Appeal No. 1998-0039
Application No. 08/372,701
The claims on appeal stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103
as unpatentable over the admitted prior art in view of either
JP ‘672, JP ‘961 or Ku (emphasis added, Answer, page 3). 2
We reverse this ground of rejection for reasons which follow.
OPINION
The examiner finds that the admitted prior art on pages
1-4 of the specification shows “[a]ppellant’s process of
positioning a shield adjacent to the periphery of a substrate
and depositing a metal such as W or TiW to avoid arcing” by
forming a conductive bridge between the clamping ring and the
wafer (Answer, page 4). The examiner then finds that the
secondary references (JP ‘672, JP ‘961, or Ku) provide
evidence of the obviousness of modifying the admitted prior
art method by depositing metal at two different pressures to
form compressive and tensile films that cancel the stresses to
result in a much desired zero stress film (Answer, pages 4-5).
The examiner states that it would appear that either low or
2We add the emphasis to the examiner’s statement of the
rejection to show that the examiner has applied the secondary
references to JP ‘672, JP ‘961, and Ku alternatively. We also
note that the examiner has mistakenly referred to JP ‘961 as
“JP ‘963" on page 3 of the Answer.
3
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