DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 08/12/2024 was filed and considered by the examiner.
Specification
The lengthy specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
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.
Claims 1-4, 7-9 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Huang et al., US 2020/0264367 A1, in view of the Applicant’s submitted prior art, Zhang et al., CN 202010598401 A.
Regarding claims 1 and 15, Huang et al. disclose an optical waveguide system (figs 1-6) comprising:
. an optical waveguide 1
. a two- dimensional grating 2 disposed on a surface of the optical waveguide 1
. wherein the grating 2 comprises a plurality of cell arrays 201, and each of the cell arrays has a parallelogram shape (fig 6), such that one incident light beam incident on the grating is diffracted into two diffracted light beams D1, D2 with a first angle between a component of one diffracted light beam D1 on a plane of the grating and a component of the incident light beam on the plane of the grating and a second angle between a component of the other diffracted light beam D2 on the plane of the grating and the component of the incident light beam on the plane of the grating.
Huang et al. do not explicitly disclose a first angle being different from the second angle, Zhang et al. do disclose an optical waveguide (fig. 1), in which each point grating is used for diffracting the light beam coupled in the wave guide unit and coupling out according to the pre-set angle range; and the grating period of each point grating 11 is different, so that each point grating can diffract the light beam incident angle range are not the same. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to employ the Huang et al cell arrays being able to perform two diffracted light beams D1, D2 with two angles (e.g., first and second) are not equal, as shown by Zhang et al. to improve a viewing angle and then increasing a display effect of an optical device (see Abstract).
Re claim 2, wherein each of the cell arrays comprises a first grating vector and a second grating vector (corresponding to D1 and D2), the parallelogram shape comprises adjacent horizontal sides and vertical sides, the first grating vector corresponds to the horizontal sides, and the second grating vector corresponds to the vertical sides (fig. 6).
Re claim 3, wherein an angle between the first grating vector and the second grating vector is A, and 0<A<180 degree ( e.g., 60 degree) and lengths of the horizontal sides are not equal to lengths of the vertical sides (fig. 6).
Re claim 4, the modification to Huang et al. do not disclose each of the cell arrays including at least four lattice points that having the same height, or at least two of the lattice points having different heights, and wherein when each of the lattice points of each of the cell arrays has the same height, the lattice points of at least two of the cell arrays have different heights. It would have been an obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention was made to employ heights of a cell arrays (e.g., four lattice points heights) being a same or different from each other, since the examiner takes Office Notice of the equivalence of same heights and different heights of the lattice points for their use in the optical art and the selection of any of these known equivalents for light diffracting purposes would be within the level of ordinary skill in the art.
Re claim 7, wherein the grating comprises an in-coupling grating and an out-coupling grating, and the in-coupling grating and the out-coupling grating are disposed asymmetrically (figs 1, 3, 5).
Re claim 8, wherein the in-coupling grating is disposed to be translated by a preset distance relative to a horizontal symmetry axis or a vertical symmetry axis of the out-coupling grating (figs 1, 5).
Re claim 9, wherein the in-coupling grating and the out-coupling grating are synchronously rotated by the same angle (figs 1, 5).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5, 6 and 10-14 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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/DUNG T NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2871
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