Appeal No. 2001-1776
Application No. 08/881,948
bolts passing into the target (Brief, paragraph bridging pages 3-
4). Appellants state that the claims stand or fall together
(Brief, page 4). Accordingly, pursuant to the provisions of 37
CFR § 1.192(c)(7)(1997), we select claims 9 and 10 from the
groupings of claims and decide the grounds of rejection in this
appeal on the basis of these claims alone, to the extent these
claims have been separately argued by appellants.1 Illustrative
independent claim 9 is reproduced below:
9. A target for installation in a vacuum chamber for
processing a substrate by causing sputtering material to be
ejected from the target onto said substrate, comprising
a disk-shaped section having two planar surfaces and an
outer periphery, said disk-shaped section having at least one
radially-inward step proximate said outer periphery,
said target being manufactured homogeneously of said
sputtering material,
said disk-shaped section defining threaded holes proximate
said outer periphery of said disk-shaped section.
The examiner has relied upon the following references as
evidence of obviousness:
Zejda 5,112,467 May 12, 1992
Inoue 5,244,556 Sep. 14, 1993
1Claim 24 is the sole claim in the third rejection on appeal
(Answer, page 6) and therefore we consider claim 24, to the
extent it is separately argued by appellants, in deciding this
ground of rejection. See In re McDaniel, 293 F.3d 1379, 1383, 63
USPQ2d 1462, 1465 (Fed. Cir. 2002).
2
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