Appeal No. 2005-2014 Παγε 4
Application No. 09/792,737
address the rejections as presented by the Examiner and any claim that is separately
argued.
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the Examiner and
the Appellants regarding the above-noted rejections, we make reference to Appellants'
Brief filed February 17, 2004, Reply Brief, filed May 24, 2004, and the Examiner’s
answer mailed March 24, 2004.
OPINION
The Examiner has rejected claims 1, 7, 34, 36, 37, and 40-44 stand rejected
under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as obvious over the combination of Simon, Lim, Nogami and
Hong. We select claim 41 as representative of the rejected claims. We affirm.
The Examiner determined that the claimed subject matter is unpatentable over
the combined teachings of Simon, Lim, Nogami and Hong. (Answer, pp. 3-6).
Appellants argue that Simon describes copper seed deposition in the presence of
a TaN liner, however, Simon does not mention the thickness or deposition technique for
the TaN liner. (Brief, p. 3). The Examiner acknowledges these differences in the Simon
disclosure on page 4 of the Answer. The Examiner asserts that the technique for
applying the liner would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art
because Simon discloses that the liner could be applied by any known technique, and
Lim discloses that ALD is a conventional deposition method for depositing a TaN liner.
(See Simon col. 4, ll. 15-19; and Lim col. 4, ll. 15-24). As to the thickness of the layer,
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