Appeal No. 2001-0113
Application No. 08/604,751
and Examiner, we affirm the rejection of claim 12 and reverse the
rejection of claim 13, which were both rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103. Claims 12 and 13 differ substantially in scope, and
therefore we will first address Appellants' arguments with
regards to claim 12.
Appellants argue in the Appeal Brief that Juengling does not
disclose nor suggest having a "first conductive plug having a
width approximately equal to a minimum photolithographic limit"
as recited in claim 12. See Appeal Brief, Paper No. 21, page 9,
lines 1-6. Appellants further support this assertion in the
Reply Brief, where they argue that Column 6, lines 64-67 of
Juengling, which teaches "the first polysilicon layer 56 has to
fill only the plugs connecting to the cell capacitors in the
array, which are typically less than 0.4 micrometers wide," does
not anticipate the claim language. The Appellants argue that the
grammatical structure of the sentence implies that the cell
capacitors, not the plugs, are 4 micrometers, or 4,000 angstroms
wide. See Appellants' Reply Brief, Paper No. 23, page 3,
paragraph 4, line 6 through page 4, line 7. The Appellants
further contest the Examiner's obviousness rejection because
4,000 angstroms is not "approximate" to 3,000 angstroms. The
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