Ex Parte WangDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardOct 26, 201713084568 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 26, 2017) Copy Citation United States Patent and Trademark Office UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE United States Patent and Trademark Office Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS P.O.Box 1450 Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 www.uspto.gov APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. JW002SR 1347 EXAMINER MCALLISTER, STEVEN B ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3749 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 13/084,568 04/12/2011 15186 7590 Jiaxiong Wang 306 Sun Stream Court Danville, CA 94506 Jiaxiong Wang 10/27/2017 PAPER Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding. The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte JIAXIONG WANG Appeal 2015-008207 Application 13/084,5681 Technology Center 3700 Before MICHAEL C. ASTORINO, SHEILA F. McSHANE, and AMEE A. SHAH, Administrative Patent Judges. ASTORINO, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL2 The Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from the Examiner’ decision rejecting claims 1, 2, 10, 12, 13, and 22. We have jurisdiction the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. 1 Jiaxiong Wang (“Appellant”) is the real party in interest. Br. 2. The Appellant has filed this appeal pro se. See Br. 12. 2 This Decision refers to the Final Office Action (“Final Act.”), mailed July 17, 2014, the Appellant’s Appeal Brief (“Br.”), filed December 20, 2014, and the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.”), mailed April 23, 2015. Appeal 2015-008207 Application 13/084,568 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Subject Matter on Appeal The Appellant’s “invention relates to a reactor that can be assembled with modular sections to fabricate multiple component semiconductor materials that can be used in thin film solar cells as absorbers or other fields of applications.” Spec. 11 (filed March 15, 2014). Claims 1 and 12 are the independent claims on appeal. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal. 1. A reactor, comprising: a rapid thermal process (RTP) compartment; a cooling compartment; at least one modular heating section, installed between said RTP compartment and said cooling compartment, including one or more modular thermal control components and modular reaction chamber wall; and a reaction oven that has an oven space enclosed by said one or more modular thermal control components, one or more heating elements, one or more pieces of cooling tubing, one or more thermocouples, one or more gas inlets to said oven space, and one or more gas outlets to said oven space; wherein said oven space possesses a central internal height between 10 and 200 millimeters, and an internal bottom width between 100 and 2000 millimeters; wherein said reaction oven is configured in such a way that a flexible substrate can be delivered through said oven in a roll-to-roll process. Rejections Claims 10, 12, 13, and 22 stand rejected under (pre-AIA) 35 U.S.C. §112, second paragraph, as indefinite. 2 Appeal 2015-008207 Application 13/084,568 Claims 1, 2, 10, 12, 13, and 22 stand rejected under (pre-AIA) 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over McMaster et al. (US 3,934,970, issued Jan. 27, 1976) (“McMaster”) and Pinarbasi et al. (US 2009/0183675 Al, published July 23, 2009) (“Pinarbasi”). ANALYSIS Rejection of claims 10, 12, 13, and 22 under (pre-AIA) 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, as indefinite The Appellant contends that claims 10, 12, 13, and 22 are definite and have sufficient antecedent bases. Br. 5; see Br. 4. The Examiner reasons that claims 10 and 22 are indefinite because the terms “an arc top piece” and “a flat bottom piece” in claim 10’s line 7 and “a top piece” and “a bottom piece” in claim 22’s line 2 lack sufficient antecedent basis.3 See Final Act. 3, Ans. 14. As for claim 10, the Examiner explains that the terms “an arc top piece” and “a flat bottom piece” were previously introduced on two occasions in claim 10 prior to being recited for a third time. Ans. 14. As for claim 22, the Examiner explains that the terms “a top piece” and “a bottom piece” were previously introduced in independent claim 12. Ans. 14. The Examiner determines that one of ordinary skill in the art would be unsure if the claims require “two different components of the same name or the same component (‘double inclusion’).” Ans. 14. The Examiner’s reasoning is not persuasive. Each of the terms at issue in claims 10 and 22 are part of the claimed “said modular thermal 3 Cited line numbers of claims 10 and 22 are particular to the claims as recited in the Appeal Brief at pages 13 and 14. 