Appeal No. 1998-2422
Application 08/488,380
The Examiner's position is as follows (FR5):
Keogh conceptually discloses the same claimed invention
except for its use for lithographic fabrication tool.
Artisan having ordinary skill in the art would select
such system for any tool adjustment on the basis of its
suitability for the intended use as a matter of obvious
engineering design selection. Consequently, it would
have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art
at the time the invention was made to use the device of
Keogh to align the fabrication tool since it was known in
the art to align any tool by passing current into one
coil and detecting the respective magnetic field in other
coil as taught by Keogh.
Appellant argues that "Keogh's methods are not compatible
with the methods of the present invention nor is it obvious
that Keogh's apparatus could be scaled down to the microscope
[sic] feature size required for application to lithography"
(Br4).
The Examiner does not respond to this argument.
Nevertheless, we are not persuaded by the argument because
Appellant provides no reasons why Keogh is incompatible with
the claimed subject matter and, in fact, there appears to be
no difference between the coils and detection system of Keogh
and the claimed invention other than the size necessary to
provide the appropriate positional accuracy. Appellant has
not stated why one of ordinary skill in the art would not have
considered it obvious to scale the coils in Keogh down to the
- 8 -
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007