Appeal No. 1999-0844
Application 08/633,598
OPINION
We reverse both rejections.
The basis of the examiner's rejection of claim 10 under 35 U.S.C. § 102 and of
claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is the Figure 5 embodiment of Watanabe's invention, the
examiner alleging that there are two portions within region 10 shown in this figure which
correspond in doping level and location to the claimed first and second laterally uniform n-
layers of independent claim 10 and independent claim 1. We do not agree with the
examiner's interpretation of column 11, lines 6 through 13 as providing the basis to allege
that there are two separate portions within the region 10. Thus, as expressed at the top of
page 2 of the reply brief, we agree with appellants that this two-portion view of region 10 of
Watanabe's Figure 5 is not supported by column 11, lines 11 through 13.
Both independent claim 10 and independent claim 1 recite in the wherein clause
the feature that “the first laterally uniform, deep n-layer is more heavily doped than the
second laterally uniform n-layer.” According to Figure 5, there is only one n-layer, region
10, instead of the claimed first and second layers, which are further recited in the claims on
appeal to be of different doping levels, and more specifically recited relative to each other
as the first layer being more heavily doped than the second layer. Watanabe's own
contribution in the art is reflected in the embodiments shown in Figures 1, 4 and 5, and the
corresponding discussion of each of them commonly refer to the impurity concentrations
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