Appeal No. 1997-3532
Application 08/411,385
25,2 all of the claims in the application, that is, claims 1, 2, 4 through 6, 9 and 10 are rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Yamaha taken with Doering et al.
and Wolf or Chen et al. and further in view of Dixit et al., Sun et al., and Manos et al.;3 claims 7 and 8
are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Yamaha taken with Doering et al. and
Wolf or Chen et al., and further in view of Dixit et al., Sun et al., and Manos et al., as applied to claims
1, 2, 4 through 6, 9 and 10, and further in view of Jeuch et al. and Aoyama et al.;4 and, claims 11
through 25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Yamaha taken with Doering
et al. and Wolf or Chen et al. and further in view of Dixit et al., Sun et al., Manos et al. and Jeuch et al.5
It is well settled that a prima facie case of obviousness under § 103 is established by showing
that some objective teaching, suggestion or motivation in the applied prior art taken as a whole and/or
knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art would have led that person to the
claimed invention as a whole, including each and every limitation of the claims, without recourse to the
teachings in appellant’s disclosure. See generally, In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1447-48, 24
USPQ2d 1443, 1446-47 (Fed. Cir. 1992) (Nies, J., concurring); In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074-
76, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598-1600 (Fed. Cir. 1988); In re Dow Chem. Co., 837 F.2d 469, 473, 5
USPQ2d 1529, 1531 (Fed. Cir. 1988) (“The consistent criterion for determination of obviousness is
whether the prior art would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art that [the claimed process]
should be carried out and would have a reasonable likelihood of success, viewed in light of the prior art.
[Citations omitted] Both the suggestion and the expectation of success must be founded in the prior art,
not in the applicant’s disclosure.”).
We find that the claimed processes encompassed by the appealed claims, as represented by
claims 1 and 11, require the sequence of depositing a prebarrier layer of titanium or a derivative thereof,
which is conformally deposited over the substrate, including a contact hole (claim 1), or deposited at the
2 See the amendments of August 18, 1995 (Paper No. 21), April 17, 1995 (Paper No. 17). In the
present application, and the amendments of March 15, 1994 (Paper No. 10) and July 12, 1993 (Paper
No. 6) in parent application 07/980,550.
3 Answer, pages 4-8.
4 Id., pages 8-9.
5 Id., pages 9-12.
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