, such as taught by Hussel. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to have the LED chips be flip chips for completing the details of the invention in selecting an appropriate connective mode of the LED chips to the substrate, in particular flip chips for using solder instead of long lead wires (Hussel, ¶ [0040]).
Claim(s) 7-8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang in view of Feng et al., CN 109243313 A.
Regarding claim 7, Yang discloses “A manufacturing method for an LED backlight source, configured to manufacture a LED backlight source comprising a substrate (102, Fig. 3), at least one LED chip (104, Fig. 3), and at least one driver integrated circuit (IC) (103, Fig. 3), wherein the substrate has a first side, the at least one LED chip and the at least one driver IC are disposed at intervals on the first side (seen in Fig. 3), M partitions are disposed on the first side (each partition referring to an IC chip and LED chips group set, seen in Fig. 3, there are 8 partitions), one driver IC and N channels are disposed in each partition, and one driver IC controls X LED chips through one channel, wherein M, N, and X are integers greater than or equal to 1 (in Fig. 3, there are M=8 partitions, N = 4 channels per chip, X = 4 LED chips), N is less than or equal to 6 (¶ [0026] N = 4), and an appearance of the driver IC is white (¶ [0013] “the packaging material of the LED driver chip is a white ceramic packaging material”);
However, Yang does not disclose “
the manufacturing method for the LED backlight source comprising:
providing a substrate and a steel mesh,
aligning the steel mesh with the substrate, and
simultaneously applying solder paste to an LED pad and an IC pad of the substrate through the steel mesh, wherein an amount of solder paste on the LED pad and an amount of solder paste on the IC pad are different; and
providing at least one LED chip and at least one driver IC with a white appearance, and
soldering the at least one LED chip and the at least one driver IC respectively on the LED pad and the IC pad using reflow soldering to form the LED backlight source.”
Feng discloses an LED panel with a substrate (1, Fig. 7), with LED chips (103, Fig. 1) and IC chips (104, Fig. 1) laying a steel mesh (2, Fig. 6-7; ¶ [0025]) on the substrate with the holes corresponding to the electrode pads, applying solder onto the electrode pads and attaching the LED chip (¶ [0051-0052]) where the solder amounts would be different (seen in Fig. 1, the sizes of the chips are different).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to use the steel mesh method of applying solder, such as taught by Feng, for the LED backlight source LED and driver components, as taught by Yang. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to use a steel mesh for applying solder for reducing the design area of the solder pads, allowing for higher density of components on the substrate (Feng, ¶ [0008-0009]).
Regarding claim 8, Yang in view of Feng discloses the invention of claim 7, as cited above, except “a plurality of first through holes and a plurality of second through holes are disposed at intervals on the steel mesh, the plurality of first through holes correspond to the LED pad in position, the plurality of second through holes correspond to the IC pad in position, and a depth of each of the plurality of first through holes is less than a depth of each of the plurality of second through holes.”
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to have the holes have different sizes such that the IC pad holes are deeper, since such a modification would have involved a mere change in the size of a
component and it has been held that a change in size is generally recognized in as being within
the level of ordinary skill in the art (In re Rose, 105 USPQ 237 (CCPA 1955)) and that, where
the only difference between the prior art and the claims is a recitation of relative dimensions of
the claimed device and a device having the claimed relative dimensions would not perform
differently than the prior art device, the claimed device is not patentably distinct from the prior
art device (In re Gardner v. TEC Systems, Inc., 725 F.2d 1338, 220 USPQ 777 (Fed. Cir. 1984),
cert. denied, 469 U.S. 830, 225 USPQ 232 (1984)). See MPEP 2144.04 (IV-A).
Claim(s) 9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang in view of Feng, and further in view of Liu, CN 111993768 A (all citations will be made to the English language translation provided by Espacenet).
Regarding claim 9, Yang in view of Feng discloses the invention of claim 8, as cited above, except “the steel mesh comprises a mesh plate, bosses are protruded from a side of the mesh plate away from the substrate, each boss corresponds to a respective second through hole, and each second through hole penetrates through a respective boss.”
Liu discloses a solder plate steel mesh with a mesh plate (11, Fig. 1) and bosses that protrude from a side of the mesh plate (12, Fig. 1) and the holes align (seen in Fig. 1).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to have the mesh plate, as taught by Yang in view of Feng, have boss protrusions, such as taught by Liu. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to include boss protrusions for assisting with the accuracy of the solder dispensing (Liu, ¶ [0052])
Claim(s) 11-14, 17, 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang in view of Feng, and further in view of Li.
Regarding claim 11, Yang in view of Feng discloses the invention of claim 7, as cited above, and further discloses “before providing the at least one LED chip and the at least one driver IC with a white appearance and soldering the at least one LED chip and the at least one driver IC respectively on the LED pad and the IC pad using the reflow soldering to form the LED backlight source, further comprising: molding the driver IC using white plastic.
