Appeal No. 1997-1319
Application 08/290,227
Thus, it would appear that Chiang may actually teach
the invention as claimed except for the recitation regarding
the electrical conductivity of the annealed amorphous film.
Chiang gives no specific values of the conductivities of the
thin film of his invention or of the as-deposited (non-
implanted) thin film, and the examiner has made no
observations on this point. One could draw the inference from
appellants’ disclosure that the claimed conductivity
relationship resulted naturally from annealing an amorphous
silicon film, or that the claimed conductivity relationship
resulted from a specific selection of film thickness,
annealing temperature, dopant levels and so forth.
The point is that Chiang alone seems to be very a good
reference with respect to the disclosed and claimed invention,
but a consideration of the obviousness of the claimed
invention over Chiang taken alone requires a consideration of
facts which have not been investigated on this record. We
leave it to the examiner to decide whether a factual record
can be created which would support a rejection of the appealed
claims based on Chiang taken alone or Chiang taken with any
other pertinent prior art. We simply point out that a further
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