Appeal 2007-2510 Application 10/389,456 1 limited to the specifically described examples. This impression is also 2 supported by the standard disclaimer that "it should be understood that 3 various changes, substitutions and alterations can be made herein without 4 departing from the spirit or scope of the invention as defined in the appended 5 claims." (Id. at 5:11–14.) These general disclosures indicate that those 6 skilled in the art might have looked beyond the four corners of the 7 Economikos disclosure for other semiconductors that might be useful in the 8 process. We leave further findings of fact related to the reasons to combine 9 the references—and the weighing of their import—to the sound judgment of 10 the Examiner and Wang in the first instance, in the event of further 11 prosecution. 12 We are well aware of the difficulties of finding disclosures in the 13 technical literature of "things that everyone knows." At the same time, we 14 caution both examiners and applicants, generally, that relying on procedural 15 technicalities to avoid dealing with the substance of a rebuttal or a rejection, 16 tends to weaken the credibility of the argument. No argument is more 17 persuasive than one that deals forthrightly with all the facts of record, 18 including those that do not support the proponent's position as well as those 19 that do. 20 As the Examiner has relied on Fitzgerald and Moon solely to teach 21 other limitations recited in dependent claims, we need not consider 22 separately the rejections based on those references. 14Page: Previous 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Next
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