Yang discloses the driver can be encapsulated in ceramic (¶ [0013]).
Li discloses an LED substrate with a driver IC (3, Fig. 1-3) that is encapsulated by a white plastic packaging material or coated with white glue (4, Fig. 1-3; ¶ [0059-0060]), or a rubber or a ceramic, thus exemplifying recognized equivalent structures.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to have the driver IC chip, as taught by Yang, be encapsulated by a plastic packaging material, such as taught by Li. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to have the driver IC chip be encapsulated by a white plastic material or white glue for simpler processing, starting from a liquid. Additionally, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to have the encapsulation be a plastic packaging material since the selection of any of these known equivalents would be considered within the level of ordinary skill in the art as evidenced by Li’s teaching.
Regarding claim 12, Yang discloses “A manufacturing method for an LED backlight source, configured to manufacture a LED backlight source comprising a substrate (102, Fig. 3), at least one LED chip (104, Fig. 3), and at least one driver integrated circuit (IC) (103, Fig. 3), wherein the substrate has a first side, the at least one LED chip and the at least one driver IC are disposed at intervals on the first side (seen in Fig. 3), M partitions are disposed on the first side (each partition referring to an IC chip and LED chips group set, seen in Fig. 3, there are 8 partitions), one driver IC and N channels are disposed in each partition, and one driver IC controls X LED chips through one channel, wherein M, N, and X are integers greater than or equal to 1 (in Fig. 3, there are M=8 partitions, N = 4 channels per chip, X = 4 LED chips), N is less than or equal to 6 (¶ [0026] N = 4), and an appearance of the driver IC is white (¶ [0013] “the packaging material of the LED driver chip is a white ceramic packaging material”);
However, Yang does not disclose “
the manufacturing method for the LED backlight source comprising: providing a substrate and a steel mesh, aligning the steel mesh with the substrate, and simultaneously applying solder paste to an LED pad and an integrated circuit (IC) pad of the substrate through the steel mesh, wherein an amount of solder paste on the LED pad and an amount of solder paste on the IC pad are different; providing an LED chip and a driver IC, and soldering the at least one LED chip and the at least one driver IC respectively on the LED pad and the IC pad using reflow soldering to form the LED backlight source; and coating each of the at least one driver IC with white glue, and drying the LED backlight source with the at least one driver IC in an oven to make the appearance of the driver IC white..”
Feng discloses an LED panel with a substrate (1, Fig. 7), with LED chips (103, Fig. 1) and IC chips (104, Fig. 1) laying a steel mesh (2, Fig. 6-7; ¶ [0025]) on the substrate with the holes corresponding to the electrode pads, applying solder onto the electrode pads and attaching the LED chip (¶ [0051-0052]) where the solder amounts would be different (seen in Fig. 1, the sizes of the chips are different).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to use the steel mesh method of applying solder, such as taught by Feng, for the LED backlight source LED and driver components, as taught by Yang. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to use a steel mesh for applying solder for reducing the design area of the solder pads, allowing for higher density of components on the substrate (Feng, ¶ [0008-0009]).
Yang discloses the driver can be encapsulated in ceramic (¶ [0013]).
Li discloses an LED substrate with a driver IC (3, Fig. 1-3) that is encapsulated by a white plastic packaging material or coated with white glue (4, Fig. 1-3; ¶ [0059-0060]), or a rubber or a ceramic, thus exemplifying recognized equivalent structures.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to have the driver IC chip, as taught by Yang, be encapsulated by a plastic packaging material, such as taught by Li. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to have the driver IC chip be encapsulated by a white plastic material or white glue for simpler processing, starting from a liquid. Additionally, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to have the encapsulation be a plastic packaging material since the selection of any of these known equivalents would be considered within the level of ordinary skill in the art as evidenced by Li’s teaching.
Regarding claim 13, Yang in view of Feng discloses the invention of claim 7, as cited above, and except “ each of the at least one driver IC is encapsulated by a plastic packaging material, and the plastic packaging material is white plastic
Li discloses an LED substrate with a driver IC (3, Fig. 1-3) that is encapsulated by a white plastic packaging material or coated with white glue (4, Fig. 1-3; ¶ [0059-0060]), or a rubber or a ceramic, thus exemplifying recognized equivalent structures.
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to have the driver IC chip, as taught by Yang, be encapsulated by a plastic packaging material, such as taught by Li. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to have the driver IC chip be encapsulated by a white plastic material or white glue for simpler processing, starting from a liquid. Additionally, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to have the encapsulation be a plastic packaging material since the selection of any of these known equivalents would be considered within the level of ordinary skill in the art as evidenced by Li’s teaching.
