Appeal No. 2002-0293 Page 4
Application No. 09/192,564
To the extent that appellant is arguing that one of ordinary skill in the art of
polishing would not understand the surface finish value of “on the order of 0.005
microns” as used by Malshe as referring to a surface roughness on the order of 0.005
microns (5 nm), we do not consider this argument to be well taken. From our
perspective, one of ordinary skill in the art, reading the above-mentioned sentence of
Malshe as a whole would have understood that, by “surface finish on the order of 0.005
microns,” Malshe meant a surface roughness on the order of 0.005 microns (5 nm).
We do, however, share appellant’s view that it is not apparent whether the
surface finish/roughness value cited by Malshe refers to an arithmetic average (Ra)
surface roughness value or a root mean square (Rms) surface roughness value (Rq).
As pointed out by the Metals Handbook (p. 27-22), the ratio of the root mean square
surface roughness value (Rq) to the arithmetic average surface roughness value (Ra)
can vary anywhere from 1.16 to at least as high as 2.10, depending on the type of
polishing process used. Thus, while it is certainly possible, and even in our view likely1,
that the ion beam polished diamond film referred to in the background section of the
Malshe patent does have a surface roughness (Rms) within the range of from 0.5 to
10.0 nm as called for in claim 7, the disclosure of the Malshe patent is too speculative
to permit a conclusion that this is necessarily the case and the examiner has not
provided any additional evidence to establish that one of ordinary skill in the art would
1 Table 1 on page 27-22 of the Metals Handbook notes that a practical first approximation for the
ratio Rq/Ra for most processes is 1.25. Thus, even assuming that the surface finish/roughness value
referred to by Malshe is an arithmetic average value, the root mean square (Rms) value would likely still
fall within the range recited in claim 7.
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