Appeal No. 2001-2388
Application 09/151,948
evidence or technical reasoning which shows that Huang’s
structure and that of the appellant’s admitted prior art are
equivalent.
The examiner argues that it would have been obvious to one
of ordinary skill in the art to use Huang’s dual damascene method
instead of the appellant’s admitted prior art method for making a
liquid crystal display integrated circuit device because Huang
teaches that an etch back method (which appears to be the method
used to form the metal pixels in the appellant’s admitted prior
art structure) has the disadvantage of residual metal shorts
leading to inconsistent manufacturability, low yields, uncertain
reliability, and poor ultra large scale extendability (answer,
pages 10-11). Huang’s disclosed disadvantage of an etch back
method relied upon by the examiner, and the additional disclosed
disadvantages set forth above in the discussion of Huang, are in
the context of ultra large scale integration semiconductor wiring
having planarized layers with minimum spacing between wiring
lines (col. 1, lines 17-20). The examiner has not established
that one of ordinary skill in the art would have considered these
disadvantages to exist in the appellant’s admitted prior art
liquid crystal display integrated circuit device having metal
pixels instead of minimum-spaced conductive wiring and having on
7
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007