DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. 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.
2. Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cleary et al. (US 2015/0132538 A1) in view of Okuda et al. (US 6094943 A).
Cleary et al. disclose a glass laminate (equivalent to the vehicle window glass and the limitation that the glass can be used in a vehicle of the claimed invention) includes at least one chemically-strengthened glass sheets and a polymer interlayer between the glass sheets. Flaws are created in the surface of one of the glass sheets in order to weaken the glass laminate upon an impact event on a first side of the laminate, while retaining the strength of the laminate upon impact on the opposing second side of the laminate. The opposing side of the glass sheet with the flaws or a surface of the other glass sheet may be strengthened with an acid etch treatment in order to further strengthen the laminate upon impact on the opposing second side of the laminate. Glass laminates can be used as windows and glazing in architectural and vehicle or transportation applications, including automobiles, rolling stock, locomotive and airplanes and conventional automotive glazing constructions may consist of two plies of 2 mm soda lime glass (heat treated or annealed) with a polyvinyl butyral PVB interlayer. The inner glass sheet and the outer glass sheet may each be chemically hardened to a surface compressive stress (CS) of at least 300 MPa, at least 500 MPa, at least 700 MPa. As schematically illustrated in FIG. 1, glass laminates 10 according to embodiments disclosed herein include one or more thin but high strength glass sheets 11 and 13 (equivalent to the outer and inner glass of the claimed invention) and a polymer inter-layer 15 (equivalent to the interlayer of the claimed invention), such as polyvinyl butyral (PVB) interlayer. In one embodiment both the outer glass sheet 11 and the inner glass sheet 13 are chemically strengthened thin glass sheets having a thickness of 1.5 mm or less. When the outer surface 1 of a laminate 10 is impacted by an external object such as a stone, hail, foreign road hazard object, or by a blunt object used by a potential car thief or vandal, surfaces 2 and 4 of the laminate go into a state of tension. Therefore, in order to reduce the occurrence of penetration of the impacting object into the vehicle, it is desirable to make surfaces 2 and 4 as strong and resistant to fracture as possible. By acid etching surfaces 2 and 4 of two chemically strengthened tin glass sheets 11 and 13 as described herein, these surfaces can be significantly strengthened by the combined effects of chemical strengthening and acid etching. If etched immediately prior to lamination, the strengthening benefit due to the acid etch on surface 2 that is bonded to the inter-layer may be maintained because this surface is protected from contact and creation of surface flaws by the other glass sheet and the polymer interlayer following lamination. On the other hand, during an internal impact event on the inner surface 4 of a laminate, surfaces 1 and 3 go into tension. The presence of the controlled flaws 17 on the outer surface 3 of the inner glass sheet 13 act as stress concentration sites for the initiation of fractures in the inner glass sheet. Thus, the controlled flaws 17 can ensure that the laminate properly reacts when impacted from the interior of the vehicle by fracturing and absorbing energy at the desired level of impact force or energy. The flexural strengths of a thin tempered and acid-etched glass sheet is significantly influenced by the surface quality of the starting glass sheet as a whole, particularly including the size and spatial distribution of any surface flaws present on the sheet prior to treatment. This source of sheet failure is not readily apparent from ball drop impact testing because the sheet surface areas stressed under ball drop impacts are much smaller than those stressed during bi-axial or four-point bend testing. To insure consistently high strengths in thin glass sheet glass subjected to chemical tempering and acid etching in accordance with the presently disclosed methods, a preliminary step of selecting sheets for treatment that are substantially free of surface flaws of a depth greater than 2 microns prior to treatment may be advantageous. Such sheets can consistently provide high flexural strengths even where etching treatments designed to remove only minimum surface thicknesses from the tempered sheets are required. Example ion-exchangeable glasses that are suitable for forming glass laminates are alkali aluminosilicate glasses or alkali aluminoborosilicate glasses, though other glass compositions are contemplated. (See Abstract and paragraphs 0004, 0007, 0013-0015, 0026-0032, 0044-0046, 0051, 0072, and 0073).
Cleary et al. teach that the glass sheets in their laminate can have regions of different strength (i.e., when the inner surface of the outer glass sheet may be acid etched in order to reduce the number, size and severity of flaws in the surface of the outer glass sheet and/or the inner surface of the inner glass sheet may also be acid etched to reduce the number, size and severity of surface flaws given that the surface flaws act as fracture sites in the glass sheets and reducing the number, the size and severity of the flaws in these surfaces removes and minimizes the size of potential fracture initiation sites in these surfaces and thereby strengthens the surface of the glass sheets) but does not teach that the outer glass has a first tempered region and a second tempered region, the first tempered region is connected to the second tempered region, and a surface stress of the first tempered region is greater than a surface stress of the second tempered region.
However, Okuda et al. disclose a toughened glass sheet for use as a windowpane of an automotive vehicle and teach that the prior art has shown that improvements in a toughened glass sheet which has a thickness of, for example, from 2.5 to 3.1 mm and is tempered by air-cooling in order to provide a toughened glass sheet high in tempered degree can be obtained and is suitable for architectural windowpanes and automotive vehicle windowpanes. In this method, tempering gas stream is a single local gas stream which is pulsed at a repeated frequency in connection with a velocity at which the glass sheet is carried to a tempering station thereby forming highly tempered regions distributed in a lowly tempered regions. The heating elements can be arranged to concentrically spread throughout a range of from the center to the outside. By these tempering, the glass sheets can be largely improved so as to meet the requirements of the automotive glass test standard, for example, the number of fragments, no production of sharp edge having a length exceeding 100 mm, and no production of fragment having an area of not less than 3 cm2 in the fragmentation test. (see Abstract, Column 1, lines 5-67, and Column 2, lines 1-33)
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to provide outer glass has a first tempered region and a second tempered region given that Okuda et al. teach that a glass sheet can be formed with highly tempered regions distributed in a lowly tempered regions so as to meet the requirements of the automotive glass test standard, for example, the number of fragments, no production of sharp edge having a length exceeding 100 mm, and no production of fragment having an area of not less than 3 cm2 in the fragmentation test and to provide a toughened glass sheet suitable for architectural windowpanes and automotive vehicle windowpanes. With regards to the shape and thickness of the tempered area and the surface stress of the glass layers, the Examiner would like to point out that workable physical properties are deemed to be obvious routine optimizations to one of ordinary skill in the art, motivated by the desire to obtain the required properties.
Conclusion
3. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHEEBA AHMED whose telephone number is (571)272-1504. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday 7am-6pm.
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/SHEEBA AHMED/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1787
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