Appeal No. 1998-2925
Application 08/532,861
cannot take the place of evidence. See In re De Blauwe, 736
F.2d 699, 705, 222 USPQ 191, 196 (Fed. Cir. 1984); In re
Payne, 606 F.2d 303, 315, 203 USPQ 245, 256 (CCPA 1979); In re
Greenfield, 571 F.2d 1185, 1189, 197 USPQ 227, 230 (CCPA
1978); In re Pearson, 494 F.2d 1399, 1405, 181 USPQ 641, 646
(CCPA 1974). Second, for a prima facie case of obviousness to
be established, the expectation of success provided by the
prior art needs only to be a reasonable one; absolute
certainty is not required. See In re O’Farrell, 853 F.2d 894,
903-04, 7 USPQ2d 1673, 1681 (Fed. Cir. 1988). Because, as
acknowledged by appellants (specification, page 1, lines 11-
15), it was conventional to implant both the gate oxide and
adjacent source/drain regions with an impurity dopant, it
reasonably appears that the disclosure by Lin regarding doping
source and drain regions of metal-oxide-semiconductor field-
effect transistors (page 1790) would have provided one of
ordinary skill in the art with a reasonable expectation of
success in using the disclosed dopants to dope both the
source/drain and gate regions.
Accordingly, we affirm the examiner’s rejections of
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