Ex Parte Sexton et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardDec 11, 2012

11697695 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 11, 2012)

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. 11/697,695 04/06/2007 Greg Sexton LAM2P587 6862 25920 7590 12/11/2012 MARTINE PENILLA GROUP, LLP 710 LAKEWAY DRIVE SUITE 200 SUNNYVALE, CA 94085 EXAMINER CHEN, KEATH T ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 1716 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/11/2012 PAPER 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. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ________________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ________________ Ex parte GREG SEXTON, ANDREW BAILEY III, and ALAN SCHOEPP ________________ Appeal 2011-010952 Application 11/697,695 Technology Center 1700 ________________ Before RICHARD E. SCHAFER, CHUNG K. PAK, and TERRY J. OWENS, Administrative Patent Judges. OWENS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2011-010952 Application 11/697,695 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE The Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s rejection of claims 8-16 and 21, which are all of the pending claims. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). The Invention The Appellants claim a plasma etch processing chamber. Claim 8 is illustrative: 8. A plasma etch processing chamber configured to clean a bevel edge of a substrate, comprising: a bottom edge electrode surrounding a substrate support of the plasma processing chamber, wherein the substrate support is configured to receive the substrate; the bottom edge electrode and the substrate support are electrically isolated from each other by a bottom dielectric ring; a top edge electrode defined over the bottom edge electrode, the top edge electrode and the bottom edge electrode are configured to generate a cleaning plasma to clean the bevel edge of the substrate; an inductive coil surrounding the bevel edge of the substrate, wherein the top and bottom electrodes are grounded when the inductive coil generates a plasma; a gas feed defined through a side surface of the processing chamber, the gas feed introducing a processing gas for striking a plasma defined between the top edge electrode and the bottom edge electrode; and a pump out port defined through a top surface of the chamber, the pump out port located at a radial distance from a center axis of the substrate, wherein a distance of an inlet of the pump out port from a top surface of a substrate is about 4mm thereby enabling pressure gradients to exist over a top surface of the substrate to substantially flatten a warped substrate during cleaning of the bevel edge. Appeal 2011-010952 Application 11/697,695 3 The References Arami US 5,575,853 Nov. 19, 1996 Saito US 6,171,104 B1 Jan. 9, 2001 Luo US 2001/0009177 A1 Jul. 26, 2001 Moslehi US 6,471,830 B1 Oct. 29, 2002 Berman US 6,837,967 B1 Jan. 4, 2005 Kubo US 2005/0036126 A1 Feb. 17, 2005 Lim US 2005/0173067 A1 Aug. 11, 2005 The Rejections The claims stand rejected as follows: claims 8-16 and 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement, claims 8-11 and 13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Lim in view of Moslehi, Berman and Luo, claim 12 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Lim in view of Moslehi, Berman, Luo and Kubo, claims 14-16 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Lim in view of Moslehi, Berman, Luo and Arami, and claim 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Lim in view of Moslehi, Berman, Luo and Saito. OPINION We reverse the rejections. Rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph For an applicant to comply with the 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph, written description requirement, the applicant’s specification must “convey with reasonable clarity to those skilled in the art that, as of the filing date sought, he or she was in possession of the invention.” Carnegie Mellon University v. Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., 541 F.3d 1115, 1122 (Fed. Cir. 2008), quoting Vas-Cath Inc. v. Mahurkar, 935 F.2d 1555, 1563-64 (Fed. Cir. 1991). Appeal 2011-010952 Application 11/697,695 4 The Examiner argues that the Appellants’ original disclosure lacks written descriptive support for the claim 8 requirement of “an inductive coil surrounding the bevel edge of the substrate” in combination with “a gas feed defined through a side surface of the processing chamber” (Ans. 3-4, 11-12). The Appellants’ application no. 11/440,561, which is incorporated by reference into the Appellants’ Specification (Spec. ¶ 0001), discloses, in one embodiment, a plasma etch processing chamber (100d) having an inductive coil (170) surrounding a bevel edge (117) of a substrate (150) (Spec. ¶¶ 32, 44; Fig. 1D). In that embodiment the gas feed is a gas top feed (161) (¶ 32; Fig. 1D). In another embodiment the gas feed is a bottom gas feed (263) (Spec. 50-51; Fig. 2A). The present application discloses a plasma etch processing chamber (2) having, in one embodiment, a top gas feed (6) (Spec. ¶ 0021; Fig. 1) and having, in another embodiment, a gas feed which can be a bottom gas feed (200) or a side gas feed (202) (Spec. ¶ 0024; Fig. 3A). The