Appeal No. 2000-0660
Application No. 08/985,278
rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over
Hayabuchi and Hayashi. For the same reasons above with regards
to claim 5, we fail to find that the Examiner has shown that
Hayabuchi teaches or suggests the above claim 9 limitations.
Because claims 10 and 11 depend from claim 9, and therefore
include all the limitations of claim 9, we will not sustain the
Examiner's rejection of claims 9 through 11 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103.
Now we turn to the rejection of claim 3 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as being unpatentable over Hayashi and Young. We agree
with the Examiner's contention that Hayashi teaches the
limitations found in claims 1 and 2 but fails to teach that the
thickness of the tunnel film being 3.4 nm or more. See page 5,
lines 1-4 of the answer. However, the Examiner asserts that
"Young discloses a nonvolatile semiconductor memory device
comprising a tunnel film (23) having a thickness of 5 nm. See
Fig. 2." See page 5, lines 5 and 6 of the answer. The Examiner
further states that "[i]t would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art to form the tunnel film with a
thickness of 3.4 nm as taught by Young . . . depending on the
size of the transistor which is depending on each application"
and "[t]he thickness differences are considered obvious design
1212
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