Appeal No. 2001-0006
Application 08/993,107
the artisan within 35 U.S.C. § 103 based on the applied prior
art.
As a final matter, independent claim 17 relates to the
generation of a baseline image and, specifically, the feature of
selecting among a plurality of algorithms the particular
algorithm to apply to the image data derived from the reticle
itself. The examiner attempts to address this feature by merely
asserting in the middle of page 3 of the final rejection that it
would have been obvious for the artisan to have chosen
appropriate signal processing algorithms for the particular
object to be inspected. The examiner further indicated in the
paragraph bridging pages 3 and 4 of the final rejection that it
would have been trivially obvious to have chosen appropriate
imaging algorithms and clearly obvious to have chosen the best
among a plurality. The examiner has provided no evidence before
us that such algorithms exist in any of the applied prior art.
We do note that certain teachings and suggestions exist beginning
at column 10 of Noguchi and column 7 of Micka of known algorithms
pertaining only to the compare operation or function. We agree
with the appellants' assertion at the bottom of page 17 of the
principal brief on appeal that the references do not contain any
mention of choosing an appropriate imaging algorithm before the
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