Appeal No. 95-2413
Application 07/936,865
sputtering design art would have appreciated that the teaching
in Suzuki is implicit in Sato '375 and Sato '374 since the
graphic spiral in Suzuki is expressible as the mathematical
equation in the Sato references. In addition, claim 36 is
considered broad enough to read on the prior art in
figure 4(a) of Suzuki, which is shown in appellants' figures
3A-3C. That is, the function in appellants' figure 3C can be
expressed as a function >(R) and can be considered to be "a
selected function corresponding to a desired erosion profile"
(emphasis added) as recited in claim 36. For these reasons,
we sustain the rejection of claims 36-38, 45, and 47 over
Suzuki, Sato '375 and Sato '374.
Appellants argue that Suzuki, Sato '375, and Sato '374 do
not, in fact, produce uniform erosion. First, Suzuki
expressly teaches the conditions of claim 36 and Sato '375 and
Sato '374 implicitly teach the conditions of claim 36, which
teach one of ordinary skill in the art to do what is claimed.
Suzuki expressly teaches that the way to satisfy the condition
is to make the exposure time uniform over the surface to be
eroded by making the arc lengths divided by the velocity a
constant.
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