Appeal No. 2004-0657
Application No. 09/845,604
on opposing sides of the silicon fin (e.g., see lines 36-44 in
column 5 in conjunction with the paragraph bridging columns 7 and
8).
Many of the Appellant’s arguments against this claim 1
rejection (as well as the other rejections before us) involve
features disclosed in the subject specification or in the Muller
patent which are neither required nor excluded by the claims under
review. For example, regarding claim 1 (as well as other appealed
claims), the Appellant repeatedly argues that Muller “contains key
elements not found within Applicant’s invention which would render
Muller non-functional to remove” (see page 7 of the brief; also see
each of pages 8-14 of the brief) even though these “key elements”
are not excluded by the claim in question. Such arguments fail at
the outset because they are based on matters with respect to which
the appealed claims are not limited. See In re Self, 671 F.2d
1344, 1348, 213 USPQ 1, 5 (CCPA 1982). These arguments are
undeserving of our attention and will not be commented upon
further.2
2 In addition to being without value, these so-called
“arguments” (particularly in the quantity advanced by the
Appellant on this appeal) carry the potential of diluting
and possibly obfuscating arguments of merit. For these reasons,
we discourage the advancement of such “arguments” in appeal
(continued...)
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