The Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s construction of a key claim term in a patent directed to a method for fabricating a self-aligned contact hole in a semiconductor circuit was overbroad in light of the actual claim language and specification, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held. Because a prior art patent did not meet the disputed claim limitation under the proper construction, the Board’s conclusion that six challenged claims were unpatentable as anticipated was reversed (Home Semiconductor Corp. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., July 25 2017, Lourie, A.).
A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law
________________________
To make sure you do not miss out on regular updates from the Kluwer Patent Blog, please subscribe here.
