Appeal No. 1998-1925 Page 6
Application No. 08/430,956
teachings of the references do not support such a conclusion. It is true that both Justus and
Schwartzlander teach protecting a sensor from damaging intensities of light by passing a
focused incident beam through a defocusing device. It also is true that Murphy teaches
that a scattering device can be used to accomplish the same objective. However, we
agree with the appellants that the examiner’s rejection fails because the teachings of
Wood have wrongly been interpreted. Wood discloses three protecting means for acting
upon light beams. One of these is a scattering device (pages 379-385), and another is a
thermal defocusing device (pages 388-392). At the end of the discussion on thermal
defocusing, Woods concludes that “[a] device of this type [thermal defocusing] may be
desirable in front of all other devices as a means of protecting other limiters as well as
sensitive optical elements from extremely high incident fluences” (page 392). The
examiner apparently interprets this to mean that this suggests combining the two devices
into a single protective element. We do not agree. From our perspective, the extent of
Wood’s teaching in this regard is only that a complete thermal defocusing device be used
in series ahead of a complete scattering device, and such would include for each of the
devices a first optical means for focusing an incident light beam at a focal point, a
protective element located near the focal point, and a second optical means for focusing
the light beam exiting from the protective element upon the light sensitive object. The
examiner has not pointed out, nor do we find, any reason upon which to base a conclusion
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