Interference No. 105,113
The wafer or workpiece 490 is supported on its bottom side by a hot plate 530 while cooling air
535 moves from left to right across the top surface, as indicated by arrows 535. Id. at 24, ll.
18-22. Although not discussed in the specification or given reference numerals, the dashed lines
at the left and right sides of the figure appear to represent left and right side walls. Adjacent to
and outside the left wall is a rectangle which we assume, based on the position and direction of
arrows 535, represents the source of the cooling air. The right side wall includes an opening
through which the cooling air presumably exits after passing over the wafer. While the figure
does not show front and back side walls, it is reasonable to assume they were omitted from the
drawing because their presence is not required to show the path of the cooling air across the
wafer. Thus, we conclude that this figure is sufficient to show that the inventors envisioned an
annealing apparatus having surrounding sides, thereby satisfying the annealing "chamber"
terminology of independent claims 68, 70, and 73. Furthermore, when this annealing apparatus
is employed in the system depicted in Figure 16, the "system" limitation and the remaining
elements of these claims are also satisfied for the reasons given above in the discussion of the
annealing "oven" embodiment.
For the same reasons, these claims read on the system depicted in Figure 17, reproduced
above, when it employs the annealing apparatus of Figure 11 as the heating unit 635 in annealing
station 630. However, we note in passing that although heating unit 635 is described as being
"separate" and although annealing station 630, which contains heating unit 635 and a dedicated
robotic mechanism 640, is connected to the other system component through "an intermediate
staging door/area 645" (id. at 28, ll. 10-14), we do not agree with Ritzdorf that these
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