Appeal No. 1998-0754
Application No. 08/652,253
claims 2-9, 12-18 and 20-23. Upon consideration of the record, including the Appeal Brief (Paper
No. 24), the Reply Brief (Paper No. 26) and the Examiner’s Answer (Paper No. 25), we affirm the
examiner’s rejection of claims 5-9 and 20-23 as unpatentable over Halliwell in view of De Bakker.
Conversely, we reverse the examiner’s rejection of claims 2-4 and 12-18 as being unpatentable over
Halliwell in view of De Bakker.
The Invention
The appellants' invention relates to a method of providing a metal pattern on an electrically
insulating substrate in an electroless process where the substrate is pretreated with an aqueous
palladium (“Pd”) sol which is tin (“Sn”) free. (Specification, page 1, lines 1-5 and page 4,
lines 15-19). A copy of the claims under appeal is set forth in the appendix to the Appellants' Brief.
Independent claim 21 and dependent claim 2 are illustrative of the invention and read as follows:
21. A method of providing a metal pattern on an electrically insulating substrate in an
electroless process, in which method the substrate is pretreated and subsequently exposed to
light according to a pattern, whereafter the substrate is brought into contact with an aqueous
metal salt solution to metallize unexposed areas of the substrate, thereby forming the metal-
pattern on the substrate, characterized in that the substrate is pretreated by bringing it into
contact with an aqueous Sn free Pd sol which is stabilized with a water-soluble polymer,
thereby depositing Pd nuclei on the substrate, and in that the substrate, thus provided with the
Pd nuclei, is exposed according to the pattern to a pulsed light beam of such energy content per
pulse that the Pd nuclei are removed from the exposed areas and in that an electroless
metallization bath is used to metallize the unexposed areas of the substrate thereby forming the
metal pattern on the substrate.
Page 2
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007