Appeal No. 2000-1414
Application No. 08/840,351
Appellants argue that the examiner relied upon hindsight using appellants’
specification. (See brief at page 9.) Again, we disagree with appellants as discussed
above. Appellants have made no other specific arguments in the brief with regard to
claim 1 except at page 13 of the brief, but these arguments merely distinguish
independent claim 1 from independent claim 9.
With respect to claim 3, appellants argue that Cuthbert teaches away from the
use of an aperture mask to block at least some of the scattered light since Cuthbert
teaches the reflected beam should be blocked. This argument is not persuasive since
Kato is relied upon to teach the use of the reflected beam.
With respect to claim 4, appellants argue that Cuthbert and Kato do not teach or
suggest the use of a rate of change of pixel data to detect defects. (See brief at page
13.) Appellants then argue that the examiner has asserted that it would have been
obvious to use any known signal processing arrangement. (See brief at page 13.) We
disagree with appellants' interpretation of the rejection. From our understanding of the
examiner's statement of the rejection at page 3 of the answer, the examiner relies upon
the premise that skilled artisans would have been motivated to implement known
processing circuitry to perform desired functions and that Cuthbert teaches the use of a
high pass filter and high pass amplifier and level detector. The examiner indicates that
Figure 3 of Cuthbert teaches these well known circuits in use in Cuthbert and that the
high pass filter is a differentiator by a different name. Additionally, the examiner
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