Appeal No. 96-0633
Application 07/971,041
subject matter of the other claims on appeal relating to the
first embodiment.
The remaining claims on appeal all relate to the
disclosed first embodiment which essentially recite either a
single or plurality of apertures each surrounding a respective
one of a device region. The examiner essentially relies upon
Ishii’s figure 4 as the base reference to which to take the
position that the artisan would have found it obvious to
modify in light of the collective teachings of Asano according
to the first rejection or Asano and Esquivel as to the second
rejection. The examiner’s position relies upon figure 4 of
Ishii but appellants’ statement at page 4 of the brief
recognizes that figure 1 of this reference discloses a device
region 11 and a dicing region 12 which are separated by trench
7 surrounding the device region 11 and also which are filled
with a wiring film layer 4 which extends into the dicing
region. Figure 1 of Ishii shows that first wiring layer 4 of
tungsten (as taught at the bottom of page 12 of the
translation) not only fills the first groove 7 located in the
first insulation layer 3 but also extends over the middle
portion thereof to connect the other groove shown in that
5
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