Appeal No. 1998-1578
Application No. 08/543,827
reply brief, pages 10-12.) However, we are unclear as to how
the
evidence is even germane to appealed claims 1 and 14 as they
relate to the applied prior art. As we have discussed above,
appealed claims 1 and 14 read on any annealing temperature
below the recited maximum anneal temperature (e.g., 300 to
650EC).
Even assuming that the evidence is germane to appealed
claims 1 and 14, the showing of unexpected results must be
commensurate in scope with the degree of patent protection
sought. In re Dill, 604 F.2d 1356, 1361, 202 USPQ 805, 808
(CCPA 1979) (“The evidence presented to rebut a prima facie
case of obviousness must be commensurate in scope with the
claims to which it pertains.”). Here, appealed claim 1 reads
on any metal nitride barrier layer. Further, both appealed
claims 1 and 14 read on a wide range of annealing
temperatures, any first electrode, any dielectric layer, and
any second electrode. It is not clear on this record how the
evidence, which appears to be limited to a BST film formed on
a Pt/TiN/Ti/D-PS/SiO /Si substrate at a limited number of
2
18
Page: Previous 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007