Appeal No. 2005-0900
Application No. 10/098,588
Shinozuka (answer, page 4). Appellants argue that the examiner
has failed to establish a prima facie case of obviousness because
he failed to show that the prior art teaches the limitations of
claims 2 and 8 with respect to the wherein clause. Appellants
argue that the examiner has attempted to find the limitations of
dependent claims 3 and 9, but these findings do not support the
unpatentability of independent claims 2 and 8. Appellants also
argue that the assumptions made by the examiner with respect to
the nozzle size of the prior art are totally unsupported by the
applied prior art (brief, pages 7-10).
The examiner responds that based on his assumptions, the
artisan would have designed a semiconductor wafer radius and a
wafer table radius that satisfy the values recited in dependent
claims 3 and 9. Since the dependent claims must be consistent
with the independent claims, the examiner asserts that the
obviousness of claims 3 and 9 means that independent claims 2 and
8 must also be obvious (answer, page 5).
Appellants respond that even if the examiner found the
dimensions of the wafer and wafer table as recited in claims 3
and 9, that would not render independent claims 2 and 8 obvious
8
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