Appeal No. 1999-0848
Application No. 08/634,310
prior art, the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 102 rejection of
representative claim 8 is not sustained.
Turning to a consideration of the Examiner’s obviousness
rejection of representative claim 8 we note that, while we found
Appellant’s arguments to be persuasive with respect to the lack
of an anticipatory disclosure in Nakano, we reach the opposite
conclusion as to the appropriateness of the Examiner’s rejection
under 35 U.S.C. § 103. In our view, the Examiner’s has made a
reasonable assertion that the skilled artisan would have been
motivated and found it obvious to define a device region in
Nakano by forming a well, thereby surrounding the device region
with the field oxide 16, to effectively isolate devices from the
underlying substrate. We further find to be a reasonable
presumption the Examiner’s assertion that, since conventional
field oxide layers have a thickness of about 2 microns, a
recessed portion of such field oxide as its thickness diminishes
and approaches zero would inherently have a recessed portion
within the thickness range of 0.6-1.4 microns as claimed.
In our opinion, the Examiner's analysis is sufficiently
reasonable that we find that the Examiner has at least satisfied
the burden of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness. The
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