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 .
Examiner’s response
Applicant’s amendments filed on 12/08/2025 have been considered:
The limitation, ”lead frame” have been removed from claims 2, 7, and 9-10 by the Applicant; hence, the objection to the Drawings is now withdrawn.
The amendments to claims 1-7, (cancelled claim 8), 9-13, and newly added claims 14-18 were carefully reviewed, and considered.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
Claims 1-7, and 9-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
The limitation, ”passive device”, as recited in independent claims 1 and 9, and later dependent claims, is unclear with regard to how a resistor or inductor would be implemented as part of this invention. Note, the limitation “passive device” is not found in the specification”.
The limitation, “overlapping”, as recited in claim 1, is also not found in the
specification: While the arrangements claimed may be perhaps be found in the drawings, it is nevertheless incumbent on the Applicant to specifically indicate which parts of the drawings provide support for the claims. For this reason, the examiner believes that the Applicant will find it necessary to amend the specification in order to properly overcome the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 112(A).
Specification
35 U.S.C. 112(a) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, requires the specification to be written in “full, clear, concise, and exact terms.” The specification is replete with terms which are not clear, concise and exact. The specification should be revised carefully in order to comply with 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112. Examples of some unclear, inexact or verbose terms used in the specification are:
Throughout the specification, numeral “110” represents “silicon wafer” (see [0023-[0025], [0029]-[0031], [0033]-[0037]; but the same numeral; “110” also represents “substrate” (see [0034]).
These is just one example, because they seem to cause confusion in that different names which are referred to by the same numeral.
Claim Objections
Claims 1-7, and 9-18 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Regarding claims 1 and 9, the phrase, “an insulator over the substrate and between the first and second conductive lines”, as recited in claim 1, appears inaccurate based on Applicant’s Fig. 2.
Fig. 2 shows e.g., “an insulator ‘132’ on the substrate between the first and second conductive lines ‘120’ and ‘122’.
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288
644
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Greyscale
Appropriate correction is required.
LIN (US 8368150 B2) (same reference as in the previous Office action) teaches in Fig. 8, “An integrated circuit (IC) comprising:
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363
604
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a substrate; (see Fig. 8 with interpretation labels)
a first conductive line (23) coupled to the substrate;
a second conductive line (same number 23) coupled to the substrate; and
a decoupling capacitor (38).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the
examiner should be directed to JASMINE J CLARK whose telephone number is (571)272-1726. The examiner can normally be reached 8:30-5.30.
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/JASMINE J CLARK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2899