Appeal No. 1999-0542
Application 08/760,557
nitride on an aluminum alloy. The examiner ignores this fact
and simply assumes that the applied prior art would not permit
such a condition. The claims require a successive and
uninterrupted application of layers in a vacuum chamber, but
the applied prior art does not address this feature. The
claimed invention requires that the nitride layer and the
aluminum alloy layer be conductively coupled together.
Although the examiner simply asserts that a nitride layer and
a metal layer of the applied prior art would meet this
feature, we are unable to find any specific teaching in the
applied prior art that supports this assertion. Finally, the
claimed invention requires that the metalization continue to
conduct even if the aluminum alloy layer becomes non-
conducting. The examiner simply asserts that the multi-layer
metalizations of the prior art would have this property, but
we are unable to find any evidence on this record which
supports this position.
Although the examiner has noted similarities between
the applied prior art and the claimed invention, and
similarities between the problems solved by the applied prior
art and the claimed invention, the examiner has failed to
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