Appeal No. 1997-4033 Application No. 08/589,584 lines 21-27). See also Ishizaka U.S. Patent 5,757,985 (copy attached), which at column 5, lines 13-17 describes a Mach- Zehnder modulator having a thicker MQW structure in the modulator region than in other regions. Consequently, claim 4 22, which together with dependent claims 23-26 was added by the above-mentioned preliminary amendment, is believed to be misdescriptive of appellant's disclosed invention by reciting a thinner MQW structure in the active region than in the passive regions. For the same reasons, the above-noted amendment to the specification is also believed to be incorrect. However, claim 22 is accurate to the extent it specifies that using a small mask stripe width in the passive regions results in a "band gap wavelength smaller than that provided on said active region." This is consistent with Sasaki's Figure 4, which shows that 10 Fm-wide mask stripes result in a 4Ishizaka, like the application on appeal, is assigned to NEC Corporation. 5Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007