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 .
Claim Objections
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities: “a stencil information related” “a solder paste information related” and “a substrate information related” do not make grammatical sense. Examiner suggests each instance should be “a piece of … information” or “a … information parameter”. Appropriate correction is required.
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.
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.
Claim(s) 1, 2, and 4-8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Martinek et al. (Materials 2022, 15, 4734) in view of Simeroth (An Exploratory Review of Variables Affecting Solder Paste Volume and Reliability in the Stencil Printing Process). Regarding claim 1, Martinek et al. disclose “a printing result prediction device configured to predict a volume of solder paste printed by a printer onto a substrate (penultimate sentence on page 13), the printer printing the solder paste by filling the solder paste into a stencil aperture of a stencil disposed on the substrate (fifth sentence in Section 1), the device comprising: a calculation part configured to input a printing condition to a prediction model (penultimate sentence on page 13) trained by machine learning (abstract), and predict a volume of solder paste printed by the stencil aperture of the stencil in a next printing using the input printing condition (penultimate sentence on page 13 and sentence bridging pages 13 and 14), the printing condition including each of: a stencil information related to the stencil used to print (abstract: stencil apertures), a solder paste information related to the solder paste used to print (abstract: particle size), and a printing parameter of an operation of the printer when printing (abstract: printing speed), wherein the substrate used to print includes a pad on which solder paste is printed by the stencil aperture (second and fifth sentences of Section 1).” Martinek et al. fail to specifically disclose “a substrate information including unevenness information related to a protrusion on the substrate used to print” or “the unevenness information includes at least one of thickness information related to a thickness of the protrusion, distance information corresponding to a distance between the protrusion and the pad, or image entropy calculated based on an image including the protrusion.” However, Simeroth discloses that while the stencil parameters like printing speed affect the solder paste volume, parameters related to the substrate, including surface roughness, also affect the solder paste volume (second paragraph of the abstract). Therefore, at the time of the filing of the invention, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to use the surface roughness as an input parameter in order to predict the volume of the solder paste transferred. Examiner notes that surface roughness is interpreted to be “unevenness information related to a protrusion on the substrate,” and specifically, it is “thickness information related to a thickness of the protrusion” because roughness is a value (information) which depends on the thickness of the protrusion(s) on the substrate. Regarding claim 2, Martinek et al. further disclose “wherein the prediction model is a model trained using a neural network or random forests (first sentence of section 4).” Regarding claims 4 and 5, Martinek et al., as modified, disclose all that is claimed, as in claim 1 above, but fail to disclose “wherein the protrusion includes a silkscreen” or “wherein the protrusion includes a wiring part of an outer-layer circuit.” However, it would be apparent to one having ordinary skill in the art that the presence of a volume of material on the substrate, either in the form of a silkscreen or a previously printed wiring part, would affect the amount of volume printed by the stencil printing process. Common sense would dictate that factoring in the volume already occupied on the substrate surface into the prediction model would result in a more accurate prediction. Therefore, at the time of the filing of the invention, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to use the volume of the silkscreen or the wiring part already on the substrate as a parameter in the prediction model or Martinek et al. in order to achieve a more accurate volume prediction. Examiner notes that the volume of a silkscreen or wiring part is dependent upon the thickness of the silkscreen or wiring part, and is therefore interpreted by Examiner to be “thickness information related to a thickness of the protrusion.” Regarding claim 6, roughness is defined as the average heigh of deviations from the mean line; thus, the roughness meets the requirement that “the thickness information is an average of thicknesses of a plurality of the protrusions located in a plurality of regions on the substrate.” Regarding claim 7, only that which is optional is recited; therefore no structure is recited which defines over Martinek et al., as modified. Regarding claim 8, Martinek et al. further disclose “an acquisition part configured to acquire volume information of a volume of solder paste printed by the stencil aperture of the stencil in a previous printing using the stencil (last paragraph on page 5: Examiner interprets whatever was used to inspect the solder paste deposits to be the recited ‘acquisition part’), the printing condition including the volume information of the volume of the solder paste printed in the previous printing (last paragraph on page 5: this is implicit in the training of the model), and a printing sequence indicating a number of uses of the stencil used to print (last paragraph on page 5: this is implicit in the training of the model).”
Claim(s) 9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Martinek et al. and Simeroth, further in view of Gong et al. (US 2020/0383212). Regarding claim 9, Martinek et al., as modified, disclose “a printing system (fifth sentence in Section 1), comprising: the device according to claim 8 (see the rejection of claim 8 above); the printer (fifth sentence in Section 1); and an inspection machine configured to detect the volume of the printed solder paste (last paragraph on page 5: Examiner interprets whatever was used to inspect the solder paste deposits to get the volume deposited to be the recited inspection machine), the acquisition part acquiring the volume information of the volume of the solder paste printed in the previous printing from the inspection machine (last paragraph on page 5).” Martinek et al. fail to disclose “the calculation part determining the printing parameter for the next printing based on the predicted volume of the solder paste, the printer performing the next printing by an operation indicated by the printing parameter for the next printing determined by the calculation part.” However, Gong et al. disclose a similar system wherein, based upon a measured printed volume of solder paste in a prior printing (paragraph 23, step S208), the printing parameters for the next printing are changed to improve print quality and yield (step s212, paragraph 29). Therefore, at the time of the filing of the invention, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to modify the system of Martinek et al. in accordance with Gong et al. in order to improve the print quality and yield.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 07/02/2026 have been fully considered but they are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection 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 nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) 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 mailing date of this final action.
/JOSHUA D ZIMMERMAN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2853
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