Appeal No. 1997-3514 Page 3
Application No. 08/303,566
Dohjo et al. (Dohjo) 4,905,066 Feb. 27, 1990
Hey et al. (Hey) 4,987,856 Jan. 29, 1991
Iwamoto et al. (Iwamoto) 5,258,207 Nov. 02, 1993
Yamagishi et al. (Yamagishi) 5,264,710 Nov. 23, 1993
Kenmotsu et al. (Kenmotsu) 62-136870 Jun. 19, 1987
(published Japanese Patent Application)
THE REJECTIONS
Claims 1, 3, and 5 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over
Yamagishi in view of Hey and Iwamoto. These three references serve as the foundation for the
rejection of all the other claims. To reject claim 6, the Examiner further adds Kenmotsu. Dohjo is
added to reject claims 7-9, 12, and 13. Both Kenmotsu and Dohjo are added to reject claims 10 and
11. We reverse all the rejections because the Examiner has failed to establish that the combination of
Yamagishi, Hey, and Iwamoto, the references used to reject independent claim 1, would have led one
of ordinary skill in the art to perform the process using a pressure and temperature within the ranges
required by that claim.
OPINION
The Examiner states that Yamagishi describes, in Examples 1-3, a plasma CVD process for
forming amorphous silicon films on a glass substrate heated to 200EC using silane at a pressure range of
0.4 to 3 Torr (Answer, page 3). We note that Examples 1 and 2 specify a pressure of 3 Torr. This
pressure is at least about 0.8 Torr as required by claim 1. However, the 200EC temperature specified
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