Appeal No. 1998-2761
Application No. 08/586,587
Examiner are an essential part of complying with the burden of
presenting a prima facie case of obviousness. Note In re
Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir.
1992).
Analysis
At the outset, we note that there is a single principal
issue in all the claims on the appeal (brief, page 7).
Therefore, we treat a single claim, 1, as the representative
claim. The Examiner points to the metal line side wall, 22 or
42, in Jones. The Examiner refers to Lin and Nishioka for
replacing the metallic side wall with the silicon nitride side
wall from Lin and Nishioka (answer, pages 3 to 4). Appellants
argue (brief, pages 9 to 17, and reply brief, pages 2 to 6)
that there is no teaching or suggestion in any of the applied
references to replace the metallic side wall of Jones with the
insulating spacers (that is, the recited silicon nitride side
wall) from Lin and/or Nishioka. The Examiner has cited
various court cases (answer, pages 4 to 5) to support the
suggested combination, however, they are not applicable in the
instant case, as noted by Appellants (reply brief, pages 2 to
4). While Lin and Nishioka each shows a silicon nitride
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