Detailed Action
The following Office action concerns Patent Application Number 18/921,469. Claims 1-12 are pending in the application.
Claims 2-8, 11, 12 are withdrawn from consideration as being drawn to non-elected species.
The applicant’s amendment filed December 10, 2025 has been entered.
The previous grounds of rejection under 35 USC 112 are withdrawn in light of the applicant’s amendment.
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 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, 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Park et al (US 2017/0170408) in view of Jang et al (KR 2015-0121337).
Park et al teaches an organic electroluminescent device comprising two or more host materials in a light-emitting layer (par. 8). One of the host materials is the compound:
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wherein La is a bond and Ma is a heteroaryl group (par. 12-14). The above compound satisfies claimed formula (2).
Park et al does not teach a host material of claimed formula (1-2).
However, Jang et al teaches a host material having the formula:
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(page 4). The above compound satisfies formula (1-2) with “M” being N-aryl, “Y9” and “Y10” being CR1 with R1 being an arylamino group shared by “Y9” and “Y10.” The remaining “Y” groups are all CH in the above compound. The host compound provides high luminous efficiency, low driving voltage and improved lifetime of an organic electroluminescent device (par. 8-9).
A person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the host compound of Jang et al with the organic electroluminescent device of Park et al in order to obtain high luminous efficiency, low driving voltage and improved lifetime of the device.
Response to Arguments
The applicant argues that the amendment to claim 1 requires that R1’s in Y9 and Y10 may not be fused together to form a ring. However, no such limitation appears in claim 1. Therefore, the argument is not persuasive.
Amended claim 2 is now drawn to formula (1-1), which is a non-elected species by the applicant’s election of species of July 15, 2025.
Conclusion
No new ground of rejection was presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
Examiner’s Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to William Young whose telephone number is (571) 270-5078. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday, 8:30 AM to 5 PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Angela Brown-Pettigrew, can be reached at 571-272-2817. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000./WILLIAM D YOUNG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1761 January 16, 2025