Appeal No. 2000-1003
Application No. 08/631,465
consideration will be facilitated by preliminarily reviewing the
arguments advanced by the appellants against this rejection.
According to the appellants, the here applied references
“do not disclose or suggest a secondary ionization zone, as set
forth in claims 1, 2, 4-8, 12, 13, 15-18, 27, 29, 30, 32 and 34,
much less a plurality of secondary ionization zones, as set forth
in claims 22-25" (brief, page 15). This is incorrect. As fully
explained earlier, the apparatus and method of Mosely includes a
plurality of ionization zones by virtue of patentee’s antennas
50, 60 as well as cylindrical plates or rings 80, 82.
The appellants additionally argue that “these references do
not disclose or suggest a recombination zone, as set forth in
claim 8" (brief, page 15). As reflected by the appellants’ own
disclosure, for example, at lines 20-24 on specification page 4
(also see lines 13-23 on specification page 10), ions tend to
recombine with charged particles in the plasma and neutralize
quickly. Thus, the recombination zone of appealed claim 8 would
necessarily and inherently be present in an environment of the
type under consideration including that of the Mosely apparatus.
It follows that the here argued feature of claim 8 is disclosed
by Mosely under the principles of inherency albeit not expressly.
See RCA Corp. v. Applied Digital Data Sys., Inc., 730 F.2d 1440,
7
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