PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15880158
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-01
Publication Date: 2018-07
Patent Classification: ["356", "237500"]

Abstract:
A photomask blank having a thin film on a transparent substrate is inspected for defects by irradiating inspection light to a surface region of the blank, collecting the reflected light from the irradiated region via an inspection optical system to form a magnified image of the region, extracting a feature parameter of light intensity distribution from the magnified image, and identifying the bump/pit shape of the defect based on the feature parameter combined with the structure of the thin film. The defect inspection method is effective for discriminating defects of bump or pit shape in a highly reliable manner. On application of the defect inspection method, photomask blanks having no pinhole defects are available at lower costs and higher yields.

Claim (Index 2):
The method of  claim 1  wherein the magnified image in step (A2) is created by diffraction components of the reflected light that are transmitted through the inspection optical system, and higher-order diffraction components as said diffraction components are asymmetric between positive and negative sides with respect to the zeroth-order diffraction component (specular component) of the reflected light.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 3.0
- Percentile: 86.0
- Lexical Diversity: 1.73973
- Patent Class: 356.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: none
- Component Type: 0
- Foreign Priority: True
- Related Applications: ['15181691', '15256111', '14921076', '14716213', '14878181']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.7854405484161983
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.5871360832230612
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.7656101018968845
- Mean Citation Score: 394.14107
- Max Citation Score: 531.0924
- Similarity Product: 428.60241478528974

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test