Appeal No. 1998-1547
Application No. 08/582,001
to raise and/or consider issues not argued by an appellant,
this board is also under no such burden.
We now direct our attention to the rejection of claims 1-
6 and 21-26 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over
Erpelding.
Independent claims 1 and 21 each recite that the etch
retardant layer is “a metal selected from the group consisting
of gold, tungsten, and nickel.” The examiner recognizes that
Erpelding fails to disclose an etch retardant layer made of
gold, tungsten or nickel but contends that it would have been
obvious “to utilize the materials listed” because Erpelding
“is not limited to the materials listed therein” and that
skilled artisans “would have utilized any suitable material”
since the “listed materials are obvious results of routine
optimizing” [answer-page 4].
We find the examiner’s conclusion of obviousness to be
unsupported by the evidence before us. The only references to
etching in the disclosure of Erpelding, at column 4, line 65
and column 5, line 7, do not indicate anything about an “etch
retardant layer,” as claimed. Thus, it is unclear from
Erpelding whether the polyimide layer 10 between the metal
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007