Ex parte STEPHANI et al. - Page 10




          Appeal No. 1999-0887                                                        
          Application No. 08/702,074                                                  


               Lastly, with the above discussion in mind, we also do not              
          sustain the Examiner’s separate obviousness rejection of                    
          claims 21-23 based on the combination of Temple and Jenny.                  
          Although Jenny provides a disclosure of the doping of silicon               
          with sulfur or selenium, dopants which have a donor energy                  
          level greater than 0.1 eV in silicon, there is nothing which                
          would indicate the suitability of such a material for a                     
          junction termination.  We agree with Appellants (Brief, page                
          15) that, at best, Jenny provides a teaching of utilizing                   
          sulfur and selenium doped silicon in the active region of a                 
          semiconductor device.  Such a teaching, however, falls well                 
          short of providing motivation to the skilled artisan to                     
          utilize such material in the junction termination region of a               
          semiconductor device, particularly in the manner specifically               
          set forth in the appealed claims.                                           
               We have also reviewed the Jaecklin and Okabe references                
          applied by the Examiner to address the stacked layers and                   
          field ring structure, respectively, of several dependent                    
          claims.  We find nothing in either of these references,                     
          however, that would overcome the innate deficiencies of the                 
          Temple, Moore, Bemski, and Jenny references discussed                       
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