Appeal No. 1997-4442 Application 08/353,040 The Examiner relies on Appellants' admitted prior art (APA) that laser trimming of resistors was known (specification, page 1, line 25, to page 2, line 2, describing U.S. Patent 4,907,341 to Chapel, Jr. et al. (Chapel)) and the following prior art references: Mcquaid et al. (Mcquaid) 4,746,896 May 24, 1988 Drabkin 5,039,976 August 13, 1991 Sahagen 5,088,329 February 18, 1992 de Wit 5,448,103 September 5, 1995 (effective filing date May 19, 1992) Claims 2 and 6 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as anticipated by de Wit or, in the alternative, under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over de Wit in view of the APA. Claims 3 and 5 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over de Wit, APA, further in view of Mcquaid.3 In the Final Rejection, the Examiner rejected3 claims 3-5 over de Wit, APA, Mcquaid, and Sahagen. Sahagen was applied only against claim 4 to show TiW as a bonding agent. The rejection of claim 4 and the reliance on Sahagen have been withdrawn. - 3 -Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007