PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15884622
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-01
Publication Date: 2019-08
Patent Classification: ["385", "030000"]

Abstract:
An optical coupler that provides evanescent optical coupling includes an optical fiber and a waveguide. The optical fiber has a glass core, a glass inner cladding surrounding the glass core, and a polymeric outer cladding surrounding the glass inner cladding. The glass core and glass inner cladding define for the fiber a glass portion, which can be exposed at one end of the fiber by removing a portion of the polymeric outer cladding. The glass portion has a glass-portion surface. The waveguide has a waveguide core and a surface, and can be part of a photonic device. The glass portion of the fiber is interfaced with the waveguide to establish evanescent coupling between the fiber and the waveguide. Alignment features are used to facilitate aligning the fiber core to the waveguide core during the interfacing process to ensure suitable efficiency of the evanescent coupling.

Claim (Index 31):
A method of performing evanescent optical coupling, comprising:\n providing at least one optical fiber having a central axis, a glass core, and a cladding, the cladding comprising an inner cladding made of glass and an outer cladding made of a polymer, and wherein the glass core and the glass inner cladding define a glass portion of the fiber; processing the at least one optical fiber to define a stripped portion substantially free of the outer cladding and configured to expose the glass portion, wherein the exposed glass portion defines: i) a first flat surface parallel with the central axis, wherein the core resides at or closely proximate to the first flat surface; and ii) an alignment feature; operably engaging the alignment feature with an alignment member so that the alignment member operably supports the stripped portion to define an alignment assembly; and using the alignment assembly to bring the glass core sufficiently close to and in relative alignment with a waveguide core of at least one waveguide to establish evanescent coupling between the at least one optical fiber and the at least one waveguide.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 27.0
- Percentile: 86.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.54098
- Patent Class: 385.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['15405396', '14861429', '15427074', '15337376', '12474210']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.8328807162909321
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.509557835104718
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.8005484281723106
- Mean Citation Score: 282.8836760000001
- Max Citation Score: 316.61865
- Similarity Product: 268.8200590979755

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 0
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test