DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant's election with traverse of Invention IC, claims 1, 4, and 5, in the reply filed on 6/1/2026 is acknowledged. The traversal is on the ground(s) that the restriction into species which are in the same embodiment are not mutually exclusive. This is not found persuasive because the restriction was not species based, but rather that the claims recited distinct products. The "mutually exclusive" discussed in the restriction requirement does not pertain a disclosed embodiment, but rather how the claims recite products that are mutually exclusive.
The requirement is still deemed proper and is therefore made FINAL.
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.
Claim(s) 1 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jowett et al. (US 3,958,122) in view of Macrelli et al. (US 2019/0360924).
Remark: The claims are reproduced below with strikeouts indicating limitations not show by Jowett.
With respect to claim 1, Jowett shows an apparatus comprising:
a chopper (104, 110) configured to repeatedly enable provision of a light signal by a light source when the chopper is in a first state and disable the provision of the light signal by the light source when the chopper is in a second state (See Fig. 4; column 8, lines 27-34: "The detectors 130 and 132 are responsive only to the radiation from infrared source 104 which has passed through either the gas sample cell 28 or the reference cell 34, and will not respond to radiation from the infrared source 104 at other times due to a series of baffles, not shown, which prevent illumination of the detectors at times other than when the infrared beam passes through the cells.");
a first
a second
a processing circuit having first and second processing inputs and a processing output, the first processing input coupled to the first output, the second processing input coupled to the second output (“The computation takes place in either a digital or analog data analysis and control system,” “digital computer,” “data computation unit 208;” col. 13:53-69), and processing circuit configured to:
generate a first signal based on the first irradiance signal and the first reference signal (column 8 lines 9-25: "Each of the two detectors thus produces two output signals separated in time, the detector signals being denoted VR for the detector output when the detector has been illuminated by the infrared radiation which has passed through the reference cell 34, and as VS for the output signal which is produced by the detector as a result of the infrared radiation which has passed through the gas sample cell.");
generate a second signal based on the second irradiance signal and the second reference signal (see above); and
provide a third signal at the processing output representing an irradiance measurement of the light source based on a difference between the first and second signals (column 5, lines 48-51: "By measuring the sample cell and reference cell outputs with ambient air in the sample cell, and then measuring the sample cell and reference cell outputs with exhaust gas in the sample cell, a ratio can be computed which is proportional to the amount of the contaminant. ";).
Jowett does not show the IR sensors are MEMS based.
Macrelli shows infrared sensors that are MEMS based (Abstract) and that the MEMS infrared sensors have reduced size (see para. [0014]) and are known in the art high sensitivity. Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to use MEMS infrared sensors for the sensors of Jowett in order to reduce the size of the gas analyzer and for the improved sensitivity.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4 and 5 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: The prior art of record fails to show or suggest an apparatus having every element as recited in claim 1,
wherein the first MEMS device includes a first plasmonic metasurface and is configured to have a first IR absorption response, in which the first IR absorption response has a peak centered at a particular wavelength; and
wherein the second MEMS device includes a second plasmonic metasurface and is configured to have a second IR absorption response curve, in which the second IR absorption response has a peak centered at the particular wavelength of interest, and the second MEMS device has a lower quality factor than the first MEMS device.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Lessure et al. (US 5,886,348) shows a non-dispersive infrared gas analyzer having a reference infrared detector that has the same sensitivity as the sensing detector.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Hwa Andrew S Lee whose telephone number is (571)272-2419. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 9am-5:30pm.
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/Hwa Andrew Lee/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2877
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