Appeal 2007-0411
Application 10/320,122
a part of the capacitor. As pointed out by Appellant, Lee describes making a
capacitor in accordance with Figures 1A to 1D, and the cleaning step occurs
before the capacitor is formed. Likewise, Chien's cleaning of the storage
node is performed before the final capacitor is made. Inasmuch as we are
not willing to consider the cleaning of a component of a capacitor during its
manufacture, and before its completion, as tantamount to cleaning the
completed product that qualifies as a capacitor to one of ordinary skill in the
art, we are constrained to reverse the Examiner's § 102 rejections.
The Examiner's additional citation of Chueh and Blosse in support of
separate § 103 rejections of claims 4-6 and 3 does not remedy the basic
deficiency of Lee and Chien.
This application is remanded to the Examiner to consider a rejection
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 based on the Lee and Chien disclosures of utilizing
sulfuric acid to clean components of a capacitor. The Examiner should
consider the obviousness of using a material that was known to clean a
component of a capacitor for cleaning the entirety of the capacitor. It would
seem that the problem of a contaminated capacitor would have been readily
apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art, as would be the remedy of
cleaning the contaminated capacitor with the appropriate cleaning solution.
See In re Ludwig, 353 F.2d 241, 244, 147 USPQ 420, 421 (CCPA 1965).
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