Appeal No. 95-2413
Application 07/936,865
in adopting the approach that the level of skill in the art
was best determined by the references of record). In
addition, those of ordinary skill in the art must be presumed
to know something about the art apart from what the references
expressly disclose. In re Jacoby, 309 F.2d 513, 516,
135 USPQ 317, 319 (CCPA 1962).
Group 1 - claims 36-38, 45, and 47
Appellants' specification discusses a mathematical
analysis to define a closed-loop plasma path that produces
uniform erosion and which has the property that the width of
the path is a constant (figure 5; specification, pages 13-16).
Claim 36 does not recite a constant width path or a uniform
erosion profile. Appellants state that their "contribution
has been, inter alia, the teaching, based on rigorous
mathematical analysis, of how to analytically design magnets
to achieve desired erosion results over a large area of a
target, without the need for extensive, iterative,
time-consuming, trial and error techniques" (Br7). However,
claim 36 is an apparatus claim, not a process claim to how to
analytically design magnet arrangements. Thus, it makes no
difference that the prior art may have used graphic or trial
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