Case: Patents/Obviousness (P.T.A.B.)

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board determined that challenged claims of Yangtze Memory Technologies Company Ltd.'s patent that relates to a word line contact structure including a staircase structure having a conductor layer disposed over a dielectric layer with a barrier layer are unpatentable as obvious over prior art, in an inter partes review by Micron Technology Inc. The board said that the challenged claims are obvious over prior art that relates to providing a semiconductor substrate including a peripheral region, that describes a nonvolatile memory device including a carbon-doped silicon nitride, and that describes a nonvolatile memory device.