Appeal 2007-0496
Application 10/273,147
claim 10, as we interpreted this claim above, would have been prima facie
obviousness to one of ordinary skill in the CVD arts familiar with CVD
apparatus configurations. There is no dispute that the combined teachings of
Anderson and Lee would have lead to a CVD apparatus having a VUV light
and a transparent plate as claimed. We agree with the Examiner that, prima
facie, one of ordinary sill in this art routinely following the combined
teachings of Anderson, Lee and Shi would have reasonably positioned Lee’s
optical shutter as a mask between the VUV light and the transparent plate
with the reasonable expectation of controlling the exposure of the substrate
to the VUV light as taught by Shi. We determine that this person would
have recognized from Shi that the optical shutter would function as a mask
regardless of the side of the transparent plate on which it was positioned.
Thus, one of ordinary skill in this art would have arrived at the claimed CVD
apparatus encompassed by claim 10, including all of the limitations thereof
arranged as required therein, without recourse to Appellants’ Specification.
See, e.g., KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 127 S. Ct. 1727, 1740, 82 USPQ2d
1385, 1396 (2007) (“if a technique has been used to improve one device, and
a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve
similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious unless its
actual application is beyond his or her skill”); In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977,
985-88, 78 USPQ2d 1329, 1334-37 (Fed. Cir. 2006); In re Keller, 642 F.2d
413, 425, 208 USPQ 871, 881 (CCPA 1981);4 In re Sovish, 769 F.2d 738,
4 The test for obviousness is not whether the features of a
secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the
structure of the primary reference; nor is it that the claimed
invention must be expressly suggested in any one or all of the
6
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