Appeal No. 1999-2739
Application No. 08/891,127
to combine must be clear and particular). The examiner has not
identified, on this record, any teaching or motivation (e.g.,
advantages) for using electroless nickel deposition instead of
the sputtering taught by Takeuchi. 3
The examiner has applied Lee in addition to Patel and
Takeuchi in the rejection of claims 2, 14 and 26 (Answer, page
5). However, Lee has been cited for the teaching of wet etching
the remaining nickel from the silicon substrate (id.) and
therefore does not remedy the deficiencies discussed above.
For the foregoing reasons, we find that the examiner has
failed to establish a prima facie case of obviousness in view
of the reference evidence. Accordingly, we need not review
appellants’ rebuttal evidence of unexpected results (Brief, page
12). See In re Geiger, 815 F.2d 686, 688, 2 USPQ2d 1276, 1278
(Fed. Cir. 1987). Therefore the rejections under 35 U.S.C.
3We note that Patel teaches a method of nickel deposition
which renders unnecessary any catalyzing pretreatment of the
silicon surface that is to receive the nickel (abstract).
However, we find that Takeuchi deposits nickel onto
polysilicon and does not teach any catalyzing pretreatment of
this surface.
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