Appeal No. 2005-0277
Application No. 09/883,883
"equivalent" to the claimed step, and we find no basis for such a
conclusion, an equivalence of a prior art step is not a
description of a claimed step within the meaning of § 102.
The examiner's citation of Lee in support of a § 103
rejection of claims 3 and 4 does not remedy the deficiency in
Egermeier discussed above.
The examiner's § 102 rejection of claims 10-15 is another
matter. Unlike claim 1 on appeal, claim 10 does not require the
modification of an operational parameter in response to the
spectroscopic analysis. Rather, claim 10 simply requires
"controlling a process flow operation to reduce the amount of the
residual material on the wafer responsive to the results of
processing the raw spectral data." In our view, the examiner has
properly concluded that Egermeier's return of the wafer to the
prior processing operation for removing residual layers meets the
claim requirement of controlling a process flow operation to
reduce the amount of residual material on the wafer. Appellant
submits that Egermeier "teaches no such 'controlling,' but is
instead directed to rejecting defective wafers, as is established
above" (page 6 of principal brief, second paragraph). However,
we are satisfied that Egermeier's rejection of defective wafers
-5-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007