Appeal No. 1996-2246
Application No. 08/052,910
these dependent claims will stand or fall with their base
claim.
As a general proposition in an appeal involving a
rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103, an Examiner is under a burden
to make out a prima facie case of obviousness. If that burden
is met, the burden of going forward then shifts to Appellants
to overcome the prima facie case with argument and/or
evidence. Obviousness is then determined on the basis of the
evidence as a whole and the relative persuasiveness of the
arguments. See In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d
1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992); In re Hedges, 783 F.2d 1038,
1039, 228 USPQ 685, 686 (Fed. Cir. 1986); In re Piasecki, 745
F.2d 1468, 1472, 223 USPQ 785, 788 (Fed. Cir. 1984); and In re
Rinehart, 531 F.2d 1048, 1052, 189 USPQ 143, 147 (CCPA 1976).
With respect to representative independent claim 1 from
Group I, the Examiner, as the basis for the obviousness
rejection, proposes to modify the semiconductor fabricating
method of Ogura which lacks the claimed selective implantation
of impurities to form a doped region in a silicon layer with
6
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007