Appeal No. 2000-1483
Application No. 08/851,608
OPINION
At the outset, we note that many of appellants' arguments in
the brief are moot in view of the examiner’s withdrawal of any
reliance on the Lidow, Hendrickson, Bulucea and Lisiak
references. The examiner has also withdrawn a rejection based on
obviousness-type double patenting in view of appellants’ terminal
disclaimer.
It is the examiner’s position, with regard to claim 17, that
Tonnel, taken together with Ueda, suggests a trench having
vertical side walls (i.e., U-shaped) and that Figure 3 of Tonnel
discloses a DMOS transistor cell that comprises an N-type
substrate 20, a uniformly doped N-type epitaxial layer 21 with a
finite thickness formed on the substrate, trench 30, a P-type
body region 25 having a depth at a second location less than the
trench slot depth, with N-type source regions 26 formed above the
body region in the second location horizontally adjacent the
trench slots. The examiner goes on to state that the P-type
guard ring body portion 22 is "formed substantially more deep
than the trench slot depth; whereby a lateral distance between
the trench slot (30) and the P-type body region portion (25) at a
second location was substantially less than a distance between
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