Appeal No. 1998-1660
Application No. 08/108,499
The Examiner asserts (Answer, page 4) that, since silicon
is the only impurity mentioned in the specification, there is
no support for the claim language which, in the Examiner’s
interpretation, requires total impurity concentration to be
less than 1x10 cm (claim 13) or less than 1x10 cm (claim16 -3 15 -3
14). Our review of Appellants’ disclosure, however, reveals
that the formation of a GaAs crystal with the defined impurity
concentrations is clearly set forth, for example, at page 10,
line 4 and page 12, line 6. We agree with Appellants that
there is nothing in their disclosure that would limit the
impurity concentration to silicon. In our opinion, Appellants
have satisfied the statutory written description requirement
because they were clearly in possession of the invention at
the time of filing of the application. Therefore, we do not
sustain the rejection of claims 13 and 14 under the first
paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112.
We next consider the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)
rejection of claims 11-14 as being anticipated by Ghandhi.
Anticipation is established only when a single prior art
reference discloses, expressly or under the principles of
inherency, each and every element of a claimed invention as
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