Appeal No. 2000-1927
Application No. 08/990,754
We refer to the Final Rejection (mailed Jan. 7, 2000) and the Examiner's Answer
(mailed Jun. 20, 2000) for a statement of the examiner's position and to the Brief (filed
May 11, 2000) and the Reply Brief (filed Jun. 29, 2000) for appellants’ position with
respect to the claims which stand rejected.
OPINION
With respect to independent claim 1, the examiner presents alternative
reasoning in the section 103 rejection over Murakami and Hori. First, the examiner
submits the view that it would have been obvious to form an LDD (lightly doped drain)
structure comprising source and drain regions having high concentration (n+) in the
structure shown in Murakami’s Figure 35. (Answer at 4-5.) The examiner urges that, in
the alternative, it would have been obvious to form a leakage current prevention region
in a transistor as shown in Murakami’s Figure 24. (Id. at 5) In either case, the rejection
relies on Hori to show obviousness of using metal compound layers on surfaces of the
source, drain, and gate, for the purpose of providing electrical connections to the
device. (Id. at 6.)
Appellants argue in the briefs that the references do not provide motivation for
the proposed modifications, and that Murakami in particular teaches away from
appellants’ invention. The examiner considers the arguments that Murakami teaches
away from the invention to be not persuasive, because the invention described by
Murakami (e.g., Figure 1) was not relied upon for the rejection. “Admitted Prior Art
-3-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007