Appeal No. 1998-2405
Application 08/351,093
equipment (answer, pages 4-5). The examiner, however, has not
established that one of ordinary skill in the art would have
reasonably expected Nakagawa’s ion beam method to produce a
film having a resistance to reactive ion etching which is
similar to that of a film produced by Ozaki’s electron beam
method. The examiner has merely provided speculation to that
effect, and such speculation is not sufficient for
establishing a prima facie case of obviousness. See In re
Warner, 379 F.2d 1011, 1017, 154 USPQ 173, 178 (CCPA 1967),
cert. denied, 389 U.S. 1057 (1968); In re Sporck, 301 F.2d
686, 690, 133 USPQ 360, 364 (CCPA 1962). Accordingly, we
reverse the rejection over Franke in view of Nakagawa and
Ozaki.
Rejection over Seki in view of Jelks and Kaito
The portion of Seki relied upon by the examiner discloses
masking a ZnSe substrate using a nickel, molybdenum or
tungsten mask formed by sputtering, and then etching the ZnSe
using an ion beam (col. 13, line 40 - col. 14, line 12).
Kaito discloses forming a metallic patterned film by
scanning a substrate with a converging ion beam while blowing
6
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007