Appeal No. 2002-0579 Page 10
Application No. 09/324,780
and the same process step (see column 12, lines 26-34) and thus would not have been
obvious. For the following reasons, neither of these arguments persuades us of error
on the examiner’s part. Thus, we shall sustain the examiner’s rejection of claim 14.
As for appellant’s first argument, the various considerations in fabrication of
terminals between chips and chip carriers and between chip packages and printed
circuit boards are not of such a nature as to discourage the use of the same type of
terminal fabrication in both applications. Further, as evidenced by Johnson in column
4, lines 7-8, the use of solder balls or ball grid arrays 220 (see Figure 2B) for external
terminals on chip packages was well known in the art at the time of appellant’s
invention and would, thus, have been an obvious choice for one of ordinary skill in the
art in fabricating the external bonding bumps 96 of Oppermann.
As for appellant’s second argument, we do not share appellant’s view that the
use of a solder ball in fabricating the external bonding bump 96 of Oppermann would
not permit the use of a single process step for filling both the recesses and orifices, as
disclosed by Oppermann. Solder balls could, for example, be placed in the recesses
and orifices and heated in a single reflow process step to bond the solder material to
the conductive paths 82.
CONCLUSION
To summarize, the decision of the examiner is affirmed as to claims 1-14 and 20-
23 and reversed as to claim 24.
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007