NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________

IN RE: URI COHEN,

Appellant

______________________

2018-1609

______________________

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 12/471,557.

______________________

Decided: May 1, 2019

______________________

JOHN FRANKLIN SUMMERS, Caldwell Cassady & Curry, 

Dallas, TX, for appellant. Also represented by HAMAD M.

HAMAD. 

 THOMAS W. KRAUSE, Office of the Solicitor, United 

States Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, VA, for 

appellee Andrei Iancu. Also represented by KAKOLI 

CAPRIHAN, JOSEPH MATAL, ROBERT MCBRIDE. 

______________________

Before PROST, Chief Judge, REYNA and STOLL,

Circuit Judges.

PROST, Chief Judge.

Dr. Uri Cohen appeals from a decision of the Patent 

Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) affirming the Examiner’s 
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rejection of claims 3, 7, and 17 of U.S. Patent Application 

No. 12/471,557 (“the ’557 application”). For the following 

reasons, we affirm the Board’s decision. 

I

The ’557 application “pertains to the field of electroplating metals or alloys for filling high aspect ratio openings, such as trenches and vias, for semiconductor 

metallization interconnects, thin film heads, or micromachined Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) devices.” J.A. 43 ll. 11–14. 

Claim 1 of the ’557 application recites: 

1. A method for depositing two or more seed layers 

for electroplating metallic interconnects over a substrate, the substrate having a patterned insulating 

layer which includes at least one opening and a 

field surrounding the at least one opening, the at 

least one opening having top corners, sidewalls, 

and a bottom, the field and the at least one opening 

being ready for depositing one or more seed layers, 

and the method comprising: 

Depositing by a CVD technique a continuous first seed layer over the sidewalls and 

bottom of the at least one opening using a 

first set of deposition parameters; and 

depositing a second seed layer over the first 

seed layer using a second set of deposition 

parameters; wherein 

(i) the second set of deposition parameters includes at least one deposition parameter which is 

different from any of the deposition 

parameters in the first set of deposition parameters, or whose value 
IN RE: COHEN 3

is different in the first and second 

sets of deposition parameters, 

(ii) the thickness of the first seed 

layer is from about 50Å[1] to not 

more than 400Å over the field, 

(iii) the first and second seed layers 

are sufficiently thick over the field 

to enable uniform electroplating 

across the substrate, and 

(iv) after depositing the seed layers, 

there is sufficient room for electroplating inside the at least one opening. 

J.A. 37. The claims at issue in this appeal recite further

limitations on the thickness of the first seed layer. Claim 

3 recites that the thickness of the first seed layer is “from 

about 50Å to not more than 300Å over the field.” Id.

Claims 7 and 17 recite that the thickness of the first seed 

layer is “from about 50Å to not more than 350Å” over the 

field. Id. at 38–39.

The Examiner rejected claims 3 and 7 as obvious over 

the combination of U.S. Patent No. 6,187,670 (“Brown”), 

U.S. Patent No. 6,065,424 (“Shacham-Diamand”), and applicant-admitted prior art, and rejected claim 17 as obvious

over the same combination in further view of U.S. Patent 

No. 6,146,517 (“Hoinkis”). J.A. 1208, 1210–11, 1214–15. 

As to the applicant-admitted prior art, the “Background of 

the Invention” section of the specification discloses that it 

was “typical” to have seed layers deposited by chemical vapor deposition (“CVD”) with thicknesses of about 300Å to 

about 1000Å over the field. See J.A. 47 ll. 24–26 (“On the 

 

1 Å is the symbol for Angstrom, a unit of length equal 

to 10-10 meters. 
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other hand, the typical thickness of about 300Å to about 

1000Å (on the field), deposited by the CVD techniques, may 

not be sufficient.” (emphasis added)). The specification 

further describes CVD layers as “conformal” and as 

“providing continuous and complete step coverage of the 

seed layer inside very narrow openings.” See J.A. 48 ll. 2–

5. The Examiner found that this applicant-admitted prior 

art discloses continuous CVD layers as thin as 300Å, which

overlapped the thickness ranges claimed in claims 3, 7, and 

17, and that “discovering the optimum or working ranges 

involves only routine skill in the art.” See J.A. 1202, 1208, 

1210–11, 1214–15. 

The Board affirmed the Examiner’s rejections of claims 

3, 7, and 17. The Board agreed with the Examiner that the 

“applicant-admitted prior art discloses that continuous 

CVD layers as thin as 300 angstroms were common in the 

prior art” and that “optimization of the thickness within 

the range of the prior art was a matter of routine skill in 

the art.” J.A. 12. The Board concluded that the Examiner 

did not err in determining that a person of ordinary skill in 

the art “would have been able to optimize the CVD seed 

layer thickness within the range that [the applicant] discloses was known in the prior art.” J.A. 13. 

Dr. Cohen requested rehearing, but the Board maintained its affirmance of the Examiner’s rejection. See J.A. 

27–30. Dr. Cohen timely appealed. We have jurisdiction 

pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A). 