present application states that “the embodiments described herein in any of the Figures may be integrated together” (¶ 0028). Thus, the Appellants’ original disclosure in the present application shows, with reasonable clarity to one of ordinary skill in the art as of the filing date of the present application, possession of a plasma etch processing chamber having both a side gas feed and an inductive coil surrounding a substrate’s bevel edge. The Examiner argues that the Appellants’ original disclosure lacks written descriptive support for the claim 8 requirement of “a pump out port defined through a top surface of the chamber, the pump out port located at a radial distance from a center axis of the substrate” in combination with its Appeal 2011-010952 Application 11/697,695 5 dependent claim 21 requirement that “the pump out port defined through the top surface [of the chamber] is controlled to switch between pumping out the chamber and introducing an inert gas into the chamber” (Ans. 3-4, 11-12). The Appellants’ original present application discloses “a pump out port [44] defined through a top surface of the chamber, the pump out port located at one of along a center axis of the substrate or at a radial distance from the center axis” (original claim 8; Fig. 1), discloses that “an inert gas may be pumped through center feed/channel 44 of chamber 2”, and discloses that “channel 44 may be used to supply a gas to increase the pressure or channel 44 may be used to pump out the region of the chamber to reduce the pressure” (¶ 0022). The present application, therefore, shows, with reasonable clarity to one of ordinary skill in the art as of the filing date of the present application, possession of a plasma etch processing chamber having a pump out port which is located through a top surface of a plasma etch processing chamber at a radial distance from a center axis of a substrate and which is controllable to switch between pumping out the chamber and introducing an inert gas into the chamber. For the above reasons we reverse the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph. Rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103 We need to address only the sole independent claim, i.e., claim 8. That claim requires “an inductive coil surrounding the bevel edge of the substrate”. Appeal 2011-010952 Application 11/697,695 6 The Examiner argues that “it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to have added a variable height ICP [inductively-coupled plasma] coil of ‘830 [Moslehi], or replaced the RF powered cathode #14 of ‘067 [Lim], for the purpose of real time adjustment of antenna position (col. 3, line[s] 45-48a)” (Ans. 5).1 Moslehi’s ICP coil is an antenna whose position is variable in real time relative to a sputtering target and substrate to compensate for variations in the target material properties and other aspects affecting process uniformity which affect the degree of collimation and deposition rate such as ionization uniformity and ionization intensity near the substrate (col. 3, ll. 9- 22, 46-49). Establishing a prima facie case of obviousness of an invention comprising a combination of known elements requires “an apparent reason to combine the known elements in the fashion claimed.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007). The Examiner has not established that in view of the applied prior art it would have been apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art to use Moslehi’s ICP coil in an apparatus such as Lim’s plasma etching apparatus (¶¶ 0012-16, 0037-42, 0047; Fig. 1) which does not have a sputtering target and, therefore, would not appear to benefit from Moslehi’s real-time ICP coil position adjustment relative to a sputtering target and a substrate. Thus, 1 The Examiner argues that an ICP coil can generate a plasma without a sputtering target and that it was well known in the art that the same apparatus can be used for etching and deposition, but the Examiner provides no substantive argument as to why any such general knowledge in the art would have led one of ordinary skill in the art to the Appellants’ claimed plasma etch processing chamber (Ans. 13). Appeal 2011-010952 Application 11/697,695 7 the record indicates that the rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103 are based upon impermissible hindsight in view of the Appellants’ disclosure. See In re Warner, 379 F.2d 1011, 1017 (CCPA 1967) (“A rejection based on section 103 clearly must rest on a factual basis, and these facts must be interpreted without hindsight reconstruction of the invention from the prior art”). Accordingly, we reverse those rejections. DECISION/ORDER The rejections of claims 8-16 and 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph, claims 8-11 and 13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Lim in view of Moslehi, Berman and Luo, claim 12 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Lim in view of Moslehi, Berman, Luo and Kubo, claims 14-16 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Lim in view of Moslehi, Berman, Luo and Arami, and claim 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Lim in view of Moslehi, Berman, Luo and Saito are reversed. It is ordered that the Examiner’s decision is reversed. REVERSED tc