Appeal No. 95-3557
Application No. 07/833,417
Claims 1 through 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Wise in
view of Huster or Mauger. We reverse this rejection for reasons which follow.
Pursuant to the provisions of 37 C.F.R. § 1.196(b), we make the following new rejection:
Claims 11-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by or, in the alternative,
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over Huster.
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to the appellants’
specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the respective positions articulated
by the appellants and the examiner. We make reference to the examiner’s answer (Paper No. 16,
mailed September 21, 1994) for the examiner’s complete reasoning in support of the rejection, and to
the appellants’ brief (Paper No. 15, filed July 05, 1994) and reply brief (Paper No. 17, filed November
21, 1994) for the appellants’ arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
Wise describes a semiconductor thermopile detector 10 comprising a thick semiconductor rim
20 containing an aperture 22 through which infrared radiation is detected by thermopiles 24 which span
portions of the aperture 22 and the rim 20 (Fig. 2A). The thermopiles 24 comprise a plurality of
thermocouples 32 formed of a first layer of polycrystalline silicon 34 and a metal layer 36 and are
connected to output leads and processing circuitry (Fig. 2B). Aperture 22 is preferably spanned by a
dielectric diaphragm 40 to support the thermopile 24, although the thermopile 24 may be self-
supporting. (Figs. 2A and 3; col. 5, lines 25-32 and 54-67). Wise forms the thermopile detector by a
process comprising:
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