Appeal No. 1997-3489
Application No. 08/430,467
Claims 1, 4 through 6, 9, 10, 12, 14 and 15 stand
rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over the
admitted prior art in view of the Wolf publications, Lowrey
and Payne.1
Reference is made to the briefs and the answer for the
respective positions of the appellant and the examiner.
OPINION
The obviousness rejection of claims 1, 4 through 6, 9,
10, 12, 14 and 15 is reversed.
We agree with the examiner (Answer, page 4) that Wolf ‘90
“teaches . . . forming a silicon dioxide layer with a contact
hole between the metallization and silicon,” but this teaching
is merely redundant to the well-known conventional device
described on pages 1 through 6 of appellant’s specification.
Stated differently, appellant is claiming a method of etching
the layers from an already constructed device to inspect for
aluminum spiking, and is not claiming the device.
1We assume that the obviousness rejections of claims 2,
3, 7, 8, 11 and 13 have been withdrawn because the rejections
set forth in the final rejection have not been repeated in the
answer, and the references to Wei and Hauck are not listed in
the answer.
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