Ex Parte Cui et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Aug 1, 2017

12485160 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 1, 2017)

United States Patent and Trademark Office
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O.Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www.uspto.gov
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
12/485,160 06/16/2009 Anqing Cui 010442/P01/USA/FEP/LPCVD 2747
67251 7590 08/03/2017
SERVILLA WHITNEY LLC/AMT
33 WOOD AVE SOUTH
SUITE 830
ISELIN, NJ 08830
EXAMINER
PAIK, SANG YEOP
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3742
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
08/03/2017 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address(es):
docket @ dsiplaw. com
j escobar @ dsiplaw. com
lmurphy @ dsiplaw .com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte ANQING CUI, BINH TRAN, ALEXANDER TAM,
JACOB W. SMITH, R. SURYANARAYANAN IYER,
JOSEPH YUDOVSKY, and SEAN M. SEUTTER
Appeal 2015-002847
Application 12/485,160
Technology Center 3700
Before GEORGE R. HOSKINS, BRANDON J. WARNER, and
ARTHUR M. PESLAK, Administrative Patent Judges.
WARNER, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Anqing Cui et al. (“Appellants”)1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a)
from the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1—7 and 9—21, which are all
the pending claims. Appeal Br. 5. We have jurisdiction over the appeal
under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.
1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Applied
Materials, Inc. Appeal Br. 3.
Appeal 2015-002847
Application 12/485,160
CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
Appellants’ disclosed invention relates to “resistive heaters, apparatus
incorporating resistive heaters[,] and methods of heating substrates such as
semiconductor wafers.” Spec. 12. Claim 1, reproduced below with
emphasis added, is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal.
1. An apparatus comprising:
a stage comprising a body and a surface having an area to
support a substrate, the body comprising a center region and an
outer region;
a shaft coupled to the stage;
a first heating element consisting essentially of a planar,
continuous section of material disposed within a recess within
the central region of the body of the stage', and
at least second and third heating elements consisting
essentially ofplanar, continuous sections of material disposed
within recesses within the outer region of the body of the stage,
the at least second and third heating elements each partially
surrounding the first heating element and wherein the at least
second and third heating elements are circumferentially
adjacent to each other,
wherein the first heating element is disposed within a
first plane of the body of the stage adjacent to one of a top
surface or bottom surface of the body of the stage, and the
second and third heating elements are disposed within a second
plane of the body of the stage adjacent to the other of the top
surface or bottom surface of the body of the stage and dielectric
material is disposed across the top surface to provide a
susceptor, the susceptor including lip edges to hold the
substrate during processing.
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Appeal 2015-002847
Application 12/485,160
EVIDENCE
The Examiner relied on the following evidence in rejecting the claims
on appeal:
Mahawili US 5,059,770 Oct. 22, 1991
Kano US 6,242,719 B1 June 5, 2001
Yamaguchi US 6,875,960 B2 Apr. 5, 2005
Mandal US 6,891,134 B2 May 10, 2005
Goto US 7,247,819 B2 July 24, 2007
Kachi US 7,491,432 B2 Feb. 17, 2009
Kawasaki US 7,718,930 B2 May 18,2010
REJECTIONS
The following rejections are before us for review:
I. Claims 1—6 and 11—20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Goto, Mandal, Kawasaki or Kachi,
and Yamaguchi. Final Act. 2—5.
II. Claims 7, 9, 10, and 21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Goto, Mandal, Kawasaki or Kachi,
Yamaguchi, and Kano or Mahawili. Id. at 5—6.
ANALYSIS
All the claims require, in relevant part, an apparatus that includes a
first heating element and at least two additional heating elements, limited to
a specific arrangement wherein the additional heating elements are both
(1) “circumferentially adjacent” one another while “partially surrounding”
the first heating element, and (2) disposed in a different plane than the first
heating element (adjacent one of opposed top and bottom surfaces of a stage
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Appeal 2015-002847
Application 12/485,160
body, with the first heating element adjacent the other surface, in claim 1;
specifically below the first heating element, which is adjacent a top surface
of a stage body, in claim 21). See Appeal Br., Claims App.
In rejecting the claims, for both Rejections I and II, the Examiner
relies on a combination of teachings from Goto and Yamaguchi. See Final
Act. 2-4, 5. In particular, the Examiner relies on Goto for disclosing heating
elements arranged with claimed constraint (1), but not (2)—namely, multiple
circumferentially adjacent heating elements partially surround a central
heating element, but all the heating elements appear to be in a common
plane. Final Act. 2—3 (citing Goto, Fig. 4); see Ans. 6—7 (citing same); see
also Goto, Fig. 3 (depicting heating elements in the same plane).
