Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
OFFICE ACTION
This is a response to the election filed on 11/17/2025.
The Examiner acknowledges:
the election group 2 (claims 10-20), without traverse;
The withdrawal of group 1 (claims 1-9);
Applicants reserve the right to seek examination of claims in any unelected claims associated with Group 1 in a divisional application; and
Upon allowance, Applicant reserves the right to rejoin of any unelected claims associated with Group 1.
(The Applicant is advised that “MPEP § 821.04 indicates that, in order to be eligible for rejoinder, a claim to a nonelected invention must depend from or otherwise require all the limitations of an allowable claim”)
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) The claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) The claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 10 and 18-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a) (2) being anticipated by the prior art of record Houben (US 2024/0054669)
Regarding claim 10, the prior art discloses:
A metrology system (see one or more of par 2, 6, 45-46, 54, 59-60, 74, 82-83, 92, 98-99, 107-110…) comprising:
an illumination subsystem (illumination subsystem is one or more of: illumination/radiation optical system, beam optics, radiation beam/system, lithographic projection, SEM, projection optics, electron beam apparatus,
optical metrology/scatterometry tool, e-beam generator, disclosed in one or more of par 7, 45-46, 52-53, 55, 98-99, 179, 203, 209, 216, 223, 225, 231, 234, 235, 237) configured to illuminate a semiconductor structure with an amount of energy at a measurement site (see one or more of summary and/or one or more of fig 1-5, 7-8, 11-13, 16-17, 19-21 and corresponding text, i.e., the followings:
Semiconductor structure is one or more of: critical dimension structure/ device/ object, and/or one or more of substrate, three-dimension (3D) structure, wafer, die, chip, IC, resist layer, as disclosed in the prior art.
Amount of energy measured/quantified/metrics is one or more of: dose, focus, illumination/radiation source/distribution, angles/electrons of beams, x-ray lithography/wave length, electromagnetic spectrum, scattered energy, shape radiation, SEM intensity profile/values/distribution, radiation beam/pulses, laser source, extreme ultra violet as disclosed in the prior art);
a detector (one or more of SEM, AFM, optical scatterometry/metrology tool, contour model, gradient intensity profile, image simulated metrology/simulator, optical capture metrology too disclosed in one or more of par 7, 9, 45, 54-55, 57, 62, 74, 78, 82, 98-99, 104, 107, 110, 120, 144, 191, 197, 238) configured to detect an amount of measurement data associated with measurements of the semiconductor structure in response to the amount of energy; and
a computing system (see one or more of computer, processors, trained model processor, processing unit, computing device/system in one or more of par 12, 83, 179, 183, 188-189, 192 fig 18) configured to:
estimate a value of at least one latent variable of a set of latent variables (see par 53, 108, 178, 185) characterizing the semiconductor structure in a non-observable (non-observable is inherent because latent variable are referred to as non-observable variable or capturing latent is non-observable property in data and/or non-observable variable because latent variable are inferred variable that represent non-observable features hidden in input data) mathematical space based on a fitting of a trained measurement model (see one or more of par 7, 9, 20, 24, 26, 30-36 and/or one or more of fig 3, 5, 6, 8, 10-15) to the amount of measurement data; and
transform (see encoder-decoder, conversion function, transformation operation in one or more of par 61-64, 72, 82, 105, 120, 127, 130, 139, 146, 238) the value of the at least one latent variable to a value of at least one observable geometric parameter of interest (see observed metrology height/ depth, observed data/map/structure, observed shape/image, observed extracted data in one or more of par 9, 28, 92, 93, 97-110, 114-115, 127, 238) characterizing the semiconductor structure.
(Claim 18) wherein the illumination subsystem and the detector comprise an optical metrology system, an x-ray based metrology system, or an electron beam based metrology system (see one or more of par 7, 38, 45-46, 52-59, 98-99, 104-105, 110, 182, 235-238 )
(Claim 19) recite similar subject matter and rejected for the same reason.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 11-17 and 20 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 the base claim and any intervening claims.
Claims 11-17 and 20 would be allowable because the prior art of record does not teach or suggest the limitations in claim 11 and similarly recited claim 20.
Correspondence Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PAUL DINH whose telephone number is 571-272-1890. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s Supervisor, Jack Chiang can be reached on 571-272-7483. The fax number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/PAUL DINH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2851