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.
Claim(s) 1, 4-9, 12-13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nakanishi (US 20160229733) and further in view of Takashi (JP 2015151328) as cited in the machine translation provided herein.
Regarding claims 1 and 12-13, Nakanishi discloses a method for manufacturing a multi-core fiber (1) [0011], [0030] comprising the steps of;
Providing a cylinder of cladding glass (22)
Nakanishi discloses creating a plurality of peripheral core holes (Fig 2 ST10, holes 220 at least [0033].
Nakanishi discloses inserting core glass rods (21) (Fig. 2 ST20 at least [0034]) and
Nakanishi discloses integration of the core rods into the cladding cylinder (Fig. 2 ST20) via heating the cylinder with the core rods in the core holes by exposing to a heating element (30) and collapsing the cylinder onto the rods (at least [0035]-[0039]).
Nakanishi discloses a desirable radius difference between the peripheral core holes and peripheral core rods in radius is greater than .15mm [0054] and thus the difference in diameter between the core rod and core hole is greater than 0.3 mm. It would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to optimize the spacing gap between the core hole and core rod as motivated to optimize and improve position accuracy before, during and after the integration step and avoid scratching and allow cleaning as indicated by Nakanishi [0053]-[0055].
Nakanishi does not indicate the claimed temperature gradient maintained during the heating step to collapse the preform into a fiber.
In an analogous art of manufacturing a multicore optical fiber preform (title) Takashi also discloses a rod in collapse method (page 3, second paragraph) where the temperature difference in manufacturing the preform between the points in the preform heating is can be reduced to 100K or less and avoid uneven softening (page 3; first paragraph-page 4; paragraph 6) as motivated to avoid temperature, and thus viscosity, differences and avoid uneven core rod and cladding consolidated shape from that desired by the skilled artisan.
Regarding claim 6, Nakanishi discloses creating the plurality of holes 220 in the cylinder by drilling [0037]
Regarding claim 7, Nakanishi discloses the cylinder and core rods are stretched during the heating integration step as depicted by the arrow and reduction in diameter in Fig. 5
Regarding claim 8, Nakanishi is silent as to the integration temperature, Takashi discloses a suitable temperature for a multi-core optical fiber integration is 1700K (Page 3; paragraph 5). It would be further obvious to a skilled artisan to optimize the integration heating temperature to collapse the cladding around the cores based on composition and size absent any unexpected results.
Regarding claim 9, Takashi suggests an outside cylinder of 75 mm with a center hole of 15mm is 75-15=60/2=15 thus 15mm is the thickness between the center of the center hole and peripheral hole center and 22.5 is the hole center interval (page 4; paragraph 2) 15.75<15<22.5
Claim(s) 2-3 and 10-11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nakanishi (US 20160229733) and further in view of Takashi (JP 2015151328) as cited in the machine translation provided herein as applied above and further in view of Ma et al. (US 20200223737)
Regarding claims 2-3, Claims 2-3 do not actually recite any active steps of the claimed process but merely a dimension of a product used in the process. Nakanishi does not indicate the precise dimensions of the outer cylinder as claimed in present claims 2-3.
In analogous art of collapsing rods, or cores in cylinders [0044], Ma discloses providing a cylinder of an outer diameter of about 200mm is conventional[0045]. It would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the method of Nakanishi with use an outer cylinder of conventional dimension as taught by Ma.
Regarding claims 10-11, Nakanishi does not disclose the direction of draw during the heating step.
In analogous art, Ma discloses an upward draw heating step for collapse of a multi-core fiber preform with support from below via bottom collar and drawing upward (title apparatus, [0012] Fig. 1)
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 08/11/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Applicant argues Takashi does not disclose how a temperature gradient should be managed during collapse of the cylinder only in a "heat storage" Applicant declares this a preliminary heating of the glass cylinder to a temperature with the aim to be as uniform as possible but not collapsing.
In response to this, Examiner first points out that Takashi discloses a “rod-in-collapse method” (page 2, Description-of-embodiments) this portion further describes the jacket has drilled holes and cores placed withing and an “integration step” equivalent to at least a portion of the claimed collapsing step see also, the claims of Takashi. Takashi indicates on page 3 ¶ that the heat storage and integration occur one after the other or simultaneously. The claims do not identify precisely what constitutes as the consolidation step as indicated in the claim interpretation of the non-final office action 05/11/2026.
On Page 6 ¶ 2 of the translation Takashi states,
the core material is inserted into the hole having a large non-circularity of the jacket material, the fixing position of the core in the jacket material moves randomly. On the other hand, in this embodiment, since the glass temperature around the hole of the jacket material of the multi- core optical fiber preform can be uniformized to a deviation of 100K or less, the jacket material when the core material and the jacket material are integrated. The surface tension from the side is also made uniform, and the deviation of the actual core position from the desired position is reduced.
Therefore, Takashi does discuss the collapsing step and control over temperature. Furthermore, a skilled artisan recognizes that the uneven heating discussed by Takashi yielding “non-circularity” of the multicores would also apply to any heating step, including integration.
It is clear from the entirety of the disclosure of Takashi that the temperature that reducing the temperature deviation in the preform and cores below 100K will maintain the uniform and desired shapes of each clad and core and avoid non-circularity.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
/JODI C FRANKLIN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1741
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