Appeal No. 2005-0123
Application No. 10/114,759
January 15, 2004) and Reply Brief (filed June 18, 2004) for
appellant's arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
As a preliminary matter, we note that appellant indicates on
page 4 of the Brief that all of the claims stand or fall
together. In accordance with this statement, appellant has
argued the claims as a single group. Therefore, we will treat
the claims as one group with claim 1 as representative.
We have carefully considered the claims, the applied prior
art references, and the respective positions articulated by
appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of our review, we
will reverse the obviousness rejection of claim 1 through 10 over
Xu in view of Simpson and, pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b),
enter a new ground of rejection for claims 1 through 10 under
35 U.S.C § 103 over Xu, Simpson, and appellant's admissions taken
together.
The examiner explains (Answer, pages 3-4) that Xu discloses
a method of making an integrated circuit including all of the
steps of claim 1 except the last step of electroplating a metal
layer directly over the metal sublayer. Specifically, Xu
discloses (column 1, lines 14-18) that the invention relates to a
method of filling metal into contacts through insulating layers
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