Appeal No. 2005-0237
Application No. 10/165,861
rejections, we refer to the brief and reply brief and to the
answer for a complete exposition thereof.
OPINION
For the reasons which follow, we cannot sustain any of the
above noted rejections.
Concerning the section 102 rejection based on the IBM
reference, the examiner regards organic coating 3 of this
reference as corresponding to the here claimed etching delay
layer and accordingly finds appealed claim 1 to be anticipated by
the reference. As correctly argued by the appellants, however,
the IBM reference contains no teaching that the organic coating 3
thereof is applied via a deposition and patterning step as
required by claim 1. To the contrary, Figure 2 of this reference
shows the organic coating 3 as a non-patterned layer and thereby
militates against the examiner’s belief that coating 3 is applied
via a patterning technique as here claimed.
Additionally, we agree with the appellants that the
planarized surface achieved by way of organic coating 3 cannot be
regarded as satisfying the feature requirement of appealed claim
1. That is, the IBM reference does not satisfy the claim 1
limitation “the thickness and location of said etching delay
layer being chosen to control the depth of features formed in the
3
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