Appeal No. 2005-2013 Page 5
Application No. 10/140,324
have a restrictive section (21a/21b) and a center passage section (28) and an opening
section (27). (Final Rejection, pp. 5-6). The Examiner concludes “[i]t would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to extend
Hills[’] annular body to provide a mounting flange as taught by Murakami, including
shaping, numbering, and positioning Hills[’] holes as taught by Murakami, including
optimizing the dimensions of Hills[’] apparatus and Hills[’] lip face plate angle. . . .” (Final
Rejection, p. 7).
The Examiner disagrees with the Appellants position that there is no suggestion
to combine the references. Specifically the Examiner states:
In response to applicant's argument that there is no suggestion to
combine the references, the examiner recognizes that obviousness can
only be established by combining or modifying the teachings of the prior
art to produce the claimed invention where there is some teaching,
suggestion, or motivation to do so found either in the references
themselves or in the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill
in the art. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 5 USPQ2d 1596 (Fed. Cir.
1988)and In re Jones, 958 F.2d 347, 21 USPQ2d 1941 (Fed. Cir. 1992). In
this case, there is some teaching, suggestion, and motivation to extend
Hill's annular body to provide a mounting flange as taught by Murakami,
including shaping, numbering, and positioning Hill's holes as taught by
Murakami, including optimizing the dimensions of Hill's apparatus and
Hill's lip-face plate angle.
Motivation to extend Hill's annular body to provide a mounting
flange as taught by Murakami, including shaping, numbering, and
positioning Hill's holes as taught by Murakami, including optimizing the
dimensions of Hill's apparatus and Hill's lip-face plate angle is for providing
support means for Hill's showerhead and sizing his apparatus for the
desired wafer size (column 4, line 1 - Hill) and plasma confinement
(column 5, lines 31-36 - Hill) while providing for uniform flow of the
process gasses as taught by Murakami (column 2, lines 53-59). Further, it
is well established that changes in apparatus dimensions are within the
level of ordinary skill in the art. (Answer, p. 6).
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