Appeal No. 1999-2115
Application No. 08/724,574
IV. Claims 9 through 12 and 15 through 20 under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Yu '534 in
view of Rao. (Id. at pages 4-5.)
V. Claim 13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Yu '534 in view of Rao and Tang. (Id. at
pages 5-6.)
VI. Claim 14 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Yu '534 in view of Rao and Morimoto. (Id.
at page 6.)
We reverse these rejections.
Under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the initial burden of establishing a
prima facie case of obviousness rests on the examiner. In re
Piasecki, 745 F.2d 1468, 1471-72, 223 USPQ 785, 787-88 (Fed.
Cir. 1984). In this case, it is our determination that the
examiner has not met the initial burden of proof.
We first consider rejections I through III. Yu '843
teaches that "good local planarization [of a semiconductor
wafer] can be readily achieved in a CMP process," but "obtaining
a complete planarization with good uniformity on the scale of a
wafer, or even a die, is not easy." (Column 2, lines 11-15.)
To solve this problem, Yu '843 teaches a method in which, prior
to the CMP process, a portion of the wafer surface is modified
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