Appeal No. 94-0166
Application No. 07/815,316
(CCPA 1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1064, 197 USPQ 271 (1978).
Moreover, as the court stated in In re Kaslow, 707 F.2d 1366,
1375, 217 USPQ 1089, 1096 (Fed. Cir. 1983):
The test for determining compliance with the written
description requirement is whether the disclosure of
the application as originally filed reasonably conveys
to the artisan that the inventor had possession at that
time of the later claimed subject matter, rather than
the presence or absence of literal support in the
specification for the claimed language. The content of
the drawings may also be considered in determining
compliance with the written description requirement.
(citations omitted)
Precisely how close the original description must come to the
actual claim language to comply with the description requirement
must be determined on a case-by-case basis.
Here, both the specification and the appealed claims
indicate that a gate electrode includes a conducting structure,
insulating (dielectric) sidewalls 11 and an insulating top
layer 9. See specification, page 2, lines 4-5, in conjunction
with the preamble of claim 1. As correctly found by the
examiner, Figure 1, one of the application drawings, shows a
conforming dielectric layer 13 contacting insulation layers 9 and
11, which are part of a gate electrode. The specification also
states that “[a] layer of a conformal dielectric is deposited
over the surface of the substrate and the gate electrodes. . . .”
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