Appeal No. 1998-1681 Page 5
Application No. 08/523,075
OPINION
We have carefully considered all of the arguments
advanced by appellant and the examiner and agree with
appellant that the aforementioned rejections are not well
founded. The § 103 rejections maintained by the examiner
suffer from a lack of a careful comparison of what is being
claimed with what is reasonably disclosed and suggested by the
applied references. Accordingly, we will not sustain these
rejections.
As explained by appellant (brief, pages 6 and 7), the
appealed claims involve the treatment of substrate surfaces
from which photoresist has been removed by particular
techniques to detect whether gel substances are or were
present thereon.
Appealed claims 26-35 are drawn to a method wherein the
entire surface of a substrate to which photoresist is applied
is exposed and the exposed photoresist is removed.
Thereafter, the substrate exposed surface is subjected to an
etching process with any gel substances remaining on that
exposed surface functioning as a mask. Then, the substrate
surface is irradiated with a laser beam and light from that
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