Appeal No. 2005-0789
Application No. 10/410,000
de Nemours & Co. v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 849 F.2d 1430, 1433,
7 USPQ2d 1129, 1131 (Fed. Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 986
(1988). Claim 1 recites “comprising”, and this word is an open-
ended word. See, Parmelee Pharmaceutical Co. et al. v. Zink (CA
8 1961) 285 F2d 465, 468, 128 USPQ 271, 275.
Furthermore, for argument sake, we note that appellants’
specification indicates that the plating solution can have “no
acid”. See page 5, paragraph 9. In light of this disclosure,
the claimed phrase of “up to about 0.4M of supporting
electrolyte” can be interpreted as including no supporting
electrolyte. Under such an interpretation, Bickford also
anticipates claim 1 because Bickford discloses an electroplating
bath having no supporting electrolyte. See column 18, lines 63-
66.
In view of the above, we therefore affirm the anticipation
rejection claims 1-4, 6, 12, 14, 20, 21, and 23-26 as being
anticipated by Bickford.
II. The 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of claims 1-13 and 15-24 as
being obvious over Watson
The examiner’s position for this rejection is set forth on
pages 4-5 of the answer. The examiner’s basic position is that
Watson teaches use of appellants’ plating solution for
electrodepositing copper on a brass panel, and that it would
have been within the skill in the art to employ Watson’s method
would for electrodepositing copper on a semiconditive substrate.
Answer, pages 4-5.
Appellants respond to this rejection, on page 5 of the
brief and page 3 of the reply brief. Appellants essentially
argue that claims 1-13 and 15-24 recite a method of
electrodepositing a metal, such as copper, on a semiconductor
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007