Appeal No. 2005-0488
Application No. 09/851,274
the ARGUMENT section of appellants' Brief discusses various
claims on appeal, all the appealed claims stand or fall together
with claim 1, and we will limit our consideration to the
examiner's rejection of claim 1.
We have thoroughly reviewed each of appellants' arguments
for patentability, as well as the specification evidence relied
upon in support thereof. However, we are in complete agreement
with the examiner that the claimed subject matter would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art within the meaning of
§ 103 in view of the applied prior art. Accordingly, we will
sustain the examiner's rejection for the reasons set forth in the
Answer, which we incorporate herein, and we add the following
primarily for emphasis.
There is no dispute that Kawabe, like appellants, discloses
a resist material comprising a surfactant having a fluorine
substituent and provides the further teaching that "a non-ionic
surfactant can be further added for the purpose of improving the
applicability of each photosensitive resin composition of his
invention or improving developability" (page 3 of Answer, last
paragraph). Also, as emphasized by the examiner, Kawabe
specifically discloses examples of non-ionic surfactants which
have neither a fluorine nor a silicon-containing substituent,
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