Appeal No. 2003-2096
Application No. 09/847,202
spacers (Answer, page 5, citing the Brief, page 4, ll. 4-5).
Therefore appellants’ arguments that Luning fails to disclose the
claimed location of the insulating material and liner are not
well taken as these features and their locations were shown in
the admitted prior art (Figures 3-6d). As correctly stated by
the examiner (Answer, paragraph bridging pages 5-6), Luning
discloses an inclined sidewall spacer 52 disposed “on and
extending over said isolation region” as required by claim 4 on
appeal since the isolation region includes the trench (45), the
liner (46), and the insulation/central portion (47).
Accordingly, appellants’ argument that the spacer 52 of Luning is
not disposed over the isolation region as required by the claim
is not persuasive. Finally, appellants’ argument that there is
no suggestion to install the features of Luning into the admitted
prior art is not persuasive for the reason noted by the examiner,
namely that the motivation for using the sidewall spacers of
Luning in the structure of the admitted prior art is “to prevent
oxide loss at the edge of the trench during an etching step”
(Answer, page 4). As noted by appellants, in the prior art there
was a problem with penetration into the shallow trench isolation
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