3 Appeal 2015-008207 Application 13/084,568 control component.” See Br. 13, 14, Claims App. The Examiner does not explain — and we fail to understand — why one of ordinary skill in the art, reading the terms at issue in light of the Specification, would reasonably interpret “said modular thermal control component” to have more than one “arc top piece” and “flat bottom piece,” with regard to claim 10, and more than one “top piece” and “bottom piece,” with regard to claim 22. As such, we disagree with the Examiner that the terms at issue in claims 10 and 22 may refer to “two different components of the same name.” We determine that the terms at issue refer to the same component. For example, “a top piece” in claim 22’s line 2 refers to the same “top piece” in claim 12’s line9.4 Further, we note that the Examiner suggests replacing “an” and “a” with “said” prior to the words “top piece,” “bottom piece,” “arc top piece,” and “flat bottom piece.” Ans. 14. Although the Examiner’s suggestion to the Appellant is valid as a matter of form (i.e., a claim objection) — and would help to understand the claims more easily — it is not persuasive as a matter of substance for a rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph. The Examiner rejects independent claim 12, and its dependent claims (i.e., claims 13 and 22), because the term “said oven space” in line 8 uses “said” prior to “oven space” without previously introducing the term “oven space” in claim 12. Final Act. 3; Ans. 14. We note that claim 12 recites “a reaction oven that includes . . . one or more gas inlets and one or more gas outlets to said oven space.” Br. 13. We fail to understand why one of ordinary skill in the art reading the term “oven space” in light of the 4 Cited line numbers of claim 12 are particular to the claim as recited in the Appeal Brief at pages 13—14. 4 Appeal 2015-008207 Application 13/084,568 Specification would interpret “said oven space” to be something other than the oven space associated with the “reaction oven.” Similar to a point discussed above, the reason for the Examiner’s rejection seems to be valid as a matter of form, but not substance. For the reasons discussed above, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 10, 12, 13, and 22 as indefinite. Rejection of claims 1, 2, 10, 12, 13, and 22 under (pre-AIA) 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over McMaster and Pinarbasi The Appellant argues, “there is no convincing evidence to say that a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention can modify McMaster with Pinarbasi to create the present invention.” Br. 9. The Appellant also argues, “the Examiner took a reverse way to examine the present invention” and relies on the Appellant’s disclosure “to make a kind of illusion that the present invention was cop[i]ed from the prior art.” Br. 7. The Examiner responds to the Appellant’s arguments by explaining that the conclusion of obviousness is not based on impermissible hindsight, i.e., a reconstruction of the Appellant’s invention based on knowledge gleaned only from the Appellant’s disclosure. Ans. 15; see also Ans. 18. The Examiner’s conclusion of obviousness is based on the reason that the teachings from McMaster’s furnace and Pinarbasi’s reactor would have been combined “in order to heat a flexible material that is horizontally conveying through a horizontal furnace in an efficient manner, thus creating a desired final product per specified parameters.” Final Act. 5. In this case, the Examiner’s reasoning does not explain why all of the teachings from Pinarbasi’s sought to be combined by the Examiner would 5 Appeal 2015-008207 Application 13/084,568 have resulted in efficiently conveying a flexible material through a furnace to produce a product of the claimed specifications. For example, the Examiner finds that McMaster’s furnace fails to teach a reaction oven having one or more gas inlets or outlets to said oven space, as required by independent claims 1 and 12. See Final Act. 4. To remedy this deficiency, the Examiner turns to teachings particular to Pinarbasi’s reactor. Final Act. 5 (quoting Pinarbasi, Abstract “[a]t least one gas inlet is connected to the inner space, and at least one exhaust opening connects the process gap as well as the inner space to outside the reactor and carries any gaseous products to outside the process gap and the primary gap of the reactor.”). The Examiner’s reasoning, however, fails to persuasively explain why including Pinarbasi’s teaching of a gas inlet and a gas outlet for a vacuum- tight reaction oven benefits McMaster’s furnace. See Br. 5—8. In other words, the Examiner fails to provide evidence or technical reasoning why Pinarbasi’s teaching of having a gas inlet and a gas outlet in a vacuum-tight reaction oven helps to efficiently convey material in McMaster’s furnace or to create a desired final product per specified parameters. As such, we determine that the Examiner’s legal conclusion of obviousness cannot be sustained. See In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (“[R]ejections on obviousness grounds . . . [require] some articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of obviousness.”) (cited with approval in KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007)). Thus, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1,2, 10, 12, 13, and 22 as unpatentable over McMaster and Pinarbasi. 6 Appeal 2015-008207 Application 13/084,568 DECISION We REVERSE the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1,2, 10, 12, 13, and 22. REVERSED 7 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation