Appeal No. 2002-0647
Application No. 09/122,094
a conductive material film being provided oppositely to said
semiconductor substrate through said insulating film and having a
head portion being farther from said bottom portion of said
trench than said main surface,
an end surface of said head portion being separated from
said opening of said trench measured from said inner wall by at
least 0.2 :m.
The prior art reference of record relied upon by the
examiner in rejecting the appealed claims is:
Uenishi et al. (Uenishi) 5,894,149 Apr. 13, 1999
(filed Dec. 09, 1996)
Claims 1 and 2 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Uenishi.
Reference is made to the Examiner's Answer (Paper No. 25,
mailed October 10, 2001) for the examiner's complete reasoning in
support of the rejection, and to appellant's Brief (Paper No. 24,
filed July 24, 2001) and Reply Brief (Paper No. 26, filed
December 10, 2001) for appellant's arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
We have carefully considered the claims, the applied prior
art reference, and the respective positions articulated by
appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of our review, we
will reverse the obviousness rejection of claims 1 and 2.
The issue in this case essentially boils down to whether one
can rely upon the relative positions of elements in patent
drawings with no supporting disclosure in the patent
2
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