Appeal No. 2001-0118
Application No. 09/013,927
removing the rf coil in order to practice “traditional rf
sputtering,” thereby resulting in a method of the type defined
by the independent claim on appeal. As correctly explained by
the appellants in the reply brief, the deficiency of this
position is the examiner’s implicit assumption that modifying
the Barnes process in order to practice “traditional rf
sputtering” would involve only the removal of patentee’s rf
coil. That is, the examiner implicitly assumes that an
artisan, in making the proposed modification of Barnes, would
have eliminated the rf coil but left unchanged all other
aspects of patentee’s method. This assumption is incorrect.
For example, it is implicitly assumed by the examiner
that patentee’s sputter chamber pressure, which overlaps the
here claimed pressure, would remain the same after modifying
Barnes for “traditional rf sputtering.” However, the
disclosure at lines 43-57 in column 4 of Barnes teaches that
patentee’s range of relatively high pressures enhances the
ionization desired by Barnes. In contrast, as detailed by the
appellants in the reply brief, the secondary reference to
Lubbers discloses a sputtering process which (like
“traditional rf sputtering”) is not concerned with ionization
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