Appeal No. 2004-2027
Application No. 09/670,189
one or more substrates with an aluminum halide gaseous reactant
stream. (Column 3, lines 34-37; column 4, lines 31-40.) Basta
’963 further teaches the use of other chemical species such as
chromium halides, hafnium halides, zirconium halides, or yttrium
halides in addition to or in lieu of the aluminum halide species.
(Column 9, lines 23-32.)
As pointed out by the appellants (appeal brief at 6), none
of the relied upon references contains any teaching or suggestion
as to the provision of “a solid fluoride or a solid iodide” of
the specified modifying element. Absent any evidence supporting
the allegation that one of ordinary skill in the art would have
been led to use “a solid fluoride or a solid iodide” of the
specified modifying element, we cannot uphold rejections I and
II.3
Turning to rejection III, the examiner admits that Chang
does not teach the preparation of a coating source comprising
solid aluminum halide. (Answer at 13.) Nevertheless, the
examiner held (id.):
[I]t would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill
in the art...to have included aluminum halide with the
energizer in the aluminum pack diffusion process of
3 While the examiner relies on an additional reference,
namely Basta ’614, to reject appealed claims 3 and 12-20, this
reference does not make up for the deficiency in the combination
of Warnes, Smith, and Basta ’963.
7
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