Appeal No. 2005-1219
Application No. 09/774,192
shield are embedded inside the lid rather than placed atop. Also, as disclosed in Yoshida, the heater
is placed closer to the chamber than the Faraday shield, the reverse of the orientation claimed in
appellants’ claim 28. We agree with the examiner that it would have been obvious to use the heater
lid structure of Yoshida in the plasma chamber of Guo for the disclosed advantage of preventing
contaminants from forming in the plasma chamber.
As with many cases that come before us, the devil is in the prepositions. In this instance, we
must construe the claim limitation that says the heater is “disposed outside of the vacuum
chamber”. Yoshida, relied upon by the examiner to teach the heater and its placement, embeds the
heater and the shield in the chamber lid. Applying to the claim verbiage the broadest reasonable
meaning of the words in their ordinary usage as they would be understood by one of ordinary skill
in the art, taking into account whatever enlightenment by way of definitions or otherwise that may
be afforded by the written description contained in the applicant’s specification, In re Morris, 127
F.3d 1048, 1053-54, 44 USPQ2d 1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997), we construe the phrase “outside of
the vacuum chamber” to mean outside the volume where the plasma is struck. Accordingly, we
construe the heater and Faraday shield to be outside the chamber when they are embedded in the
interior of the chamber wall or lid. We believe this to be the broadest reasonable construction of
the claim language. We acknowledge that appellants argue that access to the heater and shield
obviate the need to open the chamber for servicing or repair, but we merely point out that the claims
do not reflect the scope of this argument. They are broader.
In fact, claim 28 is broad enough that “the chamber wall” can be read on the other three
walls of the chamber 10 shown in Figure 7 of Yoshida, without the lid. It is noted that the heater 1b
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