Appeal No. 2001-0006
Application 08/993,107
acceptable, the references do not teach that it must
be, or should be, a different object; the references
teach only that the object should be known to be
acceptable. When testing for defects which may have
arisen during use, using a baseline of the same object
when it is known to be good is clearly an obvious
choice for the baseline, since the object itself, when
it is known to be acceptable, is known to be an
acceptable object and thus an appropriate baseline
generating object.
On the one hand, while the examiner asserts here that the
references do not explicitly state that the acceptable baseline
can be an earlier image of the same object taken when it was
known to be acceptable, the examiner takes the view at pages 4-5
of the answer that Micka does explicitly state that the test
signal may be produced by using an object itself at a time when
it was known to be acceptable. The examiner relies upon the
statement in Micka at column 3, lines 53-56 as a basis for this
conclusion. This portion states "[o]ne test signal generator can
be produced by recording the signals from the photo-detector 14
when the test chip 10 is an acceptable master chip."
The examiner fails to adequately develop this teaching from
this reference in the context of the applied prior art as a
whole. The examiner has not detailed for our consideration all
the teachings and suggestions of Noguchi and Stonestrom and set
forth a persuasive rationale why this teaching of suggestion
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