Appeal No. 95-3900 Page 9
Application No. 07/978,030
with 5 mm at all, routine optimization would have revealed6
it.7
Claim 3 requires the concave regions to be made by press
forming of the lower plate. The examiner finds that for
analogous arrays Rammos EP teaches press forming (stamping) of
the ground plate. (Paper 21 at 4; Rammos EP (trans.) at 5-6.)
Appellants counter that the Rammos EP cavities are located
differently, which misses the point of the rejection. We
agree that Rammos and Rammos EP in combination would provide
motivation to form the cavities of Rammos using the method of
Rammos EP. The press-forming process of Rammos EP is a
simpler and cheaper way to form the cavities of Rammos.
Claim 4 depends from claim 3 and requires that the
concave regions be formed by machining, presumably in addition
to the press forming required by claim 3. It is not clear to
6 Criticality of a particular value is best
established with reference to the closest prior art. In re
Baxter Travenol Labs., 952 F.2d 388, 392, 21 USPQ2d 1281, 1285
(Fed. Cir. 1991). The closest prior art at 12 GHz would be HL
. 6.25 mm. (Rammos at 5:7-17.) Appellants only compare their
claimed value, 5 mm, to 1 mm. (Paper 1 at 11.) Rammos
indicates that 1 mm is the lowest possible value, not the best
value. (5:7-17.) Hence, Appellants have not established that
5 mm is anything more than an arbitrarily selected value in a
known range.
7 Appellants' specification suggests that optimization
of parameters is well within the ordinary level of skill.
(Paper 1 at 12:17-19.)
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