Appeal No. 2000-0038
Application 08/751,369
intermediate layer and the substrate, see column 8, lines 21-28.”
The portion of Heming relied upon by the examiner states:
With an increasing thickness of the intermediate layer,
the substrate surface will be increasingly removed from
the region of the transversely damped field of the
wave. Due to the fact that the guided wave, with
adequate thickness of the intermediate layer, will
interact with the substrate surface now merely in its
marginal zone, scattering and absorption losses are
minimized.
Heming teaches that the light absorption of the intermediate
layer is low (col. 8, lines 37-38), and the above excerpt
indicates that light interacts with the substrate surface in its
marginal zone. The examiner has not explained how these
teachings indicate that only a negligible part of light energy
reaches an interface between the intermediate layer and the
substrate. Hence, the examiner has not carried the burden of
establishing a prima facie case of obviousness of the process
recited in the appellants’ claim 39.
Claim 41
The appellants argue that the interaction of the
intermediate layer with the waveguide to reduce the propagation
losses in the waveguide is not clearly disclosed by Heming
(brief, page 20). To the contrary, Heming teaches that
commercially available thermoplastic synthetic resin plates or
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