Appeal No. 2005-0090
Application No. 10/057,025
From our review of the examiner’s position, we find no teaching that the funnel
shaped manifold would be in the silicon substrate except for in the teachings of Taub.
The examiner maintains that Figueredo teaches a center feed with a slot 116 which is in
a thin film substrate rather than in a silicon substrate and is not funnel-shaped.
Therefore, we do not find a teaching in Ramaswami or Figueredo of a (funnel-shaped)
manifold in a silicon substrate. The examiner further maintains that Taub “is cited to
teach why one of ordinary skill in the ink jet art would provide a funnel-shaped manifold
in a print head structure that is similar to the claimed invention, Ramaswami and
Figueredo.” (See answer at page 7.) Yet with this combination, we find no motivation
to have the manifold in the silicon substrate as claimed. While we do notice that Taub
does have the funnel-shaped manifold in the silicon substrate, the examiner has
provided no convincing line of reasoning why it would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to modify the layered structures of
Ramaswami and Figueredo. From our view of the examiner’s rejection and the
discussion in the response to arguments by the examiner, we find that the examiner
opines that the various parts of the claimed invention were known, but the examiner has
not established a convincing line of reasoning for the myriad of modifications to the
base teachings of Ramaswami to achieve the invention as recited in the language of
independent claim 11.
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