Appeal 2007-1360
Application 10/605,699
device and Appellants’ injector site which, Appellants argue, is located
“within the semiconductor structure.” It is apparent to us, however, that, to
whatever extent Appellants are relying on a particular physical location of
the claimed injector site relative to the overall CMOS semiconductor device
to distinguish over Kim, no such physical location is specified in the claims.
It is our opinion that Appellants’ arguments improperly attempt to narrow
the scope of the claim by implicitly adding disclosed limitations which have
no basis in the claim. See In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054-55, 44
USPQ2d 1023, 1027-28 (Fed. Cir. 1997).
We are further of the view, after reviewing Appellants’ Specification,
that there is simply no support in Appellants’ disclosure for the
interpretation of the claim language “injection site associated with said
CMOS semiconductor structure” urged by Appellants in the Briefs. For
example, paragraph [0042], lines 8-11 of Appellants’ Specification states
“[t]hus, an injector represents any possible source, or combination of
sources, of current to the IC, either internal current injector (on-chip
injector) or external current injector (off-chip injector).”
Further, as with Appellants’ earlier arguments, we find Appellants’
contention (Br. 8; Reply Br. 4) that Kim’s latch-up prevention guard ring
structure, which is placed under the data I/O pad, is not applicable to modern
CMOS technologies to be not commensurate with the scope of the claims.
We find no language of any kind in independent claims 1 and 22 which
precludes the use of latch-up preventing guard rings as disclosed by Kim.
In view of the above discussion, since all of the claimed limitations
are present in the disclosure of Kim, the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)
rejection, based on Kim, of independent claims 1 and 22, as well as
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