Appeal No. 2003-1092
Application No. 09/692,730
a reasonable expectation of success vis-à-vis the combination
proposed by the Examiner. In re O’Farrell, 853 F.2d 894, 903,
7 USPQ2d 1673, 1680-81 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
Under these circumstances, we cannot sustain the Examiner’s
§ 103 rejection of all appealed claims as being unpatentable over
Kaisaki in view of Grumbine.
OTHER ISSUES
On pages 3-4 of the answer (as well as on page 3 of the final
office action), the Examiner makes the following statement:
However, Grumbine discloses a polishing
composition/slurry to polish TiN layer, the
slurry comprises from about 0.001 to about 2.0
weight percent of lysine (col 6, lines 5-23).
Grumbine’s slurry reads on a slurry comprises a
sufficient amout of lysine/arginine to suppress
the rate at which an underlying silicon-
containing dielectric layer is removed because
0.1 to about 5.0 weight percent of lysine in a
slurry, is defined in page 6 of the instant
specification, as a sufficient amount of
lysine/arginine to suppress the rate at which
an underlying silicon-containing dielectric
layer is removed.
This statement indicates that, in the Examiner’s view, the
lysine-containing slurry of Grumbine “reads on” the lysine-
containing slurry defined by at least certain of the appealed
claims (e.g., see independent claim 2 and claim 4 which depends
therefrom) because the lysine concentration taught by Grumbine
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