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 .
2. This office action is responsive to the application Nº 19/076,159 filed on March 11th, 2025 in which claims 1-15 are pending and ready for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
3. Acknowledgment is made of Applicant’s Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) form PTO-1449. These IDS have been considered.
Priority
4. Receipt is acknowledged of papers submitted under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d), which papers have been placed of record in the file.
Drawings
5. The examiner contends that the drawings submitted on 03/11/2025 are acceptable for examination proceedings.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
6. 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 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.
7. 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 of this title, 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.
8. Claims 1-6; 9-11 and 13-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yazaki et al. (US Pub. Nº 2013/0135400), in view of Konishi et al. (US Pub. Nº 2017/0092838).
9. Regarding independent claim 1: Yazaki et al. disclosed a liquid discharge head ([0020], line 1; also see Fig. 2, reference 1) comprising:
a piezoelectric body ([0020], line 2; also see Fig. 2, reference 30);
a pressure chamber substrate ([0021], line 1; also see Fig. 2, reference 10) provided with a plurality of pressure chambers arranged in an arrangement direction, which is a direction intersecting an extending direction of the pressure chamber ([0020], line 2; also see Fig. 2, references 12 arranged in the direction D1), the pressure chamber being configured to apply pressure to a liquid stored inside when the piezoelectric body is driven ([0020], lines 1-3);
a first electrode provided on one side of a lamination direction, which is a direction intersecting the extending direction and the arrangement direction, with respect to the piezoelectric body ([0020], lines 3-4; also see Fig. 2, reference 20);
a second electrode provided on another side of the lamination direction, which is a side opposite to the one side, with respect to the piezoelectric body ([0020], line 4; also see Fig. 2, reference 40); and
a protective layer provided on the other side with respect to the piezoelectric body in a boundary region, which is a boundary between a first region and a second region, in the extending direction ([0033], lines 1-2; also see Fig. 1B, reference 80) when the first region is set to a region where the piezoelectric body overlaps the second electrode in the lamination direction (Fig. 1B, reference 3a) and the second region is set to a region where the piezoelectric body is present and the second electrode is not present in the lamination direction (Fig. 1B, reference 3b), wherein the protective layer is made of an inorganic material ([0067], lines 1-2), and
the first region overlaps the pressure chamber in the lamination direction (Fig. 1B shows the region 3a overlapping the pressure chamber 12).
Yazaki et al. are silent about wherein the protective layer includes a first inorganic film made of an inorganic material, and a second inorganic film made of an inorganic material different from the first inorganic film.
Konishi et al. disclosed a protective layer (Fig. 7, references (40, 42)) provided at a boundary of an active region and a non-active region of a piezoelectric element ([0118], line 2; also see Fig. 7, reference 30) including a piezoelectric film ([0122], line 2; also see Fig. 7, reference 34), a first electrode ([0122], line 2; also see Fig. 7, reference 32) and a second electrode ([0122], line 3; also see Fig. 7, reference 36), wherein the protective layer includes a first inorganic film made of an inorganic material ([0128], lines 1-2), and a second inorganic film made of an inorganic material different from the first inorganic film ([0131], line 3 and [0128], lines 1-2; case when layer 40 is made of silicon oxide and layer 42 is made of aluminum oxide or vis-versa).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Konishi et al. with those of Yazaki et al. by providing a first and second protective layer at the boundary of the piezoelectric element in order to improve the reliability and quality of the piezoelectric driving unit as disclosed by Konishi et al. in paragraph [0241].
10. Regarding claim 2: The combination of Yazaki et al. and Konishi et al. disclosed the liquid discharge head according to claim 1, wherein the first inorganic film has water resistance (Konishi et al. [0128], lines 1-2. The specifications identified aluminum oxide as a possible material of the water resistance layer), and the second inorganic film has an insulating property (Konishi et al. [0118], line 2).
