Appeal No. 1998-0038
Application No. 08/236,780
reference teachings would not have given the artisan a
reasonable expectation that Champetier's low-energy method
would successfully clean the electrode surface of Barrington's
mass spectrometer. In re O'Farrell, 853 F.2d 894, 902-03, 7
USPQ2d 1673, 1680-1681 (Fed. Cir. 1988). This deficiency of
the examiner's rejection based on Barrington in view of
Champetier is, by itself, sufficient reason to not sustain the
corresponding rejection based on these references and further
in view of Benzing, Cuomo and Akishin, although we also
perceive merit in the appellants' argument that the applied
prior art contains no teaching or suggestion for combining
these last three mentioned references with Barrington and
Champetier in the manner proposed by the examiner.
As for the rejection based on George, the examiner makes
a number of obviousness conclusions, one of which is expressed
on page 12 of the answer as follows:
As to the energy range of the ion beam, George
suggest that a variety of ion beam energy ranges are
available in the range of 0.5 eV to several MeV,
therefore the subject matter as a whole would have
been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at
the time the invention was made to select the
portion of the prior art's range which is within the
range of applicant's claims because it has been held
to be obvious to select a known range by
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