Appeal No. 2006-0473
Application 10/430,558
With this background, we do not agree with appellants’ views
expressed as to independent claim 1 at pages 13 and 14 of the
brief, urging that Lim does not use the term dual damascene in
the manner commonly accepted in the industry. On the contrary,
appellants have presented no evidence to us to led us to believe
that such is the case. Not only is the examiner’s assessment of
the prior art dual damascene tutorial at pages 5 and 6 of the
answer not challenged by appellants in a reply brief, Lim makes
clear that his invention is in context of a dual damascene layer
arrangement. If anything, to the extent that there is any merit
to the appellants’ argument without any evidences at all, it
appears that the art/industry would appear to accept more than
one meaning of it to the extent it differs from appellants’
urging.
The additional urging that Lim’s structure of a dual
damascene structure actually involves two single damascene
structures - - one single damascene structure for the via layer
and another, separate, single damascene structure for the trench
layer - - is without merit. This argument is not persuasive
because of the previously noted product-by-process nature of the
term dual damascene as well as the examiner’s simple observation
in the paragraph bridging pages 6 and 7 of the answer that
indicates that Lim’s structure has features 64/84 [in figure 14]
as the via/trench ‘dual-damascene’ structure in the dielectric
layer 52,72. The ‘dual-damascene’ pattern liner 60 is clearly
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