Appeal 2007-0918
Application 10/931,868
New Ground of Rejection
We exercise our authority pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) to enter
the following new ground of rejection:
Claims 1-30 are rejected under obviousness-type double patenting as
unpatentable over claims 1-28 of US Patent 6,273,951 (Vaartstra ‘951) in
view of Baum and claims 1-28 of US Patent 6,821,341 (Vaartstra ‘341) in
view of Baum.
The claims of both Vaartstra ‘951 and Vaartstra ‘341 describe (1) a
method of manufacturing a semiconductor structure utilizing a chemical
vapor deposition precursor composition and (2) chemical vapor deposition
precursor compositions. The precursor composition of the Vaarstra patents
is the same as the precursor composition utilized in the system of the present
application. As indicated above, Baum describes a chemical vapor
deposition system that differs from the claimed invention in the description
of the precursor composition.
Given the above teachings, a person of ordinary skill in the art would
have reasonably expected that (1) the apparatus described by Baum would
have been useful for the method of manufacturing a semiconductor structure
as described in Vaartstra ‘951 and Vaartstra ‘341 and (2) the chemical vapor
deposition precursor composition of Vaartstra ‘951 and Vaartstra ‘341
would have been suitable for use in the system of Baum. Consequently, we
determine that claims 1-30 are patentably indistinct from the claims of
Vaartstra ‘951 and Vaartstra ‘341.5
5 We note that Appellant acknowledges that a restriction requirement was
not made in the prosecution of the applications that led to the Vaartstra ‘951
and Vaartstra ‘341 patents (Reply Br. 3).
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