Appeal No. 2001-2088
Application No. 09/121,177
spread out after passing through the through hole, we have no
such evidence that that is the case.
All of the rejected claims contain the limitation of
“detecting the edges of the through hole of the positioning arm”.
The applied reference simply does not refer to such a step,
detecting, instead, the edges of the reflected laser beam. The
examiner’s position is that detection of the edges of the
reflected laser beam is somehow equivalent to detecting the edges
of the through hole because of a direct proportion of the light
beam incident on the photodetectors to the amount of the light
beam blocked by the hole edges. Whatever “proportion” is being
referred to by the examiner, there is still no through hole edge
detection disclosed or suggested by Tsai. If the examiner is
contending that by measuring the edges of the beam width, this
somehow indicates the edges of the through hole, we disagree.
While this may be true for beam widths which do not vary after
exiting the through hole, in most cases, the beam may diverge
from the through hole. If this is the case, then measurement of
beam width by detecting the edges of the beam, does not indicate
the edges of the through hole since the beam width will vary with
distance from the through hole. Without knowing the distance
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