Appeal No. 2001-1690
Application 08/859,407
then undercutting reads on appellant’s step of mounting a
partially fabricated device on a package followed by
undercutting. See id., page 2. Regardless of whether the
examiner’s analysis is correct, the examiner has failed to
establish a prima facie case of anticipation since the examiner
has not shown that Mignardi teaches the final claimed step of
“attaching a lid to the package” Id.; see Examiner’s Answer,
page 6.
The examiner’s position appears to be that the step of
attaching a lid to the package is conventional in the art and the
claims, as drafted, do not preclude the additional step of
transferring an undercut device to a final package. Although the
claims utilize the word “comprising” such that additional steps
are not precluded, it is clear that the claims require that the
lid be “attached” to the same substrate (i.e., the package) on
which the devices have been mounted during a step conducted prior
to the undercutting operation. Thus, the claims define over
Mignardi’s teaching of mounting a device on an adhesive tape,
undercutting the device on the tape, transferring the device to a
package and then attaching a lid to the final package, since the
package is clearly a different substrate from the adhesive tape.
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