Regarding claim 14, Yang in view of Feng and Li discloses the invention of claim 13, as cited above, and further discloses “the plastic packaging material comprises a whitening agent, and the plastic packaging material comprises one of epoxy resin, epoxy resin mixture, silicone resin, or polyimide (Li, ¶ [0059-0060]).”
Regarding claim 17, Yang in view of Feng and Li discloses the invention of claim 12, as cited above, and further discloses “the white glue is epoxy resin or silicone resin (Li, ¶ [0059-0060]).
Regarding claim 19, Yang in view of Feng and Li discloses the invention of claim 12, as cited above, and further discloses “each of the at least one LED chip is an LED flip chip (Feng, ¶ [0008])”.
Claim(s) 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang in view of Feng and further in view of Zhang et al., US 2022/0013484 A1.
Regarding claim 10, Yang in view of Feng discloses the invention of claim 8, as cited above, and except “the depth of the first through hole is 0.01 mm to 0.03 mm, and the depth of the second through hole is 0.05 mm to 0.1 mm.”
Zhang discloses a steel mesh for solder with thickness of 0.08 mm (¶ [0028]), recognizing it as a result effective variable.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to use the claimed range, since it has been held that discovering an optimum value of a result effective variable involves only routine skill in the art. In re Boesch, 617 F.2d 272, 205 USPQ 215 (CCPA 1980).
Claim(s) 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang in view of Feng and further in view of Krijin.
Regarding claim 15, Yang in view of Feng discloses the invention of claim 7, as cited above, and further discloses “a plurality of LED chips (seen in Yang Fig. 3).”
However, Yang does not explicitly disclose “a center distance between adjacent LED chips is 4 mm to 30 mm.”
Yang is silent with the details of the layout of the LED chips and the specifics of their distance from each other.
Krijin discloses a light emitting device with a plurality of LED (101, Fig. 1) with a distance from each other in a range of 5mm to 20 mm (¶ [0039]).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to have the LEDs, as taught by Yang, have a distance from each other in a range of 5mm to 20mm, such as taught by Krijin. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to have select such a range for completing the details of the invention in selecting an appropriate distance between LEDs to emit a desired light output with a small enough distance to not appear uneven.
Claim(s) 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang in view of Feng and further in view of Hussel.
Regarding claim 16, Yang in view of Feng discloses the invention of claim 7, as cited above, except “each of the at least one LED chip is an LED flip chip.”
Yang is silent with regards to the electrical connection between the LED chips and the substrate.
Hussel discloses a light emitting device with a plrualtiy of LED that are connected to the substrate as a flip chip (¶ [0040]).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to have the LED chips, as taught by Yang, be flip chip, such as taught by Hussel. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to have the LED chips be flip chips for completing the details of the invention in selecting an appropriate connective mode of the LED chips to the substrate, in particular flip chips for using solder instead of long lead wires (Hussel, ¶ [0040]).
Claim(s) 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang in view of Feng and Li, and further in view of Krijin.
Regarding claim 18, Yang in view of Feng and Li discloses the invention of claim 12, as cited above, and further discloses “a plurality of LED chips (seen in Yang Fig. 3).”
However, Yang does not explicitly disclose “a center distance between adjacent LED chips is 4 mm to 30 mm.”
Yang is silent with the details of the layout of the LED chips and the specifics of their distance from each other.
Krijin discloses a light emitting device with a plurality of LED (101, Fig. 1) with a distance from each other in a range of 5mm to 20 mm (¶ [0039]).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, to have the LEDs, as taught by Yang, have a distance from each other in a range of 5mm to 20mm, such as taught by Krijin. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to have select such a range for completing the details of the invention in selecting an appropriate distance between LEDs to emit a desired light output with a small enough distance to not appear uneven.
Claim(s) 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yang in view of Feng and Liu, and further in view of Zhang.
Regarding claim 20, Yang in view of Feng and Liu discloses the invention of claim 9, as cited above, except ““the depth of the first through hole is 0.01 mm to 0.03 mm, and the depth of the second through hole is 0.05 mm to 0.1 mm.”
Zhang discloses a steel mesh for solder with thickness of 0.08 mm (¶ [0028]), recognizing it as a result effective variable.
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to use the claimed range, since it has been held that discovering an optimum value of a result effective variable involves only routine skill in the art. In re Boesch, 617 F.2d 272, 205 USPQ 215 (CCPA 1980).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Heo et al., KR20180062224A discloses an LED array with multiple driver IC chips located between the LED chips
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MICHAEL CHIANG whose telephone number is (571)270-3811. The examiner can normally be reached M to F, 9am-6pm.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, James R Greece can be reached at 571-272-3711. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/MICHAEL CHIANG/Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2875
/JOSEPH L WILLIAMS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2875
Prosecution Insights