Appeal No. 1998-3043
Application 08/667,587
examiner, i.e., In re Pearson, 494 F.2d 1399, 181 USPQ 641
(CCPA 1974) and Ex parte Minks, 169 USPQ 120 (Bd. App. 1971),
are not apposite, since the functions at issue there pertain
only to the general field of intended use of the invention and
do not help to define the structure of the claimed apparatus
or compound.
The examiner cites (answer at 3) to Tanaka’s floating
gate electrode [4] and control gate electrode 9 as the
appellants’ claimed field-shield isolation structure, but
makes no attempt to explain how these two elements serve to
provide field-shield isolation of separate circuit elements
within a common region on the semiconductor substrate.
Evidently, as is pointed out by the appellants, these
electrodes are not a part of any isolation structure but are
themselves a part of the circuit elements a field-shield
isolation structure is supposed to isolate. The fact that a
field-shield isolation structure may include an electrode over
an oxide film does not make any electrode over an oxide film a
field-shield isolation structure. The examiner has nowhere
accounted for the isolation property of the field-shield
isolation structure and thus improperly ignored a very
10
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007