DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 10-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 10 recites the limitation "the number of memory chips" in line 10. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Note the dependent claims necessarily inherit the indefiniteness of the claims on which they depend.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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)(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 1, 3-7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by KOSAKA (US PG Pub 2021/0193617, hereinafter Kosaka).
Regarding claim 1, figure 8 of Kosaka discloses a semiconductor package comprising:
a substrate (11);
a first stack structure (14) disposed on the substrate, and including a first chip, a second chip disposed on the first chip and a third chip disposed on the second chip; and
a second stack structure (12) disposed on the substrate, and including a fourth chip, a fifth chip disposed on the fourth chip and a sixth chip disposed on the fifth chip, wherein:
the first stack structure includes a controller (16), the number of memory chips in the second stack structure is greater than the number of memory chips in the first stack structure, and
the sixth chip is horizontally offset relative to the fifth chip toward the first stack structure.
Regarding claim 3, figure 8 of Kosaka discloses the controller is an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)(¶ 65), and each of the first stack structure and the second stack structure includes a plurality of NAND flash memories (¶ 42).
Regarding claim 4, figure 8 of Kosaka discloses the first chip (16) is the controller (¶ 65), and each of the second chip and the third chip is a memory chip (¶ 42).
Regarding claim 5, figure 8 of Kosaka discloses the controller includes one or more pads.
Regarding claim 6, figure 8 of Kosaka discloses a plurality of bonding wires (17) configured to electrically connect the controller to memory chips included in the first stack structure.
Regarding claim 7, figure 8 of Kosaka discloses memory chips in the second stack structure are electrically connected to the controller via the plurality of bonding wires (¶ 65).
Regarding claims 10-11, figure 8 of Kosaka discloses the entire claimed invention as noted in the above rejections.
Regarding claim 13, figure 8 of Kosaka discloses at least two adjacent chips are vertically disposed with no horizontal offset.
Regarding claim 14, figure 8 of Kosaka discloses the fifth chip is horizontally offset relative to the fourth chip toward the first stack structure.
Regarding claims 17 and 19, figure 8 of Kosaka discloses the entire claimed invention as noted in the above rejections.
Regarding claim 20, figure 8 of Kosaka discloses a thickness of the controller is different from a thickness of a memory chip included in the first stack structure.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim 8, 15, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kosaka.
Regarding claim 8, Kosaka does not explicitly disclose the first stack structure is vertically stacked in a first diagonal direction, a first subset of the second stack structure is vertically stacked in a second diagonal direction that is opposite to the first diagonal direction, and a second subset of the second stack structure is vertically stacked in the first diagonal direction.
However, chip stacks where subsets of a stack are stacked in a first diagonal direction opposite to a diagonal direction of a different subset of the stack are well known in the art.
It would have been obvious to form the two stacks with a greater number of chips where in subsets of the stacks are stacked in opposite diagonal directions in the claimed manner in order to form a high density memory device.
Regarding claims 15 and 18, figure 8 of Kosaka discloses the entire claimed invention as noted in the above rejection of claim 8.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 9, 12 and 16 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to YU-HSI DAVID SUN whose telephone number is (571)270-5773. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 8am-4pm ET.
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/YU-HSI D SUN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2817