Appeal No. 2004-1481
Application No. 09/726,659
D. Other Issues
In the event of further or continuing prosecution upon the
return of this application to the jurisdiction of the examiner,
the patentability of claims 10, 13, 14, 17 and 18 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) over Neoh in view of On should be reconsidered. Neoh does
not teach that bubbles cannot be detected when using a capacitive
sensor alone (i.e., without a backing plate), but only teaches that
“[s]ome bubbles that cannot be distinguished from resist without
the backing plate can be detected with the detector using the
backing plate.” Col. 3, ll. 14-16; see also col. 1, ll. 44-51.
Therefore the examiner should determine whether it would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in this art to omit the backing
plate with a corresponding loss of quality. See In re Hamilton,
404 F.2d 1388, 1390, 160 USPQ 199, 201 (CCPA 1969).
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