DETAILED ACTION
Notice to Applicant
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
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.
Claims 1-20 are pending.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1, 3-4, 10-11, and 13-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Campanella-Pineda et al. US 2019/0348966 in view of McHugh US 2023/0261626.
As per claims 1, 3-4, 10-11, and 13-14, Campanella-Pineda et al. discloses in Fig. 14 a filter device (e.g. shear mode acoustic wave filter 703 which is inherently a bulk acoustic resonator) comprising:
as per claims 1 and 11, a plurality of bulk acoustic resonators (e.g. V-shaped grooves which are each resonators comprising a corresponding IDT 701), at least one of the bulk acoustic wave resonators comprising:
as per claims 1, 4, 11, and 14, a substrate (e.g. Si layer 103); a piezoelectric layer (e.g. piezoelectric layer 601) at least partially supported by the substrate (Layer 601 is supported by the layer 103.); an interdigital transducer (IDT) (e.g. IDT 701), the IDT including a plurality of interleaved fingers (Paragraph 35; IDT 701 has a plurality of fingers.); and an acoustic reflector (e.g. Bragg reflector 1401) disposed between the substrate and the piezoelectric layer and including a plurality of layers (e.g. layers 1403, 1405, 1407, 1409), wherein all of the plurality of layers of the acoustic reflector has a shape that conforms to the plurality of interleaved fingers disposed on the surface of the piezoelectric layer (All of the layers of the reflector 1401 are shaped in a V shape that conforms to an orientation of the corresponding IDT 701 which is also disposed in a V shape pattern.);
as per claims 3 and 13, wherein the IDT of the at least one bulk acoustic resonator includes: a first busbar and a second busbar that each extends in a first direction; a first plurality of electrode fingers extending from the first busbar in a second direction towards the second busbar, with the second direction intersecting the first direction; and a second plurality of electrode fingers extending from the second busbar in the second direction towards the first busbar, such that the first and second plurality of electrode fingers comprise the plurality of interleaved fingers (Fig. 11; As shown, each of the resonators includes two busbars extending in a horizontal direction (i.e. “first direction”), where a plurality of fingers extend in a vertical direction (i.e. “second direction”) from one busbar to another busbar, where the vertical and horizontal directions intersect. Another set of plurality of fingers extend in the vertical direction from the other busbar to the one busbar, thus forming the “plurality of interleaved fingers” with the plurality of fingers.); and
as per claim 10, wherein the IDT is configured such that radio frequency signals applied thereto excites a bulk shear acoustic wave in the piezoelectric layer wherein acoustic energy propagates along a direction substantially orthogonal to the surface of the piezoelectric layer, which is transverse to a direction of an electric field created by the interleaved fingers of the IDT (The filter is a shear mode acoustic filter and thus RF signals applied thereto excite a bulk shear acoustic wave where energy propagates along a direction orthogonal to the surface of the piezoelectric layer which is transverse to a direction of an electric field created by fingers of the IDT, as well-known in the art.).
However, Campanella-Pineda et al. does not disclose the IDT being on a surface of the piezoelectric layer that faces the substrate.
McHugh exemplarily discloses in Fig. 2a an acoustic wave resonator comprising a piezoelectric plate 110 and an IDT fingers 238a and 238b being disposed on a top side 112 of the plate. McHugh further exemplarily discloses in Fig. 2b an alternative configuration where IDT fingers 238a and 238b are disposed on a back side 114 of plate 110 (Paragraph 45 of McHugh). Campanella-Pineda et al. discloses IDT 701 on a top side of piezoelectric layer 601. Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have alternatively configured the IDT of Campanella-Pineda et al. to have been on a back side of the piezoelectric layer as being an obvious design consideration of yielding expected results based on the exemplary teachings of McHugh with the motivation of providing the well-known benefit of sealing the IDT from external environment. As an obvious consequence of the modification, the combination would have necessarily included wherein the IDT is on a surface of the piezoelectric layer that faces the substrate (In the resultant circuit, the IDT of the combination circuit is disposed on a bottom surface of the piezoelectric layer 601 that faces the substrate 103.).
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Olbrich US 2022/0077834, Campanella-Pineda et al. US 2019/0348966, and McHugh US 2023/0261626, all taken in combination.
As per claim 20, Olbrich discloses in Fig. 4 a radio frequency module (e.g. RF device 400) comprising: a filter device (e.g. acoustic filter 102); and a radio frequency circuit (e.g. conductor 410) coupled to the filter device, the filter device and the radio frequency device being enclosed within a common package (e.g. package 402).
However, Olbrich does not disclose the filter device comprising all of the limitations recited in claim 20. The combination of Campanella-Pineda et al in view of McHugh discloses a filter device comprising all of the limitations recited in claim 20 (See above explanation pertaining to claim 1 which pertains to claim 20 and has not been repeated for the sake of brevity.). Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have replaced the generic acoustic filter 102 of Olbrich with the specific acoustic filter of the combination circuit as being an obvious art substitution of equivalence. As an obvious consequence of the modification, the combination would have necessarily included: the filter device comprising all of the limitations recited in claim 20.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 5-9, 12, and 15-19 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.
Conclusion
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/RAKESH B PATEL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2843
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