Appeal No. 96-0023
Application 07/958,046
suggestions. In re Sernaker, 702 F.2d 989, 995, 217 USPQ 1, 6
(Fed. Cir. 1983). "Additionally, when determining
obviousness, the claimed invention should be considered as a
whole; there is no legally recognizable 'heart' of the
invention." Para-Ordnance Mfg. v. SGS Importers Int’l, Inc.,
73 F.3d 1085, 1087, 37 USPQ2d 1237, 1239 (Fed. Cir. 1995),
cert. denied, 117 S.Ct. 80 (1996) citing W. L. Gore & Assocs.,
Inc. v. Garlock, Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1548, 220 USPQ 303, 309
(Fed. Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 851 (1984).
In regard to the rejection of claim 5 as being
unpatentable over Hitchens and Thalimer, Appellants argue on
pages 12 through
15 of the brief and pages 2 through 5 of the reply brief that
neither Hitchens nor Thalimer teaches or suggests an
historical data file in which stored historical data related
to process attributes underlying each of the plurality of
process elements for a plurality of points in time, a mask
data file including information which relates the historical
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007