Appeal No. 2003-1208
Application 09/590,805
Claim 7
The appellants’ claim 7, which depends from claim 1,
requires that the first device shorts power to ground when the
device has been exposed to ionizing radiation. The appellants
argue that Kalnitsky and the admitted prior art do not disclose
or suggest that two devices having different radiation
susceptibility should be connected in the manner recited in
claim 7 (brief, page 12).
Kalnitsky’s standard transistor, because it is more
sensitive to radiation than the radiation hard transistor,
necessarily shorts power to ground when exposed to sufficient
ionizing radiation. Hence, we affirm the rejection of claim 7.
Claim 22
Independent claim 22 requires a safeguard device and a utile
device. The safeguard device is one which is designed to
interrupt the functioning of all or part of an integrated circuit
when the integrated circuit is exposed to ionizing radiation,
thereby completely or partially destroying the functionality of
the integrated circuit (specification, page 8, line 29 - page 9,
line 2). The utile device is “a device that processes an
information-bearing signal” (specification, page 8, lines 3-4).
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