Appeal No. 2000-1010 Page 4
Application No. 08/951,402
has not established a prima facie case of obviousness of the
claimed subject matter. Accordingly, we will not sustain the
examiner's rejections.
The examiner explicitly acknowledges that Patz does not
disclose the claimed diametrically opposed vacuum locks and
associated conveyors (answer, page 5) for the barrier discharge
device disclosed therein. According to the examiner (answer,
page 7),
it would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art at the time the invention was made to
have utilized a vacuum treatment apparatus for treating
three dimensional objects with a plurality of
processing stations as taught by Patz et al., to have
utilized an additional load lock diametrically opposed
to a first load lock station and to have utilized
cross-flow metallization scheme as taught by Schwartz
et al. and to have utilized a conveyor to move
substrates as taught by Takahashi et al. because it is
desired to provide an in-line system with efficient
metallization in which indexing problems are reduced to
a minimum and where unloading and loading is performed
on substrates.
We cannot subscribe to the examiner's position since the
examiner has not clearly explained how the teachings of Patz,
Schwartz and Takahashi are being combined so as to arrive at the
claimed invention. Concerning this matter and with regard to the
proposed modification of the apparatus of Patz, the examiner has
not sufficiently explained how the barrier discharge device of
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