Appeal No. 1999-1455
Application 08/753,556
segments are altered” as expressed at the top of page 3 of the reply brief. Appellants’
position at the middle of that page with respect to that embodiment states that the
transistor is "divided into two or more non-contiguous channel segments that are
connected in parallel."
These arguments presented in the brief and reply brief are consistent with the
disclosed but not the claimed invention as emphasized by the examiner, for example, in
the advisory action. There is no recitation in independent claim 7 that the first and second
parallel segments are "connected in parallel." As such, there is ample room for the
examiner to take the view as she has with respect to the art rejection. There is a similar
basis for the appellants to allege that the mere recitation of the segments being in parallel
has a basis in the disclosed invention. However, what is emphasized here is that the
disclosed invention always disclosed the invention in terms of first and second "parallel
connected" segments or more accurately that two transistors have been formed from one
transistor where two narrower segments are "connected in parallel." The notion that the
segments are not "connected in parallel" is apparently the key absent recitation the
examiner has been focusing upon indirectly in the art rejection of record.
Therefore, rather than to attempt to interpret among the conflicting views of the word
"parallel" as the examiner did in the answer, we find that the recitation in claim 7 and its
respective dependent claims 8 through 10 is indefinite as expressed in the conflicting
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