Appeal No. 2001-0118
Application No. 09/013,927
Lubbers et al. (Lubbers) 4,217,194 Aug. 12,
1980
Jeffrey et al. (Jeffrey) 4,353,788 Oct. 12,
1982
Barnes et al. (Barnes) 5,178,739 Jan. 12, 1993
Fritsche 5,300,205 Apr. 5, 1994
Rossnagel et al. (Rossnagel), “Metal ion deposition from
ionized mangetron sputtering discharge,” J. Vac. Sci. Technol.
B, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 449-453 (1994).
Claim 2 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Barnes in view of Jeffrey, Lubbers and
Fritsche, and claim 4 stands correspondingly rejected over
these references and further in view of Rossnagel.
On page 3 of the answer, the examiner refers to “prior
Office action, Paper No. 17" for his exposition of these
rejections. Our study of Paper No. 17, which is the final
Office action, reveals that the examiner advanced therein two
separate theories in support of his position that Barnes
teaches or would have suggested the here claimed applying step
wherein “the sputter particles are ionized only by the high
frequency electric power applied to the target.” In one
theory, the examiner concludes that it would have been obvious
to modify patentee’s embodiment which uses an rf coil by
simply eliminating this coil because the rf coil “is merely
extra” (Paper No. 17, page 2 and page 8). In the other
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