Appeal No.1999-1940
Application No. 08/654,760
rejects claims 3 and 5 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Mori at page 6
of the answer.
We agree with appellant (reply brief at page 1) that the
whole appeal depends on one simple issue. That issue is the
interpretation given to the phrase “self-aligned”. We agree with
the examiner that the process limitations cannot be read into
apparatus claims (answer at pages 10 and 11), however, the claims
are not to be interpreted in a vacuum. We are persuaded by
appellant that the structure resulting from the process described
in the specification (see figures 1, 2 and 20, and table at pages
13 to 15 of the specification), leads one to conclude that
appellant is correct in his interpretation of the claims (reply
brief at page 6), when appellant states “[t]he correct interpre-
tation is that it will not have any horizontal component on the
surface of the substrate or on the bottom of the well and
therefore will not extend beyond the perimeter of the trench.”
With this interpretation of the claims and observing figures 1b
and 4b of Mori, we are not convinced that Mori anticipated the
claimed limitations of claim 1. Moreover, we are of the view
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