Opinion ID: 223687
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: A Wafer and a Plurality of Wafers

Text: Claims 1 and 3 are directed to a system and a method for inspecting integrated circuits printed on substrates such as wafers. Claim 1 recites: An automated system for inspecting a substrate such as a wafer in any form including whole patterned wafers, sawn wafers, broken wafers, and wafers of any kind on film frames, dies, die in gel paks, die in waffle paks, multi-chip modules often called MCMs, JEDEC trays, Auer boats, and other wafer and die package configurations for defects, the system comprising: a wafer test plate; a wafer provider for providing a wafer to the test plate; a visual inspection device for visual inputting of a plurality of known good quality wafers during training and for visual inspection of other unknown quality wafers during inspection; at least one of a brightfield illuminator positioned approximately above, a darkfield illuminator positioned approximately above, and a darkfield laser positioned approximately about the periphery of the wafer test plate, all of which are for providing illumination to the unknown quality wafers during inspection and at least one of which strobes to provide short pulses of light during movement of a wafer under inspection based on a velocity of the wafer; and a microprocessor having processing and memory capabilities for developing a model of good quality wafer and comparing unknown quality wafers to the model. The dispute in this case centers around whether a wafer is also a plurality of wafers. Both parties agree that a whole wafer is typically diced into many pieces called dies, [1] and that each die contains a complete functional circuit. The district court construed a wafer to be a thin slice of semiconductor material with circuitry thereon that is ready for electrical testing, or any part thereof. However, a `wafer' is not the same as a `die.' A wafer is made up of multiple die[s]. J.A. 37, 132 (emphasis added). The district court explained: wafer should be construed to include a part of a wafer. Throughout the patent, reference is made to wafers, in whole or in part. J.A. 131. The court further explained that defining a wafer as any portion of a wafer does not improperly give the same meaning to die and wafer because it requires the wafer or portion of a wafer to include multiple dies. J.A. 132 (Thus, Plaintiffs' construction of wafer does not provide the same meaning as die  the former refers to plural, while the latter refers to singular.). Claim 1 requires visual inputting a plurality of known good quality wafers during training to teach the system a standard for detecting defects. The district court referred to this plurality of known good quality wafers limitation as the multiple wafer limitation. This limitation requires multiple good wafers to be used to train the system  so the inspection device will know a flawed wafer when it sees one. In light of the district court's claim construction, August Tech and its expert, Dr. Mundy, argued that the accused Falcon device infringes the multiple wafer limitations because the Falcon visually inputs sections of multiple die from different parts of a whole wafer. J.A. 92. In its denial of JMOL on this point, the district court explained: the Court's definition of the term `wafer' could refer to each of the sections of multiple die visually inputted by the Falcon. Therefore, the Court finds sufficient evidence to support the jury's conclusion that the Falcon literally infringed the `plurality of wafers' limitation. Id. Thus, under the district court's construction, a single wafer can be a plurality of wafers. On appeal, Camtek argues that the district court erred by including the on any part thereof phrase in its construction, asserting that such a definition erroneously permits a single physical wafer to have an arbitrary number of notional `wafers' within it. Appellant's Br. 23. Camtek argues that wafers are physically distinct substrates that are inspected by the claimed invention, and that a plurality of wafers means more than one physically discrete wafer. Camtek asserts that the partial wafers, such as sawn wafers and broken wafers as recited in the preambles, are physically distinct substrates. Camtek also points to the '298 patent's specification at column 8, lines 60-64, which it asserts discusses wafers as discrete physical objects that are physically handled. August Tech first responds that Camtek waived this notional wafer argument by failing to advance it before the district court. We disagree. Before the district court, the parties simultaneously submitted proposed claim constructions. Camtek's proposed claim construction for wafer, [a] thin semiconductor slice ..., does not permit a single wafer to also be multiple wafers. J.A. 129-130. August Tech, in contrast, proposed the or any part thereof language. Id. In its Markman Rebuttal Brief, Camtek argued that August Tech's proposed construction of a plurality of wafers would perversely encompass a single wafer with multiple dies  thus reading out a plurality of from the claims. Markman Rebuttal Br. 9-10. During the jury instruction phase, the court heard additional argument regarding the proper construction of wafer. And, significantly, the court made clear in its JMOL order that it was aware of the notional wafer issue, but intended to define the term `wafer' to also refer to any part of a whole wafer other than a single die. J.A. 91-92. We cannot say, on this record, that Camtek failed to preserve its notional wafer argument for appeal. [2] With respect to the proper construction of wafer, August Tech contends that the claims do not require wafers to be physically separate from each other, and that Camtek's construction would read dies out of the definition of wafers in the preambles. Accordingly, August Tech argues, the district court correctly adopted its proposed construction, which allows for portions of a single discrete wafer to be wafers. Claim construction is a matter of law we review de novo. Cybor Corp. v. FAS Techs., Inc., 138 F.3d 1448, 1455-56 (Fed.Cir.1998) (en banc). The words of a claim are generally given their ordinary and customary meaning as understood by a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention when read in the context of the specification and prosecution history. See Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1313 (Fed.Cir.2005) (en banc). A claim's preamble may limit the claim when the claim drafter uses the preamble to define the subject matter of the claim. Allen Eng'g Corp. v. Bartell Indus., 299 F.3d 1336, 1346 (Fed.Cir.2002). We construe the preamble as limiting when it is necessary to give life, meaning and vitality to the claim based on the facts of the case at hand and in view of the claim as a whole. