Appeal 2007-2134
Application 10/311,880
§ 102(b) Rejection over Fukuda
Claims 3, 5, 7, and 11 are argued together as a group. Accordingly,
we select claim 3 as the representative claim for this claim grouping. Claim
4 will be considered separately to the extent separately argued in the Briefs.
Appellants acknowledge that Fukuda discloses an apparatus including
a heater wound about an introduction tube (Br. 5). However, Appellants
contend that Fukuda’s heater is not on the substrate side of the supply means
and is not “adapted to heat an organic metal gas to a temperature higher than
a thermal decomposition point of the gas’’ (id.).
The Examiner maintains that the heaters (13) of Fukuda are capable of
heating an organic metal gas above a decomposition temperature thereof and
that the claimed heater does not structurally distinguish over the heater of
Fukuda.
The issue before us with respect to representative claim 3 is: Have
Appellants identified a reversible error in the Examiner’s anticipation
rejection over Fukuda by asserting that the heater of Fukuda is not on a
substrate side of the gas supply and is not capable of heating an organic
metal gas to a decomposition temperature? We answer this question in the
negative and affirm the Examiner’s rejection of representative claim 3 over
Fukuda.
As we noted above, the claim term “substrate side” is not defined in
Appellants’ Specification. Giving that claim term the broadest reasonable
construction as one of ordinary skill in the art would understand it to have
when read in light of Appellants’ Specification, we determine that the heater
(13) of Fukuda is located near the gas supply means outlet end or on the
substrate side of the gas supply, as claimed. See heater (13) as shown in
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