Appeal No. 1999-0865
Application No. 08/468,573
obvious unless the prior art suggested the desirability of the
modification. In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1266 n.14, 23 USPQ2d
1780, 1783-84 n.14 (Fed. Cir. 1992).
Accordingly, since the Examiner has not established a prima
facie case of obviousness, the 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of
claims 61-68 over the combination of Keeble, Barnes, Müller, and
Fessenden is not sustained.
Rejection under 37 CFR § 1.196(b)
We make the following new ground of rejection using our
authority under 37 CFR § 1.196(b). Claims 59 and 61-68 are
rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Müller,
of record. As asserted by Appellants (Brief, page 6), we
interpret the limitations of appealed claims 59 and 61-68 as
requiring “ . . . coupling RF energy to a coil antenna associated
with a plasma reactor in which both ends of the coil antenna are
capacitively grounded or otherwise connected to a predetermined
potential.” We further find no recitation in claims 59 and
61-68 that would limit the claimed capacitances to a particular
structure or function. In our view, the plasma reactor system
disclosed by Müller meets all of the claimed requirements. As
illustrated in Figure 2 and described at column 4, lines 45-57 of
Müller, RF energy 12 is applied to the multi-turn cylindrically
12
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