Appeal No. 1997-0547
Application No. 08/020,443
92-1988 in Application 07/457,689 filed December 28, 1989), a
previous merits panel of the Board determined that appellants'
departure from the prior art systems and methods resides in
the claimed step of "perturbing" at least one of the
parameters of power input to the heater, the rate of seed
withdrawal (i.e., pull speed), a rate of relative rotation
between the crucible and the seed, and the parameter of an
applied magnetic field. Appealed claim 1, now before us,
essentially tracks appealed claim 1 in the prior appeal with
the exception that appealed claim 1 now requires that the
"perturbing" step occur during the "withdrawing" step wherein
the seed is withdrawn from the melt at a pull rate so that the
crystal grows from the seed crystal. Thus, as emphasized by
appellants in their brief at page 4, the now claimed invention
specifically requires that the perturbing, weighing and feed
back steps occur during the withdrawing of the seed from the
melt.
In finding the prior claims on appeal unpatentable under
35 U.S.C. § 103 in view of the combined disclosures of
Katsumata and Hurle, the prior Board panel determined that
Hurle's Figure 3 embodiment and the text of Hurle at pages 482
4
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