Appeal No. 96-1848
Application 08/161,604
Claim 17 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over "Shirai et al. considered together with
Deleonibus et al., and considered further in view of
Tomozawa" (Examiner's Answer, page 7).2
We refer to the Final Rejection (Paper No. 9) and the
Examiner's Answer (Paper No. 16) (pages referred to as
"EA__") for a statement of the examiner's position and to
the Appeal Brief (Paper No. 15) (pages referred to as
"Br__") and the Reply Brief (Paper No. 27) (pages referred
to as "RBr__") for a statement of appellants' arguments
thereagainst.
OPINION
Appellants argue that "the present invention teaches a
method for fabricating a tungsten contact in a semiconductor
device while properly controlling the occurrence of
tunnelling, encroachment of tungsten underneath the
silicon/dielectric interface, consumption of the silicon and
Since claim 17 depends on independent claim 10, which2
stands rejected over Haskell and Deleonibus, the examiner's
statement of the rejection is confusing. The rejection seems
to indicate that Tomozawa is added for the limitations of
claim 17, implying that the previous rejection (of claim 10)
is over Shirai and Deleonibus. The rejection is considered to
be over Haskell, Deleonibus, Shirai, and Tomozawa.
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