Appeal No. 2000-0170
Application No. 08/811,124
Rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 102
A prior art reference anticipates the subject of a claim
when the reference discloses every feature of the claimed
invention, either explicitly or inherently. (See Hazani v.
Int'l Trade Comm'n, 126 F.3d 1473, 1477, 44 USPQ2d 1358, 1361
(Fed. Cir. 1997) and RCA Corp. v. Applied Digital Data Sys.,
Inc., 730 F.2d 1440, 1444, 221 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1984).
Lee
In accordance with the above guidelines, the examiner, to
meet the recited limitation of “said plug and said metallization
line are electrically connected and have a substantially
continuous composition gradient of a selected alloy element
between said first metal and said second metal” (claim 41),
asserts (answer at page 4) that (in Lee):
because of the silicon diffusion from one metal layer
to another metal layer during heat treatment, the
diffusion equilibrium is inherently formed between the
contacting surface of the first metal and the second
metal. Therefore, the limitation of having a
substantially continuous composition gradient of a
selected alloy element between the first metal and the
second metal is inherently met by Fig. 5 of Lee.
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