Appeal No. 2006-2317
Application No. 10/334,196
It also appears to us in passing that the actual body of claim 1 on appeal does
not recite a vertical interfacing approach between any wafers notwithstanding the
recitation to that effect in the preamble of this claim. No vertical interfacing is set
forth at all in independent claim 13.
Appellants’ arguments with respect to independent claim 13 essentially rely
upon similar or the same arguments with respect to those urging patentability of
independent claim 1 on appeal which we have not agreed with. As the examiner
points out at page 11 of the answer, the term “internal contact” is not in actuality a
contact internal to a device/wafer. In fact, the examiner correctly notes that the
claimed internal contacts in fact really are the conductive lines, such as line 111 in
figure 1 of the disclosed invention and lines 115 and 116 in figure 2A of the
disclosed invention. As such, they are in fact really unclaimed external or surface
contacts of the respective devices/wafers. The claimed trench is analogous to the
via 120 in representative figure 3 of Patti which has been filled with copper as
shown in figures 6 and 7 as element 132 and depicted as completed and bonded
elements in figures 8 and 9 labeled elements 210, 211.
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