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). To determine the meaning of the plurality of wafers limitations we begin with the language of the claim itself. In the claims' preambles, the inventors listed example wafers such as whole wafers, sawn and broken wafers, and dies. Nothing in the preamble compels us to conclude that wafers are not discrete objects. The claim itself, however, distinguishes between a single wafer and multiple wafers: a wafer provider for providing a wafer to the test plate; a visual inspection device for visual inputting of a plurality of known good quality wafers during training and for visual inspection of other unknown quality wafers during inspection; ... The most logical reading of these claim limitations is that the wafer provider provides a single object called a wafer to the test plate, and that visual inspection and training requires more than one of these objects. Reading this otherwise renders any difference between the singular and the plural terms superfluous. See Merck & Co. v. Teva Pharms. USA, Inc., 395 F.3d 1364, 1372 (Fed.Cir.2005) (A claim construction that gives meaning to all the terms of the claim is preferred over one that does not do so.). System claims 18 and 26 in the '298 patent's parent, U.S. Patent No. 6,324,298 (the parent patent), further indicate that a single wafer is not also multiple wafers. z4 Techs., Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 507 F.3d 1340, 1348 (Fed.Cir.2007) (We presume, unless otherwise compelled, that the same claim term in the same patent or related patents carries the same construed meaning. (internal quotation marks omitted)). Claims 18 and 26 recite the same example list of wafer formats in their preambles as do the asserted claims, and they also recite a similar viewing a plurality of known good wafers feature. Claims 18 and 26, however, further recite a wafer alignment device for aligning each and every wafer provided to the test plate at the same x, y, z, and θ location. These claims require each and every wafer to be aligned at the exact same location and orientation. If a wafer provided to the test plate included a plurality of wafers, however, some of the wafers would not be aligned to the exact same location. The '298 patent's specification consistently treats wafers as discrete objects. For example, the inventors describe creating a new recipe which entails defining how many wafers W are selected from cassettes or other storage receptacles and defining how the dies on each wafer W are to be selected for defect inspection. '298 patent col.7 ll.36-40. The specification proceeds to explain that the wafer provider provides wafers to the test plate from cassettes, in which multiple wafers are stacked, and magazines: [T]he wafer providing means 14 includes a robotic arm that pivots from a first position where a wafer W is initially grasped from a magazine or cassette to a second position where the wafer W is positioned on the wafer test plate 12 for inspection. After inspection, the robotic arm pivots the wafer W from the second position at the test plate 12 back to the first position where the wafer W is placed back in or on the magazine or cassette. '298 patent col.8 ll.61-67. Based on the claim language as read in light of the specification, we conclude that a wafer is a discrete object, and thus a single wafer, even though it may later be diced into hundreds of separate dies, is not itself also a plurality of wafers. Contrary to August Tech's arguments, this construction does not read die out of the definition of wafer. On the contrary, the claims neatly accommodate a wafer in any discrete format, such as a whole wafer, a discrete portion of a wafer (a sawn wafer or a broken wafer), and even a discrete physical substrate that includes only an individual die. We reject August Tech's assertions that a claim construction requiring wafers to be discrete objects is incorrect because it excludes the preferred embodiment which August Tech argues trains on and inspects multiple dies on a single wafer. Appellee's Br. 33-36 (citing '298 patent figs. 3 & 5; col.6 ll.65-67; col.7 ll.20-25). August Tech argues that a claim construction that excludes a preferred embodiment from the scope of the claim is rarely, if ever, correct. Appellee's Br. 35 (quoting MBO Labs., Inc. v. Becton, Dickinson & Co., 474 F.3d 1323, 1333 (Fed.Cir.2007)). The Description of the Preferred Embodiment states that the good die model can be created by repeating the visual inputting process for a plurality of known good die or wafers as viewing a pool of wafers is necessary to form a model of a good die. '298 patent col.14 ll.15-17; see also col.16 ll.1-8 (discussing align[ing] the known good wafers to form the good die model. (emphases added)); col.6 ll.65-66 (disclosing a camera 20 or other visual inspection device for visually inputting good die during training); col.7 ll.11-34 (discussing training by viewing a plurality of known good die). The disclosure therefore teaches both using multiple die and multiple wafers to train. The fact that the claims at issue cover only the latter  a plurality of known good wafers  is little cause for concern. The mere fact that there is an alternative embodiment disclosed in the [asserted patent] that is not encompassed by [our] claim construction does not outweigh the language of the claim, especially when the court's construction is supported by the intrinsic evidence. TIP Sys., LLC v. Phillips & Brooks/Gladwin, Inc., 529 F.3d 1364, 1373 (Fed.Cir.2008). This is especially true where, as here, other unasserted claims in the parent patent cover the excluded embodiments. See PSN Ill., LLC v. Ivoclar Vivadent, Inc., 525 F.3d 1159, 1166 (Fed.Cir.2008) ([C]ourts must recognize that disclosed embodiments may be within the scope of other allowed but unasserted claims.). Unasserted claim 10 of the parent patent recites a method of inspecting a die on a substrate such as a wafer in any form including [the same list of examples], and comprises the steps of training a model as to a good die by viewing multiple known good dies, and then inspecting unknown quality dies. Claim 10, like the specification sections cited by August Tech, does not recite whether the viewed or inspected dies are on one or more wafers. The inventors chose to draft claims directed to training on and inspecting multiple discrete wafers. The district court's construction is in error so far as it defines a wafer as any portion of a wafer having two or more dies. We construe a wafer as recited in the claims at issue as a thin, discrete slice of semiconductor material with circuitry thereon that is ready for electrical testing having one or more dies. A plurality of wafers means more than one physically distinct wafer. Because the jury was given a flawed claim construction, the verdict of infringement must be vacated. August Tech also argues that even under this construction, Camtek and its Falcon inspection machine infringe the asserted claims. We decline to make this factual finding in the first instance, and instead remand to the district court for a limited trial on infringement with respect to this claim element.