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.
Claims 1, 9-11, 17 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mori et al. (US Pub. No. 2023/0197672).
Regarding claim 1, Mori discloses a chuck for a wafer bonding device, the chuck comprising: a body (71); a chuck portion (72) installed on the body and that forms an internal space (S) together with the body, and includes a partition (74) that divides the internal space; a valve (77a) installed on the body that provides pneumatic pressure to each divided internal space; and, wherein the valve adjusts and supplies pneumatic pressure to the divided internal space so that a shape of an upper surface of a deformable plate of the chuck portion is deformed (figures 5A/B). Mori is silent about having a sensor, however, Examiner takes Official Notice that it is old and well known in the chucking environment to have a sensor for measuring and adjusting pneumatic pressure.
Regarding claims 9 and 18, Mori discloses the valve and the sensor are connected to a controller (30), and the controller determines a deformation state of the upper surface of the deformable plate from a distance to the partition extracted from a signal received from the sensor, and adjusts a shape of the upper surface of the deformable plate by adjusting the pneumatic pressure (abstract).
Regarding claims 10 and 11, Mori discloses wherein the deformable plate has a thickness that decreases from a center toward an edge and a bottom of the deformable plate is downwardly convex (figure 5A).
Regarding claim 17, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to increase the number of valves, sensors, inlet/outlets depending on the size of the chuck/wafer, since it has been held that mere duplication of the essential working parts of a device involves only routine skill in the art. St. Regis Paper Co. v. Bemis Co., 193 USPQ 8.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-8, 12-16, 19 and 20 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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/SARA ADDISU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3722 9/4/26
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