Appeal 2006-2571
Application 09/759,179
claim 7 as unpatentable over Whitesides in view of Biebuyck as applied to
claim 6 and further in view of Xia (id. 6); and
claim 14 as unpatentable over Whitesides in view of Biebuyck as applied to
claim 13 and further in view of Choquette (id. 6-7).
Appellant argues the claims in the first ground of rejection as a group
and argues claims 6, 11, and 12 in the third ground (Br. 5 and 7). Thus, we
decide this appeal based on appealed claims 1, 3, 6, 7, 11, 12, and 14 as
representative of the grounds of rejection and Appellant’s groupings of
claims. 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii) (2005).
With respect to independent claim 1 and the first ground of rejection,
the Examiner contends Whitesides discloses the stamp illustrated in Fig. 3a
for use in a lithographic process, which has recesses with apertures 24, “the
recess having a triangular shape (Fig 10 and Col 15 lines 39-49)” (Answer
3). The Examiner contends Whiteside does “not expressly disclose recesses
of different apertures and or different depths, especially third recess having
an aperture at least five times the aperture of the first recess and a greater
depth,” but concludes “in the real world applications the recesses would be
of different sizes, in order to pattern features of different sizes” (id. 3-4).
The Examiner contends Biebuyck discloses in FIG. 2D “a stamp with
different sized apertures” (id. 4). The Examiner contends recess depth
would be greater with an anisotropic etch in making the stamp in
Whitesides, which “fact is disclosed by [Hawkins] who teach (Fig 6 and Col
5 lines 19-23) that in a single isotropic etch varying depths will be obtained
for different size of vias” (id.). The Examiner concludes that it would have
been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art “to have a stamp with varying
number of recesses and varying recess apertures” (id.).
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