II

A

Obviousness is a question of law based on underlying 

factual determinations. Belden Inc. v. Berk-Tek LLC, 805 

F.3d 1064, 1073 (Fed. Cir. 2015). We review the Board’s 

ultimate obviousness determination de novo and underlying factual findings for substantial evidence. Harmonic 

Inc. v. Avid Tech., Inc., 815 F.3d 1356, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 
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2016). Substantial evidence is “more than a mere scintilla” 

and means “‘such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind 

might accept as adequate to support a conclusion.’” Biestek 

v. Berryhill, 139 S. Ct. 1148, 1154 (2019) (quoting Consol. 

Edison Co. v. NLRB, 305 U.S. 197, 229 (1938)). 

B

Dr. Cohen argues that the admitted prior art does not 

disclose continuous CVD seed layers having a thickness of 

less than 375Å over the field. See Appellant’s Br. 5, 9–17.

Dr. Cohen acknowledges that his specification discloses

that CVD seed layers as thin as 300Å over the field were 

typical but argues that it does not disclose continuous CVD 

seed layers that thin. Id. at 9. For support, Dr. Cohen 

points to the testimony of Dr. Robin Cheung, who opined 

that the CVD layer must be 375Å to 500Å over the field to 

be continuous. Id. at 9–10. The Examiner and the Board

considered this testimony and determined that it was unpersuasive in light of the admitted prior art. See J.A. 1533

(Examiner’s Answer), J.A. 28–30 (Board Decision on Request for Rehearing). Substantial evidence supports the 

Board’s finding that the admitted prior art discloses that 

continuous CVD layers as thin as 300Å were common in 

the prior art. While the specification teaches that PVD 

techniques “fail to provide continuous and complete step 

coverage,” J.A. 47 ll. 28–29, it discloses that CVD techniques do provide such coverage: “[t]he conformal CVD or 

electroless techniques, on the other hand, while providing 

continuous and complete step coverage of the seed layer inside very narrow openings, pinch-off the small openings 

when used at thicknesses required on the field for a lowresistance electrical path.” J.A. 48 ll. 2–5 (emphasis 

added).

Next, Dr. Cohen argues that the above disclosure about 

conformal CVD techniques was ambiguous and that the 

Board improperly resolved the ambiguity against Dr. Cohen by finding that CVD techniques provide continuous 
6 IN RE: COHEN

layers. Appellant’s Br. 11–17. According to Dr. Cohen, the 

disclosed CVD techniques are continuous “only when sufficiently thick to provide a low-resistance electrical path.” 

Id. at 10. Even if there were an ambiguity, if the “evidence 

in record will support several reasonable but contradictory 

conclusions, we will not find the Board’s decision unsupported by substantial evidence simply because the Board 

chose one conclusion over another plausible alternative.”

In re Jolley, 308 F.3d 1317, 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2002). Dr. Cohen concedes that the Board’s interpretation of the admitted prior art was grammatically defensible. Appellant’s Br. 

15 (“Dr. Cohen does not dispute that the Office’s interpretation is reasonable, at least in the abstract. . . . [T]he Office’s reading may be grammatically defensible . . . .”).

Moreover, earlier statements in the specification support 

the Board’s interpretation of this disclosure. The prior paragraph explains that seed layers can be deposited by PVD 

techniques or CVD techniques and lists disadvantages of 

each. First, the specification states that seed layers deposited by CVD techniques, with a typical thickness of about 

300Å to about 1,000Å “may not be sufficient” to ensure a 

“sufficiently low-resistance seed layer.” J.A. 47 ll. 22–26. 

The specification does not state that these CVD-deposited 

seed layers are not continuous. Rather, the following text 

criticizes only the “non-conformal PVD techniques” as 

“fail[ing] to provide continuous and complete step coverage.” J.A. 47 ll. 27–29. Accordingly, other parts of the specification are consistent with and support the Board’s

reading of the disputed disclosure. 

Finally, Dr. Cohen argues that a person of ordinary 

skill in the art would not have achieved the continuous 

CVD seed layers having the claimed thicknesses through 

routine optimization. See id. at 5–9. Specifically, Dr. Cohen contends that “there is nothing in the Examiner’s cited 

references to show that these sub 375 angstrom ranges 

were known, or the type of mere optimization within the 

reach of the skilled artisan.” Id. at 7. This, however, 
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overlooks the disclosure in the specification that CVD layers as thin as 300Å were common in the prior art. Substantial evidence supports the Examiner’s and the Board’s 

determination that the specification discloses that continuous CVD layers as thin as 300Å were known in the art 

and that the thickness ranges of claims 3, 7, and 17 overlap 

with 300Å. Substantial evidence therefore supports the 

Examiner’s and the Board’s rejection of these claims over 

the admitted prior art. See E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. 

v. Synvina C.V., 904 F.3d 996, 1006 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (“For 

decades, this court and its predecessor have recognized 

that ‘where the general conditions of a claim are disclosed 

in the prior art, it is not inventive to discover the optimum 

or workable ranges by routine experimentation.’” (quoting 

In re Aller, 220 F.2d 454, 456 (CCPA 1955))). 

We have considered Dr. Cohen’s remaining arguments 

and find them unpersuasive. 

III

We hold that substantial evidence supports the Board’s 

conclusion that claims 3, 7, and 17 of the ’557 application

are unpatentable as obvious over the combined teachings 

of the cited references and applicant-admitted prior art. 

We therefore affirm the Board’s decision. 

AFFIRMED