Appeal No. 2004-1123
Application No. 09/933,503
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given
careful consideration to appellants' specification and claims, to
the applied prior art references, and to the respective positions
articulated by appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of
our review, we have made the determination which follows.
In considering the examiner's rejection of claims 10 through
20 under § 103(a), we note that the "Background of the Invention"
portion of appellants' specification informs us that in the field
of semiconductor fabrication it has become desirable to operate
in an extremely high cleanliness minienvironment that eliminates
micro-contamination and reduces native oxide growth on silicon
surfaces. Figure 1 of the application is designated "Prior Art"
and schematically shows such a high cleanliness minienvironment
(10). Semiconductor wafers to be processed are transported into
the high cleanliness minienvironment via a standard mechanical
interface apparatus (SMIF) located at a loading and unloading
section (14). More particularly, a cassette (30) of wafers is
transported into the high cleanliness minienvironment from a SMIF
pod (18) situated on top of the SMIF apparatus (20).
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