Appeal No. 2001-1449 Page 6
Application No. 08/791,177
operational characteristic of the first die” [brief, page 15, bottom of page]. The quoted
portion of appellants’ argument is clearly unrelated to the actual recitation of claim 20.
Thus, appellants’ arguments are frequently directed to an invention which has not been
claimed. Appellants seem to be arguing the disclosed invention in which remediation is
the key feature of the invention. Note that remediation is specifically defined on page 7
of the specification but does not appear in representative claim 20. For purposes of
applying prior art against claim 1, no teaching of remediation is required.
The examiner has broadly interpreted the phrase “altering said at least one
electrical or operational characteristic of said primary die” as being “altering an electrical
characteristic of said primary die.” In other words, the examiner finds that a prior art
reference must only teach or suggest that an electrical characteristic of the primary die
is altered. We agree that this is the correct interpretation of the phrase in claim 20 for
applying prior art against the claim. Unfortunately, the examiner has not further
specifically indicated how he interprets this phrase. It does appear, however, that the
examiner interprets an electrical characteristic of the primary die as being met by a
voltage level at a bonding pad of the primary die. It appears to be the position of the
examiner that when signals are exchanged between the patch die and the primary die
using a bonding pad of the primary die, the voltage levels of the bonding pad are
altered to reflect this connection. We agree with this finding of the examiner. For
example, if the connection point is an input/output port between the two dies, the
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