Appeal No. 2005-0488
Application No. 09/851,274
within the claimed range produce an unexpected result.
Appellants' disclosure at page 10 of the specification that
"[t]he amount of the non-ionic surfactant containing neither a
fluorine substituent nor a silicon containing substituent may be
in the range of 10 to 2000 ppm" would seem to allay any
suggestion of criticality (second paragraph, emphasis added).
Appellants submit that "merely failing to discuss or even
acknowledge a non-ionic surfactant having neither a fluorine
substituent nor a silicon-containing substituent clearly does not
constitute a 'teaching' or even a 'suggestion' of a non-ionic
surfactant having neither a fluorine substituent nor a silicon-
containing substituent" (page 5 of Brief, second paragraph).
However, the examiner's rejection is based upon much more than
Kawabe simply being silent about the nature of the non-ionic
surfactant. Rather, Kawabe expressly discloses a specific number
of non-ionic surfactants having neither a fluorine substituent
nor a silicon-containing substituent which correspond to the non-
ionic surfactants disclosed in the present specification. The
fact that appellants may have discovered an additional advantage
of including the non-ionic surfactants disclosed by Kawabe in a
resist material comprising a surfactant having a fluorine
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