This Office Action is in response to the response filed on December 17, 2025.
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group I, claims 1-21, is acknowledged. Claims 22-25 are withdrawn from further consideration.
Independent claim 11 is objected to because “second gate” (line 4) should be “a second gate.” Claims 12-21 depend on claim 11 and are thus similarly objected to. Correction is required.
Claims 11 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Lin (United States Patent 12,266,703).
As to independent claim 11, Lin discloses a semiconductor device (see the entire patent, including the FIG. 2A disclosure) comprising:
a substrate 110;
a first gate 140 on the substrate;
a second gate 140 on the substrate, wherein a side of the first gate and a side of the second gate are in a first plane, and wherein a top of the first gate and a top of the second gate are in a second plane; and a plug 128 between the first gate and the second gate, wherein a top of the plug is in the second plane.
As to dependent claim 12, a side of Lin’s plug 128 is parallel to the first plane.
Claims 13-21 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of corrected independent claim 11 (see above) and any intervening claims.
Claims 1-10 are allowed. The prior art does not disclose or suggest independent claim 1 as a whole, including the plug.
Registered practitioners can telephone the examiner at (571) 272-1843. Any voicemail message left for the examiner should include the registration number of the registered practitioner calling. The examiner’s supervisor is Wael Fahmy, whose telephone number is (571) 272-1705.
/MARK V PRENTY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2814
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