Appeal No. 1997-3690
Application 08/427,163
(Fed. Cir. 1993). Although an inventor is indeed free to
define the specific terms used to describe his or her
invention, this must be done with reasonable clarity,
deliberateness, and precision. In re Paulsen, 30 F.3d 1475,
1480, 31 USPQ2d 1671, 1674 (Fed. Cir. 1994).
We note that Appellants' claim 1 simply recites
"substrate". The Random House College Dictionary, Revised
Edition, 1982, definition of substrate is "a supporting
material on which a circuit is formed or fabricated". Thus 2
the term substrate has broad meaning which does not preclude
the interpretation that a substrate may include multilayers.
Therefore we find that the Examiner's interpretation is proper
and that Mizuno's layers 12 and 11 in which the titanium oxide
material 15 is in direct contact with gate oxide film 12
properly reads on Appellants claim language of forming a metal
oxide layer over a portion of the substrate.
On pages 2 and 3 of the Reply Brief, Appellants further
argue that the Examiner makes no pretense of finding the
limitation of forming a metal oxide layer over the gate. We
2Copy provided.
-7-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007