Additionally, the Examiner relies on Yamaguchi for disclosing heating
elements arranged with claimed constraint (2)—some heating elements
disposed below (in a different plane from) other heating elements, such that
heating elements are adjacent respective top and bottom surfaces of a body.
Final Act. 4; see Ans. 7; see also Yamaguchi, Fig. 5 (depicting the identified
heating elements), col. 9,1. 45 — col. 10,1. 9 (describing these heating
elements).
As the requisite articulated reasoning for combining these separate
constraints, the Examiner states that it would have been obvious to a person
of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to “adapt Goto with
the heater arrangement having the heating elements in the respective heating
planes so that more effective uniform heating temperature across the heating
surface can be provided as the stage body is placed in a reactor chamber.”
Final Act. 4 (emphasis added). But the Examiner provides no factual
evidence or persuasive technical reasoning to explain why such an
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Appeal 2015-002847
Application 12/485,160
adaptation of Goto’s arrangement—to separate the heating elements within
different planes, as taught by Yamaguchi—would provide any more
“effective uniform heating temperature” relative to the system of Goto alone.
See id.', Ans. 6—8.
Appellants persuasively argue that the rejection is deficient because
the Examiner’s combination of teachings from Goto and Yamaguchi is not
properly supported. See Appeal Br. 16—20, 34; Reply Br. 8—9. In particular,
Appellants assert that the Examiner’s conclusory statement of “more
effective uniform heating,” as provided in the rejection, “fails to provide a
person of ordinary skill any motivation for modifying Goto to incorporate
only certain aspects of Yamaguchi,” and such a statement “provides no
explanation as to why a person of ordinary skill would select one
arrangement over the other or move the separate ceramic bases of Goto
away from the top surface to a lower plane, as presently claimed.” Appeal
Br. 20; see id. at 19—20; Reply Br. 8. We agree with Appellants that the
rejection does not sufficiently explain why a person of ordinary skill in the
art would have combined these two disparate arrangement constraints. See
Appeal Br. 19—20; Reply Br. 8—9.
In other words, the Examiner has not sufficiently articulated reasoning
based on rational underpinnings as to why one skilled in the art would have
been prompted to combine the teachings of Goto and Yamaguchi (along
with the other cited references) in the manner proposed. See KSR Int 7 Co. v.
Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007) (stating that “[Rejections on
obviousness grounds cannot be sustained by mere conclusory statements;
instead, there must be some articulated reasoning with some rational
underpinning to support the legal conclusion of obviousness” (quoting In re
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Application 12/485,160
Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006))). Here, in response to
Appellants’ arguments, the Examiner simply notes that the references are all
in the same field of endeavor, and reiterates the individual teachings relied
upon, but does not provide any additional explanation as to why such
individual teachings—particularly those of Goto and Yamaguchi—would be
combined to arrive at the specific arrangement as claimed. See Ans. 6—8.
Rejections based on obviousness must rest on a factual basis; in
making such a rejection, the Examiner has the initial burden of supplying the
requisite factual basis and may not, because of doubts that the invention is
patentable, resort to speculation, unfounded assumptions, or hindsight
reconstruction to supply deficiencies in the factual basis. See In re Warner,
379 F.2d 1011, 1017 (CCPA 1967). Absent improper hindsight
reconstruction, we do not see a sufficient reasoned explanation based on a
rational underpinning as to why one of ordinary skill in the art would have
been led to modify Goto’s arrangement of heating elements to dispose some
heating elements in a different plane from others, as shown in Yamaguchi,
and a reason for such modification is not otherwise evident from the record.
Although we appreciate that the findings relied upon from Goto and
Yamaguchi appear to be supported by a preponderance of the evidence, we
note that a claim “composed of several [features] is not proved obvious
merely by demonstrating that each [feature] was, independently, known in
the prior art.” KSR Int’l Co., 550 U.S. at 418. Rather, a sustainable
obviousness rejection further needs to explain the reasoning by which those
findings support the Examiner’s conclusion of obviousness. Perfect Web
Techs., Inc. v. InfoUSA, Inc., 587 F.3d 1324, 1328-30 (Fed. Cir. 2009). In
this case, the rejection fails to meet this required standard.
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Accordingly, based on the record before us, the Examiner has not met
the burden of establishing a proper prima facie case of obviousness. On this
basis, we do not sustain Rejections I and II.
DECISION
We REVERSE the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1—6 and
11—20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Goto, Mandal,
Kawasaki or Kachi, and Yamaguchi.
We REVERSE the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 7, 9, 10, and
21 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Goto, Mandal,
Kawasaki or Kachi, Yamaguchi, and Kano or Mahawili.
REVERSED
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