Appeal No. 2004-0682
Application No. 09/547,152
I. The rejection of claims 1-4, 7, 8, 19, 21, and 22 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Liu in view
of Xin.
Beginning on page 5 of the answer, the examiner’s basic
position in this rejection is set forth. The examiner relies on
Liu for disclosing an NPN double-heterojunction bipolar
transistor comprising a base region 22, an emitter region 24, and
a collector region 16. The examiner states that Liu does not
disclose a layer of a p-doped indium gallium arsenide nitride on
a gallium arsenide substrate. The examiner relies upon Xin for
teaching a layer of a p-doped indium gallium arsenide nitride on
a gallium arsenide substrate. The examiner concludes that it
would have been obvious to modify Liu by having a layer of
p-doped indium gallium arsenide nitride for the purpose of
lowering the bandgap, reducing the strain and obtaining a better
thermal stability.
We observe on page 10 of the answer, that the examiner’s
position with regard to the above-mentioned summary, changes in
that the examiner’s comments present a new rationale regarding
this rejection, i.e., that Xin alone basically meets all the
limitations of the claimed invention and that Liu teaches about
emitter and collector compositions. Because this presents an
issue of potentially a new ground of rejection, we do not address
this aspect of the examiner’s answer.
Beginning on page 6 of the brief, appellants point out that
the teachings of Xin is a teaching of substituting a gallium
indium arsenide material on a gallium arsenide substrate with a
gallium indium nitride arsenide material on the gallium arsenide
substrate. On page 7 of the brief, appellants point out that Xin
does not teach the substitute indium gallium arsenide for any
other semiconductor material including gallium arsenide. We
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