Appeal No. 1998-0036 Page 8
Application No. 08/431,203
the same or overlapping times. Furthermore, we note that the film of Swisher is placed within a vacuum
chamber 16 on roll 10. Therefore, the film is subjected to vacuum pressures before entering the plasma
treatment station 11.
Appellants further argue that the statement in Sartor that “slight reabsorption of water after the
degassing treatment is not disadvantageous” (col. 4, lines 12-13) suggests that the teachings of Sartor
are antithetical to those of the Appellants because the statement implies a break in vacuum (Brief, page
6). We note that Appellants’ claims do not exclude a break in vacuum. Note that claim 1 does not
require that the steps of bombarding and vacuum metallizing take place within the vacuum system that is
outgassed.
Appellants state that the teachings of Lindsay and Ho add nothing to the teachings of the other
references (Brief, pages 5 and 6). We agree that the teachings of Lindsay and Ho are not critical to the
establishment of a prima facie case of obvious with respect to the subject matter of claim 1 with which
all the other process claims stand or fall. However, we note that Ho does teach performing a step of
desorbing water in polyimide film by heating within an ultra high vacuum chamber (col. 7, lines 39-42).
The language used by Ho implies that a vacuum exists within this chamber during the step of annealing
to desorb water. Ho is further evidence that those of ordinary skill in the art recognized at the time of
the invention that temperature and pressure levels could be manipulated to desorb water from polyimide
which is to be metallized.
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