Appeal No. 1998-1728
Application 08/397,243
claims 1 and 2 would have been obvious over Satou to one of ordinary skill in this art at the time the
claimed invention was made.
Our consideration of the issues involved with the application of Satou to appealed claims 1 and
2 necessarily entails the interpretation of the claimed invention encompassed by these appealed claims.
In doing so, we must give the broadest reasonable interpretation to the terms of these claims consistent
with appellants’ specification as it would be interpreted by one of ordinary skill in this art. See In re
Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054-55, 44 USPQ2d 1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997). We find that one of
ordinary skill in this art would have recognized from appellants’ specification (e.g., pages 14-15) that
the metal silicide “grains independently existing” are the metal silicide grains that are not “coupled” to
other metal silicide grains “like a chain” and that it is the spaces between such “chains” that are the
“gaps” in which “free” silicon grains can reside. Thus, contrary to the examiner’s apparent
interpretation, we interpret the “number of [metal silicide] grains independently existing in a cross
section” to mean the number of such grains that are not in a “chain,” and not the total number of metal
silicide grains, “chained” and not “chained,” which may be present in the cross section.2
In applying Satou to the appealed claims, we find that just as in appellants’ specification (e.g.,
pages 14-15), Satou discloses that the metal silicide “grains are coupled to each other to form a linked
structure” with silicon “distributed discontinuously in the gaps between the” metal silicide grains (col. 8,
lines 9-12, and col. 9, lines 4-7; see also, e.g., col. 6, lines 40-49), and states that
[w]hen the [metal silicide] grains are separately distributed in the [silicon] phase, the
[silicon] phase, having a greater sputtering rate, is initially eroded during the sputtering
process, so that [metal silicide] phase tends to drop out. To avoid this occurrence, it is
necessary that the [metal silicide] phase grains are coupled together in an interlinked
structure. [Col. 8, lines 12-18; emphasis supplied.]
1 Appellants state in their brief (page 4) that the appealed claims “stand or fall with claim 1” with the
exception of “[c]laim 2 [which] stands or falls separately from claim 1.” Thus, we decide this appeal
based on appealed claims 1 and 2. 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7) (1995).
2 See, e.g., the examiner’s reliance on the total number of metal silicide grains disclosed in Satou (e.g.,
col. 7, lines 58-59) with respect to the “first limitation” of appealed claim 1 (answer, e.g., pages 3-4).
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