Appeal No. 2003-1365
Application No. 09/376,659
combination of Gardner ‘298 and Kokubu to be reasonable and
sufficient to establish a prima facie case of obviousness.
Accordingly, the 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of claim 10 over
Gardner ‘298 and Kokubu is sustained.
Turning now to the 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of claims 1-5
and 10-15 over Komori, Gardner ‘298 and Kokubu, we note that the
Examiner relies on Komori to characterize the first and second
protective layers as layers 30 and 31 which are etched away to
expose the source and the drain regions and on Kokubu and Gardner
‘298 for the first layer made of nitride and the second layer
formed of HTO (answer, page 4). Appellants mainly dispute the
manner in which the references are combined and the absence of
any reason or suggestion for the combination (brief, pages 9-13
and reply brief, pages 9-11).
A review of Komori shows that the reference is concerned
with customizing the impurity concentration and the junction
depth of the source and drain regions in a field effect
transistor that constitutes the non-volatile memory (col. 3,
lines 28-34). Komori achieves the specific source and drain
doping profile by introducing n-type and p-type impurities in a
particular order and by limiting the doping to one of or both
source and drain regions using photoresist masks. First,
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