Appeal No. 2004-0593
Application No. 09/606,688
in support thereof. We decline to search the “thousands” of
patents to support the appellant’s contention that this knowledge
is within the purview of even electrical engineering students. It
is well settled that mere lawyer’s arguments and conclusory
statements, which are unsupported by factual evidence, are
entitled to little probative value. In re Geisler, 116 F.3d 1465,
1470, 43 USPQ2d 1362, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 1997); In re De Blauwe, 736
F.2d 699, 705, 222 USPQ 191, 196 (Fed. Cir. 1984); In re Wood, 582
F.2d 638, 642, 199 USPQ 137, 140 (CCPA 1978); In re Lindner, 457
F.2d 506, 508-09, 173 USPQ 356, 358 (CCPA 1972). We are
unpersuaded by the appellant’s argument.
We instead first look to the specification for any definition
of “matched” which the appellant may have used. The only
disclosure we have found is in the paragraph spanning pages 8 and
9, which reads as follows:
An advantage of the Fig. 2 example buffer/voltage-mirror
circuit is that it is very easy to design and implement in a
semiconductor IC, and such does not require excessive
semiconductor real estate. Further, if the circuit is laid
out on the semiconductor die such that the transistor devices
are geographically close to one another, than all such
transistors will be subjected to substantially the same
semiconductor processing and local environment leading to the
advantage that the various transistor devices can be easily
matched to one another. Practice of the present invention
may also be made with discreet (as opposed to semiconductor)
circuits. However, such would require matching of
components, with any degree of mismatching affecting an
7
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