Appeal No. 1996-2702
Application No. 08/093,983
12. Accordingly, we affirm.
As a general proposition in an appeal involving a rejection
under 35 U.S.C. § 103, an Examiner is under a burden to make out
a prima facie case of obviousness. If that burden is met, the
burden of going forward then shifts to Appellant to overcome the
prima facie case with argument and/or evidence. Obviousness is
then determined on the basis of the evidence as a whole and the
relative persuasiveness of the arguments. See In re Oetiker, 977
F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992); In re
Hedges, 783 F.2d 1038, 1039, 228 USPQ 685, 686 (Fed. Cir. 1986);
In re Piasecki, 745 F.2d 1468, 1472, 223 USPQ 785, 788 (Fed. Cir.
1984); and In re Rinehart, 531 F.2d 1048, 1051-52, 189 USPQ 143,
147 (CCPA 1976).
With respect to independent claim 7, the Examiner, as the
basis for the obviousness rejection, proposes to modify the MOS
semiconductor device fabrication process disclosure of Taji.
According to the Examiner, Taji teaches the claimed invention
except that, while the patterning of a deposited metal layer for
forming contacts 72, 74 is described (Taji, column 4, lines 4-9),
there is no explicit disclosure of the use of photolithography in
which a patterned photoresist is used as a mask to etch the
deposited conductor film to a desired shape. To address this
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