Appeal No. 2005-0537
Application No. 08/925,985 Page 11
inventive material from which the surface is made as being one
which is “capable of being etched away with the plasma cloud
while causing relatively little contamination and/or leaving
relatively little residue” (appellants’ specification, page 10,
lines 14 and 15). Given that disclosure in appellants’
specification, we find claims 26-28 and 32 indefinite in that the
basic and novel characteristic of leaving relatively little
contamination and/or relatively little residue while etching is
not set forth with any standard for one of ordinary skill in the
art to determine how much residue or contamination is meant by
“relatively little.”
Given that the record reflects that the terms “pure,”
“substantially pure,” “99.999% pure” and “consisting essentially
of aluminum” may be interpreted in a number of ways on this
record and that the specification provides little help in
determining the metes and bounds of the claimed subject matter,
we determine that the claims before us are in violation of the
requirements of the second paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112.
In this regard, we note that a potential competitor may have
no way of determining whether a substrate holder formed of a
particular metallic or aluminum-containing material represents
a holder that includes sufficient other materials or adulterants
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