NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

IN RE HIOK NAM TAY

______________________ 

2014-1415

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in Serial No. 

13/011,864. 

______________________ 

Decided: October 14, 2014

______________________ 

HIOK NAM TAY, of Washington, DC, pro se. 

NATHAN K. KELLEY, Solicitor, United States Patent 

and Trademark Office, of Alexandria, Virginia, for appellee. With him on the brief were WILLIAM LAMARCA and 

MICHAEL S. FORMAN, Associate Solicitors. 

______________________ 

Before PROST, Chief Judge, BRYSON and HUGHES, Circuit 

Judges.

PER CURIAM. 

Hiok Nam Tay argues that the United States Patent 

and Trademark Office improperly construed a limitation 

in his patent application by failing to consider extrinsic 

evidence. Because the Patent Office correctly construed 
2 IN RE TAY

the limitation by giving the claims their broadest reasonable construction, we affirm.

I 

In January 2011, Mr. Tay filed U.S. Patent Application No. 13/011,864. It relates to improving the performance of electronic image sensors in photographic

equipment. According to the ’864 application, electronic 

image sensors typically have millions of light-capturing 

photodiodes arranged in a tightly spaced pixel array and 

on a substrate. This array may include many routing 

wires stacked on the surface of the array. The wires

electrically connect each photodiode to a light reader. To 

avoid blocking a photo-absorption region on the substrate 

of each photodiode, the routing wires are spaced apart to 

form windows that allow light to travel into the photoabsorption regions.

Because of the tight spacing and the gaps created by 

the stacked wires, each photo-absorption region may 

inadvertently sense light that should be sensed only by

nearby photo-absorption regions, resulting in a lower 

quality picture. The ’864 application aims to solve this 

problem by including a reflective “contact” adjacent to the 

routing wires that surrounds and reflects light back down 

to the photo-absorption region. The contact is constructed 

from a reflective material such as a metal and it is electrically insulated from other components by a dielectric 

barrier. Representative claim 1 reads:

A method for forming an image sensor that includes a pixel array across a substrate, the pixel 

array comprising a photo-absorption region disposed under a region transparent to light, the 

method comprising:

forming a dielectric barrier on the substrate; 

and,
IN RE TAY 3

forming a contact on the dielectric barrier and 

insulated from the substrate by the dielectric 

barrier, the floating contact having a lightreflective lateral side facing and bounding the 

region. 

R.A. 36 (emphases added).

The Examiner rejected the claims in the ’864 application as anticipated by U.S. Patent Application No. 

2007/0,052,053. Mr. Tay appealed to the Patent Trial and 

Appeal Board, which affirmed the rejection of all claims. 

On request for rehearing, the Board maintained its decision. Mr. Tay appeals the Board’s construction of “contact” and its finding that the prior art ’053 application 

discloses a contact under Mr. Tay’s construction of the 

term. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1295(a)(4)(A).

II

A claim is anticipated if each limitation is found in a 

single prior art reference. 35 U.S.C. § 102; In re Rambus, 

Inc., 753 F.3d 1253, 1256 (Fed. Cir. 2014). Anticipation 

involves two steps. We first construe the claim, a question of law, and second we compare the construed claim to 

the prior art, a question of fact. Key Pharms. v. Hercon 

Labs. Corp., 161 F.3d 709, 714 (Fed. Cir. 1998). Claims in 

patent applications are given their broadest reasonable 

construction in light of the claims themselves and the

specification as it would be interpreted by one of ordinary 

skill in the art. Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 

1316 (Fed. Cir. 2005). And although “extrinsic evidence 

may be useful[,] . . . it is unlikely to result in a reliable 

interpretation of patent claim scope unless considered in 

the context of the intrinsic evidence.” Id. at 1319. We 

review the Board’s legal conclusions de novo and its 

factual findings for substantial evidence. In re Gartside, 

203 F.3d 1305, 1315–16 (Fed. Cir. 2000).
4 IN RE TAY

The Board adopted the Examiner’s finding that the

“reflective layer” disclosure in the prior art ’053 application is a “contact” within the scope of the ’864 application’s claims. The Board also found that the prior art ’053 

application taught that this “reflective layer” could be a 

conductive layer made of copper, aluminum, tungsten, or 

other appropriate conductive materials; that it is disposed 

on a dielectric layer and bounding a light-receiving element of an image sensor; and that it has a “transparent 

material layer” disposed above it. See ’053 application

¶ [0039], Fig. 1. The term contact is not defined in the 

’864 application. Based on our review of the ’864 application and the prior art, we agree that the broadest reasonable construction of contact encompasses the reflective 

layer disclosed by the prior art ’053 application. 

Citing extrinsic evidence, Mr. Tay argues that the 

construction of “contact” requires that it be “embedded” in 

a “first level dielectric on the substrate” and below a 

“lowest horizontal metal interconnect layer.” Appellant’s 

Br. 3. But the language of claim 1 and the specification 

do not support limiting contact in the manner that 

Mr. Tay suggests. Instead, the specification discloses that 

a contact can be adjacent to a dielectric layer and on a 

substrate or on a conductive wire, and that a contact can 

be adjacent to or below a conductive wire. Accordingly, 

we reject Mr. Tay’s invitation to improperly narrow the 

construction of contact.

In light of the foregoing, we find that the record supports the Board’s conclusion that the ’053 application 

anticipates the ’864 application.

III 

Because it properly construed the term at issue and 

because its decision is supported by substantial evidence, 

the Board correctly denied Mr. Tay’s petition for rehearing. Accordingly, we affirm.
IN RE TAY 5

AFFIRMED

No costs.