11. Regarding claim 3: The combination of Yazaki et al. and Konishi et al. disclosed the liquid discharge head according to claim 2, wherein the first inorganic film contains at least one of aluminum oxide, titanium oxide, tantalum oxide, and hafnium oxide (Konishi et al. [0128], lines 1-2; aluminum oxide).
12. Regarding claim 4: The combination of Yazaki et al. and Konishi et al. disclosed the liquid discharge head according to claim 2, wherein the second inorganic film contains at least one of silicon oxide, silicon nitride, and silicon carbide (Konishi et al. [0128], lines 1-2 and [0131], line 3; silicon oxide).
13. Regarding claim 5: The combination of Yazaki et al. and Konishi et al. disclosed the liquid discharge head according to claim 2, wherein the second inorganic film is laminated on the other side of the piezoelectric body (Konishi et al. Fig. 7, reference 42), and the first inorganic film is laminated on the other side of the second inorganic film (Konishi et al. Fig. 7, reference 40).
14. Regarding claim 6: The combination of Yazaki et al. and Konishi et al. disclosed the liquid discharge head according to claim 5, wherein the second inorganic film has a thickness thicker than the first inorganic film in the lamination direction (Konishi et al. Fig. 7, reference 42 over the second region is thicker than reference 40 over the second region).
15. Regarding claim 9: The combination of Yazaki et al. and Konishi et al. disclosed the liquid discharge head according to claim 2, wherein the first inorganic film is laminated on the other side of the piezoelectric body, and the second inorganic film is laminated on the other side of the first inorganic film (Konishi et al. Fig. 7; protective layer 40 is laminated on an upper surface of the piezoelectric body and protective layer 42 is laminated on an upper surface of protective layer 40).
16. Regarding claim 10: The combination of Yazaki et al. and Konishi et al. disclosed the liquid discharge head according to claim 9, wherein the second inorganic film has a thickness thinner than the first inorganic film in the lamination direction (Konishi et al. Fig. 7, reference 42 over the first region is thinner than reference 40 over the second region).
17. Regarding claim 11: The combination of Yazaki et al. and Konishi et al. disclosed the liquid discharge head according to claim 9, wherein the second inorganic film has a thickness thicker than the first inorganic film in the lamination direction (Konishi et al. Fig. 7, reference 42 over the second region is thicker than reference 40 over the second region).
18. Regarding claim 13: The combination of Yazaki et al. and Konishi et al. disclosed the liquid discharge head according to claim 1, wherein the protective layer is provided on the other side of the piezoelectric body in the second region (Konishi et al. Fig. 7, the two protective layers 40, 42 are provided on the upper surface of the piezoelectric body 34 in the second region (where the second electrode 36 does not overlap the piezoelectric body 34)).
19. Regarding claim 14: The combination of Yazaki et al. and Konishi et al. disclosed the liquid discharge head according to claim 1, wherein the protective layer is not provided on the other side of the piezoelectric body in the second region (Konishi et al. Fig. 7, the two protective layers 40, 42 are not provided on the lower surface of the piezoelectric body 34).
20. Regarding claim 15: The combination of Yazaki et al. and Konishi et al. disclosed a liquid discharge device (Yazaki et al. [0058], line 1; also see Fig. 5, reference 200) comprising: the liquid discharge head according to claim 1 (see the rejection of claim 1); and a control section that controls a discharge operation of discharging a liquid from the liquid discharge head (Yazaki et al. [0055], lines 1-2).
Allowable Subject Matter
21. Claims 7, 8 and 12 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
22. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
23. U.S. Patent application publication number 2007/0080611 to Yamada et al. disclosed a similar invention in Fig. 2.
24. U.S. Patent application publication number 2021/0276329 to Koike et al. also disclosed a similar invention in Fig. 8.
25. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to YAOVI M. AMEH whose telephone number is (571)272-4578. The examiner can normally be reached M-F: 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM.
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/YAOVI M AMEH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2853
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