Appeal No. 2005-0479
Application No. 08/801,812
the examiner that the claimed subject matter would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art within the meaning of
§ 103 in view of the applied prior art. Accordingly, we will
sustain the examiner's rejections for the reasons set forth in
the Answer, which we incorporate herein, and we add the following
primarily for emphasis.
Appellant does not dispute the examiner's factual
determination that Xu '461 discloses many of the claimed steps
for making an interconnect structure with the exception of
heating the diffusion barrier layer in an environment
substantially containing nitrogen gas and forming a seed layer on
the diffusion barrier layer. Also, appellant does not contest
the examiner's legal conclusion that, based on Xu '721, it would
have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to heat
the diffusion barrier layer in a nitrogen environment. Indeed,
independent claims 1 and 46, with which all the appealed claims
stand or fall, fail to recite the step of heating in an
environment containing nitrogen gas.
The principal argument advanced by appellant is that Xu '461
provides a "teaching away" from utilizing the seed layer
presently claimed and disclosed by Xu '721. In support of this
argument appellant cites Xu '461 at column 1, line 56 through
-5-
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