Appeal No. 1997-0027
Application No. 08/117,443
combined disclosures of Mashiro and Meacham. Our reasons for
this determination follow.
We turn first to the examiner’s rejections of process
claims 9 through 15. We will not sustain these rejections for
essentially those reasons expressed at pages 6 through 10 of
the Brief. We only add that Mashiro does not teach, nor would
have suggested, inter alia, elevating a cathode to a process
initiation voltage which is “insufficient to fully ignite or
maintain a plasma within said chamber” while a vacuum chamber
having such cathode is evacuated. As correctly argued by
appellant at pages 9 and 10 of the Brief, the examiner
improperly read the voltage of the normal power supply in
Mashiro as corresponding to the claimed process initiation
voltage. The statement “[i]f the normal sputtering discharge
should stop for any reason” in Mashiro does not indicate that
the voltage of the normal power supply in Mashiro is
insufficient at all times to fully ignite a plasma or maintain
plasma within the vacuum chamber, i.e., a voltage insufficient
to cause deposition, as required by claim 9. In other words,
it is speculative to conclude that “stop for any reason” means
“stop for an insufficient voltage”. Moreover, we do not find
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