Appeal No. 2000-0733
Application No. 08/310,041
an MCT. Further, page 4 of the specification also reports that certain “prior art
incentives” for certain structures in FETs and IGBTs “are not applicable to MCTs
because the problems that structure ameliorates in FETs and IGBT [sic; IGBTs] do not
exist in the MCTs.” This is clearly contrary to any admission relied upon by the
examiner and the examiner has failed to address these portions of the specification.
Claim 38 is very specific as to a method of decreasing turn-off time of an “MCT”
and wherein activation of a parasitic NPN transistor is suppressed “in the MCT.”
Since the examiner’s rejection of claim 38 is based on an erroneous reading of
APA, we will not sustain the rejection of claim 38 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
With regard to claim 32, we are of a different view. Claim 32 also recites a
“MCT,” but here it is a mere recitation in the preamble. Nothing within the body of the
claim gives life and meaning to the recitation of “MCT” in the preamble. Nothing within
the body of the claim is specific to MCTs and this interpretation is borne out by the
preamble itself which indicates that the method may be applicable to “FETs, IGBTs and
MCTs.” While the conjunction “and” is employed in the claim language, it is clear that
the claimed method is applicable to any one of these types of structures, individually.
Since APA does disclose FETs and IGBTs, the mere fact that APA does not specifically
teach applicability to MCTs does not imbue the recitation of MCTs in the preamble with
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