Ex Parte O et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 30, 2012

10673513 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 30, 2012)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
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Ex parte DAVID L. O’MEARA, DANIEL CRAIG BURDETT,
STEPHEN H. CABRAL, GERT LEUSINK,
JOHN WILLIAM KOSTENKO, and CORY WAJDA
____________

Appeal 2010-011580
Application 10/673,513
Technology Center 2800
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Before SCOTT R. BOALICK, DENISE M. POTHIER, and
BARBARA A. BENOIT, Administrative Patent Judges.

POTHIER, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final
rejection of claims 1-18, 20-22, 24-27, and 30-38. Claims 39-56 have been
withdrawn, and claims 19, 23, 28, and 29 have been objected to as being
dependent upon a rejected base claim but would be allowable if rewritten in
independent form to include all the limitations of the base claim and any
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intervening claims. App. Br. 2; Supp. Ans. 14.1 We have jurisdiction under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm-in-part.

Invention
Appellants’ invention relates to a technique for monitoring system
components during batch-type processing. See Spec. ¶ 0001. Claim 1 is
reproduced below with a certain disputed limitation emphasized:
1. A method of monitoring status of a system component in a process
chamber of a batch type processing system, comprising:
exposing a system component of the batch type processing system to
light from a light source; and
monitoring interaction of the light with the system component to
monitor a state of a material deposit on the system component in order to
determine a status of the system component.
The Examiner relies on the following as evidence of unpatentability:
Fairbairn US 2004/0069225 A1 Apr. 15, 2004
(effectively filed May 19, 2000)
Rulkens US 6,762,849 B1 July 13, 2004
(filed June 19, 2002)

The Rejection
The Examiner rejected claims 1-18, 20-22, 24-27, and 30-38 under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Rulkens and Fairbairn. Supp.
Ans. 4-14.

1 Throughout this opinion, we refer to (1) the corrected Appeal Brief filed
September 5, 2006; (2) the Examiner’s Answer (Ans.) mailed December 1,
2006, and the Supplemental Examiner’s Answer (Supp. Ans.) mailed April
6, 2010; and (3) the Reply Briefs filed February 1, 2007, June 7, 2007, and
June 7, 2010.
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THE CONTENTIONS
Claims 1, 7, 9-18, 20-22, 24-27, and 33-38
Regarding illustrative claim 1, the Examiner finds “a system
component” can be “anything having a protective coating.” Supp. Ans. 14.
Based on this understanding, the Examiner finds that the semiconductor
wafer in Rulkens is a system component exposed to light and monitored.
Supp. Ans. 5-6, 14-15. The Examiner also elaborates that Rulkens teaches
various system components (Supp. Ans. 16), including an optical port (Supp.
Ans. 15-17) and the chamber walls (Supp. Ans. 17-18), exposed to light.
Appellants argue that Rulkens does not monitor the status of a system
component as recited but rather the film thickness on a substrate. App.
Br. 4. Appellants assert that the disclosure contrasts a substrate or a wafer
from a system component and the customary meaning of a “system” would
not include a substrate or wafer, such that the Examiner’s interpretation that
the substrate includes a system component is unreasonably broad. See App.
Br. 5-6; Reply Br. 2-3 (filed June 7, 2010). Appellants also argue that one
skilled in the art would not combine Fairbairn with Rulkens because
Rulkens’s monitoring system would not work in batch processing system,
like Fairbairn. App. Br. 7-8.

ISSUES
(1) Under § 103, has the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1 by
finding that Rulkens and Fairbairn collectively would have taught or
suggested a system component that is exposed to light and the interaction of
the light with the system component is monitored?
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(2) Is the Examiner’s reason to combine the teachings of these
references supported by some rational underpinning to justify the
Examiner’s obviousness conclusion?

