Appeal 2007-2510
Application 10/389,456
1 Rejection mailed 28 December 2005, at 5. Wang objects that there is no
2 support for this construction. The Examiner, in both the Final Rejection and
3 in the Answer, does not point to any evidence in Wang's disclosure
4 supporting the proposition that the ordinary worker in the art would have
5 understood the disclosure to support the broader interpretation. See In re
6 Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054, 44 USPQ2d 1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997) (“the
7 PTO applies to the verbiage of the claims the broadest reasonable meaning
8 of the words in their ordinary usage as they would be understood by one of
9 ordinary skill in the art, taking into account whatever enlightenment by way
10 of definitions or otherwise that may be afforded by the written description
11 contained in the applicant’s specification.”) On the basis of our own review
12 of Wang's specification, we find no disclosure that supports the Examiner's
13 interpretation that the term "contact," as used in the disclosure or in the
14 claims, means anything but "direct contact."
15 In conclusion, the Examiner has relied on a faulty interpretation of the
16 claims for the rejections of record, and for this reason, the rejections based
17 on this claim construction must be REVERSED.
18 In the Final Rejection, the Examiner appears to suggest, that, contrary
19 to the earlier express finding that Economikos does not disclose direct
20 contact between α-silicon and the silicon substrate (Final Rejection at 2;
21 Answer at 4-5), the silence of Economikos claim 1 as to silicon nitride does,
22 after all, describe filling trenches with semiconductor that is in direct contact
23 with the substrate semiconductor. (Final Rejection at 5; Answer at 7.) The
24 Examiner does not, in the statements of the rejection, support the conclusion
25 that the claims would have been so understood by those skilled in the art
11
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