Appeal No. 96-1478
Application 08/232,459
antireflective property if substituted in Kato. Inherency
requires a certainty that a property or characteristic
exists. "Inherency, however, may not be established by
probabilities or possibilities." Continental Can Co. v.
Monsanto Co., 948 F.2d 1264, 1269, 20 USPQ2d 1746, 1749
(Fed. Cir. 1991) (quoting In re Oelrich, 666 F.2d 578, 581,
212 USPQ 323, 326 (CCPA 1981)). Kato discloses that the
Al O film has a thickness "ranging from 0.2 µm to 3 µm after
23
being baked" (col. 3, lines 18-19). Iwasaki discloses that
the film 5 does not function as an optical thin film layer
(col. 5, lines 32-36) and the film thickness is chosen to be
0.05 microns or less or 0.5 microns or more to eliminate any
influence on the optical property of the optical
multilayered interference film 2 (col. 5, line 57, to
col. 6, line 2). One of ordinary skill in the art
substituting a SiO layer for the Al O layer in Kato for the2 23
purpose of protecting the carbon stripe, would have used the
film thickness of Kato because Kato does not have the
interference film 2 of Iwasaki. Appellants disclose SiO2
antireflection layer thicknesses of 0.3 microns and 0.5
microns (e.g., figure 4). The examiner has not shown that a
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