Appeal No. 1999-0874
Application 08/726,733
short circuits may be avoided following Teng with the additional teaching value at
column 7 that more compact layouts may be obtained. These teachings directly
address the problems of appellants’ admitted prior art Figures 38 and 39 as discussed
in the paragraph bridging pages 7 and 8 of the specification.
Since the rejection is in part based upon the prior art structure of appellants’
admitted prior art Figures 38 and 39, on which the disclosed invention in appellants’
invention in Figures 1 and 7 are in turn based, the subject matter of the dependent
claims 2-6 and 8-13 would clearly have been obvious to the artisan as well. The bulk of
the features recited in these dependent claims appear to be substantially identical but
with different claim dependencies. What defines a hole diameter appears to be
somewhat arbitrarily determinable and therefore obvious, and the relative hole
diameters and the number of them appear to be a function of the etchants and the
number of vertically chosen layers to integrate.
In view of the foregoing, we have reversed the examiner’s rejection of claims
1-13 under the second paragraph of 35 U.S.C. §112. We have also reversed the
rejection of claims 7-13 under 35 U.S.C. §102 and the separate rejection of claims 1-6
under 35 U.S.C. §103. In contrast, however, we have instituted a new ground of
rejection in accordance with the provisions of 37 CFR §1.196(b) of all claims on appeal,
claims 1-13, under 35 U.S.C. §103. Therefore, the decision of the examiner is
reversed.
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