Appeal No. 2002-1823
Application 09/575,551
the engagement head 616 moves to engage the article. Thus, the
disclosure of the application as originally filed would
reasonably convey to the artisan that the appellants had
possession at that time of the method now recited in claim 65
including the steps of engaging an article with an engagement
head by moving the engagement head in a first direction, and
carrying the article on a transfer robot to a process chamber by
moving the transfer robot in a second direction perpendicular to
the first direction.
Accordingly, we shall not sustain the standing 35 U.S.C.
§ 112, first paragraph, rejection of claim 65.
IV. The 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection
Iwai, the examiner’s primary reference, discloses a heat
treatment apparatus for semiconductor wafers. In applying this
reference, the examiner focuses on the embodiment shown in
Figures 1 through 10. Iwai summarizes this embodiment as
follows:
[t]he treatment apparatus according to the first
embodiment of the present invention comprises a process
tube 1, a loading chamber 8, an input/output chamber
13, a cassette accommodating vessel port 14, and a
holding member accommodating chamber 16. The process
tube 1 is a treatment chamber that performs a
predetermined treatment of a wafer W that is a
workpiece. The loading chamber 8 has a transfer
mechanism 12 that loads and unloads a wafer boat 6 into
and from the process tube 1. The wafer boat 6 serves
8
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