Appeal No. 2003-1501
Application 09/756,929
the vacuum pump of Rigali was actually used to perform the missing ‘removing by-products’
limitation . . . it must necessarily be operating continually to maintain pressure of 50 to 80
mTORR, as described in Rigali” (reply brief, page 9; emphasis in original deleted). Appellant
alleges that Rigali uses gas source 30 to maintain reaction chamber 16 at a partial pressure
between 100mTORR and 1.2 TORR, citing col. 10, lines 61-67, and thus, “[i]f the vacuum pump
had been continually operating . . . the processing gas would never reach it’s operating pressure
(id., pages 9-10; emphasis in original deleted). Appellant further alleges that the venting of
injected gas to the atmosphere and purging the reaction chamber with nitrogen gas taught by
Rigali at col. 11, lines 27-33, would not be necessary if “the vacuum pump [had] been operating
to necessarily perform the ‘removing’ function” (id., page 10). Appellant argues that if such
discrepancies do not show that the pump does not function to remove by-products, “they
establish an ambiguity” which is not sufficient to establish inherency.
We find no requirement in the cited language of appealed claim 47 that the vacuum pump
must operate continuously to “removes by-products” and, indeed, in the specification Example
which illustrates a batch process, “[a] vacuum is applied to maintain the pressure between 300
mTORR – 1 TORR. The plasma gas and vacuum are applied between 5 and 20 minutes of the 4
hour period” in which the workpieces are in the reaction chamber (page 13, lines 2-15). It further
appears that the use of a vacuum pump to produce the vacuum is optional (col. 13, lines 29-30).
In similar manner, the written description in the specification further discloses “[a] vacuum pump
42, which maintains the pressure inside the process chamber 44 (usually run at pressures of 150
millitorr to 1500 millitorr), may be included in the plasma cleaner to remove the contaminant by-
products” (page 12, lines 1-4).
Thus, we interpret appealed claim 47 in light of the specification to specify that the
vacuum pump must be capable of removing at least some amount of by-products, however small,
within any TORR pressure range.
We find that Rigali discloses that vacuum pump 28 of the batch processing apparatus can
be a commercially available, two stage pump (col. 6, lines 12 and 54-56), which when operated
along with the rest of the apparatus as illustrated by Rigali (col. 10, line 45, to col. 11, line 40,
particularly col. 10, lines 58-60), evacuates the reaction chamber within a lower TORR pressure
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