Appeal No. 2000-0037
Application 08/627,631
only "substantially similar" to prior art process conditions.
There is neither an adequate description of the conditions used
in the prior art method or in appellants' disclosed method found
in the specification. Because the nature of the improvement over
the film layer prepared by the prior art process is incorporated
by appellants in their claims it is essential that appellants
define the comparative process in order for the claims to have a
definite meaning and scope.
On page 6 of the specification appellants disclose that
their invention is simply "the use of helium instead of nitrogen
as a carrier gas in a process for forming a dielectric layer such
as BPSG to provide various unexpected results." Nevertheless, as
correctly observed by the examiner in discussing the prior art on
which he has relied to reject the claims before us, the use of
helium in a process for forming dielectric layers is specifically
described (in the sense of 35 U.S.C. § 102) by the prior art. See
Lee at column 4, lines 10 through 16; lines 48 through 50; column
4, line 63 through column 5, line 2; column 5, lines 7 through
17; and claim 10. See pages 2, 7, 9 and 10 of Yamashita. See
pages 11 and 12 of Hosoda. Part of the function of the
requirement for claim definiteness found in the second paragraph
of § 112 is to distinguish the claimed invention from what is in
10
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