Appeal No. 2001-0228
Application No. 09/116,612
employs an organic polymer anti-reflective coating under the
photoresist layer and "a single plasma etch method employing
an etchant gas composition which upon plasma activation forms
a chlorine containing etchant species" (claim 1).
Appealed claims 1-15 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103
as being unpatentable over Huang in view of Kolar.
Upon careful consideration of the opposing arguments
presented on appeal, we concur with appellant that the
examiner has not established a prima facie case of obviousness
for the claimed method. Accordingly, we will reverse the
examiner's rejection.
The examiner recognizes that Huang, the primary
reference, "differs from the instant claimed invention by
using three sequential etching steps instead of [a] single
sequential etching step" (page 5 of Answer, sixth paragraph).
However, the examiner relies upon Kolar for "performing a
single sequential etching step to etch all layers of the stack
layers using chlorine based reactive etch gases (Col 3, lines
17-45)" (page 5 of Answer, penultimate paragraph). The
examiner explains that:
Although, Kolar does not clearly recite
sequentially etching of the tri-layer using a single
-3-
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