ANALYSIS
The crux of this appeal is whether Rulkens teaches “a system
component” as recited. We therefore begin by construing this key disputed
phrase. During examination of a patent application, a claim is given its
broadest reasonable construction “in light of the specification as it would be
interpreted by one of ordinary skill in the art.” In re Am. Acad. of Sci. Tech
Ctr., 367 F.3d 1359, 1364 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (citations omitted) (internal
quotation marks omitted).
Turning to the disclosure, we agree with Appellants that a
semiconductor substrate or wafer is distinguished from the system
components. App. Br. 5-6. Appellants state “[p]rocessing of substrates in a
processing system can form a material deposit on the system component.”
Spec. ¶ 0039. This sentence describes the substrates separately from the
system components. Also, while Appellants do not define “a system
component,” Appellants provide examples of “[c]onsumable system
components [which] include process tubes, shields, rings, bafflers, liners,
and other system components . . . .” Spec. ¶ 0038. As such, the substrate
itself cannot reasonably be considered a system component in light of the
disclosure. To this extent, we disagree with the Examiner that a system
component can be “anything having a protective coating.” Supp. Ans. 14.
However, the Examiner further notes that Rulkens discloses various
system components. See Supp. Ans. 16-17. Specifically, the Examiner
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states that Rulkens teaches that the film is deposited on the chamber walls
and that the changes in light intensity made by these walls are measured by
the analysis tool. See Supp. Ans. 17. This is further supported by the
Examiner’s reproduction of Figure 5 (Supp. Ans. 5) and Rulkens’s
disclosure of collecting and analyzing the radiation reflecting off the internal
walls of the chamber (col. 5, ll. 24-30; col. 7, ll. 1-4, 22-32; col. 9, ll. 31-34;
col. 11, ll. 26-28; Figs. 4-5). Because a liner can be considered a system
component according to Appellants (Spec. ¶ 0038), we find that Rulkens
teaches or suggests both exposing a system component (e.g., a chamber
wall) to light and monitoring light interaction with the system component as
recited.
Additionally, the Examiner notes that Rulkens teaches that the film
deposits on other components besides the wafer when discussing the optical
port. See Supp. Ans. 15 (citing cols. 8-9). While not explicitly stating that
the invention monitors the material deposit on the internal walls of the
chamber, this teaching in Rulkens suggests that film is deposited onto other
components, including the internal walls of the chamber. Thus, when
Rulkens is collecting and analyzing the light intensity from the internal
walls, Rulkens is also monitoring the state of material deposit on the system
component by detecting the light intensity reflected off the walls and this, in
turn, also determines the system component’s status. Rulkens further
teaches that the light intensity measurements are used to “detect[] unusual
signal behaviors of the system hardware or processing problems that would
negatively affect the film measurement.” Col. 3, ll. 17-19; see also col. 14,
ll. 16-34. Thus, this information is further used to determine the status of the
system component as recited.
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Appellants also dispute that one skilled in the art would combine
Fairbairn’s batch processing teachings with Rulkens’s single substrate
processing technique. See App. Br. 7-8. Appellants specifically assert that
Rulkens’s monitoring system could not work in a batch processing system
because light cannot be made incident to multiple wafers. App. Br. 7. We
disagree. Rulkens teaches known film measuring systems include duplicate
measuring equipment, beam splitters, or gratings when multiple spots have
to be measured. Col. 2, ll. 25-45. Because Rulkens permits measuring
multiple spots during the deposition process, Rulkens further suggests the
system has the ability to measure multiple substrates (e.g., a batch) located at
different spots. Moreover, even if light properties are altered with multiple
spots being measured and the system becomes more complex, Appellants
have not demonstrated that combining these teachings would render Rulkens
inoperable or unsuitable for its intended purpose. See App. Br. 7-8.
Thus, combining such suggestions with Fairbairn’s batch processing
technique (¶ 0005) is not infeasible (see App. Br. 7) and predictably yields
no more than one would expect from such combination – a method of
monitoring a system component within a batch type processing system. See
KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416-17 (2007). Moreover, the
Examiner has articulated a reason with some rational underpinning to
combine the teachings of Rulkens and Fairbairn. The Examiner states that
such a combination permits multiple wafers to be processed simultaneously.
Supp. Ans. 6. We therefore disagree (App. Br. 8) that the Examiner has
failed to provide a reason to combine the features of Rulkens and Fairbairn
to arrive at the claimed invention.
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For the foregoing reasons, Appellants have not persuaded us of error
in the rejection of independent claim 1 and claims 7, 9-18, 20-22, 24-27, and
33-38 not separately argued with particularity.

Claims 2-6 and 8
Claims 2-6 and 8 discuss exposing the system component (e.g., a
liner) to light having certain material. As for these claims, Appellants argue
that the Examiner has relied upon components other than the substrate to
meet their limitations. App. Br. 8. We see no error in the Examiner relying
on other components. As stated above when addressing claim 1, the
Examiner has not only discussed the substrate as being exposed to light but
also exposing film that is deposited on the optical port (Supp. Ans. 6-8) and
the internal walls (Supp. Ans. 16-17) to light. Also, when discussing the
internal walls of the chamber above, we found that the internal walls are
being exposed to the light and measuring the same. We therefore find that
the Examiner’s reliance on components other than the substrate proper.
Based on the arguments presented, Appellants have not persuaded us of
error in the rejection of claims 2-6 and 8.

Claims 30-32
Claims 30-32 recite a system for determining the intensity of light
transmission from the system component. Appellants contend that none of
the references monitor the light transmittance through the substrate or any
other component. App. Br. 8. The Examiner relies on the discussion for
claim 1 and from column 13, lines 65-68 in Rulkens to teach these
recitations. Supp. Ans. 12. While Rulkens discusses measuring light
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intensity reflected from a system component, such as a wall (col. 9,
ll. 27-34), there is no discussion in column 13 of determining the intensity of
light transmission from the system component (i.e., light that passes through
the system component) or even having the ability to measure a light
transmission intensity. Also, the cited columns 1 and 5 in Rulkens discussed
in connection with claim 1 (Supp. Ans. 5-6) do not address measuring a light
transmission intensity. We therefore agree with Appellants that the
Examiner has not presented adequate evidence that either cited reference
teaches the limitations of claims 30-32.

CONCLUSION
Under § 103, the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 30-32 but did not
err in rejecting claims 1-18, 20-22, 24-27, and 33-38.

DECISION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1-18, 20-22, 24-27, and
30-38 is affirmed-in-part.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED-IN-PART

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