Appeal No. 2003-0868 5
Application No. 09/710,101
discloses a counter doping ring 40 that separates two of the lower dopant concentration
rings 28 and 26.” See Brief, page 7. The appellant further states that the purpose of the
counter doping ring is the purpose of the spiral resistor, i.e., “to increase protection against
breakdown in the gate oxide layer 30.” Id. The examiner in error, however, relies upon
the appellant’s statement as a concession that, “one of ordinary skill in the art would not
incorporate the counterdoping ring of the ‘916 patent into the spiral resistor transistor of
the ‘826 patent.” See Answer, Page 12. Accordingly, the examiner is proposing to
replace the constant doped drift region disclosed by Mojaradi with the drift region
disclosed in the Roth patent, omitting however, the counterdoping region 40 from the
disclosed drift region. In so doing, the examiner has failed to establish why the person
having ordinary skill in the art would have utilized the drift region of Roth while omitting
the counterdoping layer, especially as there is no teaching of a spiral resistor in Roth, or
indeed any resistor. Furthermore, the examiner has not explained why would the person
having ordinary skill in the art utilize the drift region of Roth who utilizes no resistor in
place of the Mojaradi reference which teaches a spiral resistor.
Based upon the above finding and analysis, we conclude that the examiner has not
established a prima facie case of obviousness with respect to the aforesaid set of claims.
See In re Dembiczak, 175 F.3d 994, 999, 50 USPQ2d 1614, 1617 (Fed. Cir. 1999)
("[T]he best defense against the subtle but powerful attraction of a hindsight-based
obviousness analysis is rigorous application of the requirement for a showing of the teaching
or motivation to combine prior art references.").
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