Sandhu Preliminary Motion 2
Sandhu’s Position
F 37. Sandhu has filed a preliminary motion asserting that all of Leung’s involved claims, Claims
13, 19, 20 and 26, are unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶ 1. Paper 69.
F 38. Sandhu asserts that each of Leung’s involved claims are unpatentable because Leung’s
written description “fails to provide an enabling disclosure or written description of the
claimed subject matter.” Paper 69, p. 2.
F 39. In particular, Sandhu argues that each of the involved claims require a post treatment with a
hydrogen plasma which must reduce (1) the carbon content and (2) the resistivity of the
deposited layer. Paper 69, p. 4.
F 40. Sandhu argues that the 143 Specification2 does not provide a written description of reducing
carbon content and decreasing resistivity without a post-treatment including biasing the
substrate:
The [143 Application] does not teach any method to “reduce the carbon
content” and “decrease the resistivity” of any layer deposited by chemical
vapor deposition without including the biasing of the substrate. This biasing
step is understood from the Leung . . . application by those of skill in the art
(see Vasilyeva Affidavit ¶ 15-16) to be required and essential to reduce carbon
content and decrease resistivity by the . . . specification, but is not included as
part of the limitations of Leung claims 13, 19, 20, or 26. As stated in
the. . . specification, the invention is “a post treatment of films formed via
chemical vapor deposition by exposure of the deposited film to an inert
plasma while biasing the substrate. This is the only process described by the
. . . specification that accounts for any improvement of a film by possibly
lowering carbon content and decreasing resistivity.
Paper 69, pp. 9-10 (bracketed material added, footnote omitted, underlining and italics
original).
2 Sandhu’s comments were specifically made with respect to the specification of the great grandparent
application, Application 08/339,521. However, the comments are equally applicable to the specification of the 143
Application since the text of the great grandparent specification appears to be and is said to be identical to the text of
the 143 Specification. See F6 and F7, above. We need not consider the content of the parent and grandparent
applications since Leung has disclaimed reliance on whatever additional description is present in those applications.
Paper 104, p. 15.
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