Appeal No. 1997-3514 Page 4
Application No. 08/303,566
in all of the Examples of Yamagishi is not within the 270-350EC range required by the process of claim
1. The Examiner fails to note this temperature difference in the rejection (Answer, page 3).
The secondary references do not describe a plasma CVD process in which the substrate is
heated to a temperature of 270-350EC. Hey is included in the rejection for its description of a plasma
CVD apparatus and this reference contains no discussion of the temperature and pressure requirements
of plasma CVD. Iwamoto describes a plasma CVD process, but specifically limits the substrate
temperature to a level below 100EC (col. 1, lines 63-67).
Furthermore, as evidenced by the combination of Yamagishi and Iwamoto, one of ordinary skill
in the art would have been led to heat the substrate to a temperature lower than that required in the
claimed process. The Examiner rationalizes that one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized
from Iwamoto that using a higher substrate temperature and higher pressure would have resulted in a
higher deposition rate (Answer, pages 9 and 10). The problem with this conclusion is that both
Iwamoto and Yamagishi are concerned with producing amorphous silicon films with high photoelectric
conductivity and photo-semiconductors made therefrom (Iwamoto, col. 1, lines 12-17; Yamagishi, col.
1, lines 11-33). Iwamoto specifically indicates that high photoelectric conductivity is only possible
when the substrate is held at a temperature below 100EC. The combination of Yamagishi with
Iwamoto would have led one of ordinary skill in the art to heat the glass substrate to a temperature
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