Appeal No. 2006-2344
Application No. 10/408,890
table as the arm of a robot comprising said wafer table is rotating. It is our view that one of
ordinary skill in the art would have duly realized that the teachings of Akimoto and Subramanian
complement APA’s teachings to yield the invention as set forth in representative claim 1.
Particularly, the ordinarily skilled artisan would have readily been apprised of the fact that
Akimoto’s teaching of a cup-like wafer table with a support edge in addition to Subramanian’s
teaching of using adhesive material in lieu of a vacuum suction mechanism would reinforce
APA’s disclosed measurement module to meet the claim limitations.
Appellants further argue that the combination of the cited references with APA would not
be proper since there is no nexus between the references, that such a combination could only be
achieved through the use of impermissible hindsight reasoning, and that Akimoto and
Subramanian teach away from APA’s teaching. It has been held that “[a] reference may be said
to teach away when a person of ordinary skill, upon reading the reference, would be discouraged
from following the path set out in the reference, or would be led in a direction divergent from the
path that was taken by the applicant.” In re Gurley, 27 F.3d 551, 53, 31 USPQ2d 1130, 1131
(Fed. Cir. 1994). It has also been held that teaching away an alternative or equivalent method
does not teach away from the use of a claimed method. In re Dunn, 349 F.2d 433, 438, 146
USPQ 479, 483 (CCPA 1965). In this case, we find that Akimoto and Subramanian do not teach
away from Geiger. At the time of the invention, the ordinarily skilled artisan would have looked
to the teachings of Akimoto and Subramanian as a viable alternative in order to produce a cup-
like wafer table with adhesive lining as opposed to APA’s suction mechanism to firmly hold the
wafer in place as the drive rotates. Additionally, we find that the ordinarily skilled artisan would
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