Appeal No. 2001-1516
Application No. 08/684,299
The examiner recognized these deficiencies and employed Iida for providing a
8/4 wave plate from a liquid crystal polymer with a uniform nematic orientation, the
examiner indicating column 2, lines 43-52, as the teaching. The examiner held that it
would have been obvious to substitute a polymer liquid crystal quarter wave plate for
the quarter wave plate of Adachi to reduce the cost and improve the yield.
The examiner employed Abileah for the teaching (column 10, lines 25-31) of
combining the functions of a retarder and a color filter. The examiner held that
[s]ince color filters are usually formed by introducing a coloring
material into a polymer layer, with different colors for different
pixels, and since the retarder of Adachi, as modified by the teachings
of Iida . . ., is a polymer film, it would have been obvious to add a
coloring material to the liquid crystal polymer to give the retarder
a color filtering function to form a color display. Further, to avoid
using still more layers for a mask for adding the color material, it
would have been obvious to use a photosensitive layer as the protective
film and to use the protective film (or passivation layer) as the mask
[answer-pages 5-6].
Even if we take for granted the truth of the examiner’s allegations about what
each reference teaches, we will not sustain the examiner’s rejection of claims 20-24
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 because, in our view, the examiner has not established a prima
facie case of obviousness with regard to the instant claimed subject matter.
In accordance with the language of independent claim 20, the optical thin film
layer functions as a quarter wave phase shifter and also includes the plurality of
coloring areas to form color filters. If Adachi’s quarter wave panel 39 is the claimed
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