Appeal No. 2000-1483
Application No. 08/851,608
the trench slot (30) and the guard ring body portion at a first
location (22)" (answer, paragraph bridging pages 5 and 6).
In Figure 3 of Tonnel, guard ring body portion 22 is clearly
not deeper than trench 30, so the examiner relies on other
Figures within Tonnel, e.g., Figure 12, to show successive stages
in the manufacture of the Figure 3 device, wherein the guard ring
body portion is clearly deeper than the trench.
Based on the examiner’s combination of Tonnel and Ueda and
the examiner’s interpretation of Tonnel, the examiner concludes
that:
[O]ne also would have readily achieved the claimed
property that transistor breakdown occurred across the
epitaxial layer closer to the first location than to
the second location, because the claimed property
itself would have constituted a property inherent in
the prior art trench (slot) DMOS transistor . . . a
newly discovered property inherently possessed by
things in the prior art does not cause a Claim drawn to
those things to distinguish over the prior art, after
at least In re Swinehart, [ 439 F.2d 210,] 169 USPQ 226
(CCPA 1971); In re Best, [562 F.2d 1252,] 7195 USPQ 430
(CCPA 1977) [answer, page 6].
Appellants do not dispute the examiner’s allegation of the
obviousness of making Tonnel’s V-shaped trench a U-shaped trench
having vertical side walls in view of Ueda.
With regard to Figures 10-12 of Tonnel, appellants do not
deny that these Figures depict a P-type region 22 being drawn
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