Appeal No. 2004-1834
Application No. 10/158,885
38-41). With the examiner equating Balamurugan’s “auxiliary reference die” to
appellant’s claimed “pseudo reference die,” this disclosure of Balamurugan appears to
us to disclose exactly what is claimed. Accordingly, we do not find appellant’s argument
to be persuasive.
At page 5 of the reply brief, appellant explains that the left column coordinate in
the present application need not be in the reference die row, which is a requirement of
Balamurugan for the locator die. Thus, appellant concludes that there is no suggestion
of storing this last column value which is used for the subsequent partial wafers in the
same wafer map and nothing in the reference suggests using such a coordinate to
remove all dies as not part of the partial wafer. Appellant contends that Balamurugan
“teaches away” from the present invention because the reference is “dependent on the
procedures discussed in [Balamurugan] to determine the auxiliary reference and locator
die coordinates and a full die in the reference die row” (reply brief-page 5).
With regard to the “storing the coordinate of the last left column in a wafer map
data file” of claim 1, appellant argues that this is not taught by Balamurugan because
appellant’s process permits processing at other fab locations with less data. Appellant
points to instant Figure 26 for an explanation of the differences between the prior art
and the instant invention (see page 6 of the reply brief). Appellant also makes other
arguments regarding perceived examiner’s error in equating a last left column with a
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