[00:00:00] Speaker 02:
You will hear argument next in number 24, 2100.

[00:00:06] Speaker 02:
Katana, is that how we say it?

[00:00:08] Speaker 02:
Katana Silicon Technologies against Micron.

[00:00:12] Speaker 01:
Thank you, Your Honors.

[00:00:13] Speaker 01:
Good morning.

[00:00:14] Speaker 01:
May it please the Court, Howard Lim for repelling Katana Silicon Technologies.

[00:00:19] Speaker 01:
I'd like to focus this Court's attention on two independent grounds for reversal, either of which compels the same outcome.

[00:00:25] Speaker 01:
First, actually does not require this court to resolve the claim construction dispute at all.

[00:00:30] Speaker 01:
The second goes to the heart of what the patentees actually invented and what the board got wrong when it construed the term adhesion.

[00:00:36] Speaker 01:
Starting with the claim construction independent ground, even under the board's own construction that an adhesion layer means simply a layer that adheres.

[00:00:46] Speaker 01:
the Masavizade reference does not disclose the claimed invention.

[00:00:50] Speaker 01:
And because every single obviousness ground in all three IPRs depends on the Masavizade reference, that alone requires reversal.

[00:00:57] Speaker 02:
Claim 30 of the 806 patents sets out a manufacturing method with... Can I just ask, where in your blue brief did you make the argument that there is no infringement even under the board's claim construction?

[00:01:16] Speaker 02:
No disclosure of the... That there is no... I'm sorry, yeah, I didn't mean infringements.

[00:01:23] Speaker 02:
We're an IPR-led.

[00:01:25] Speaker 02:
I don't remember... Tell me, you said when you began this morning, we disagree with the board's claim construction, but even under

[00:01:34] Speaker 02:
the claim construction adopted, there's no invalidity.

[00:01:39] Speaker 02:
Where is that second argument in your brief?

[00:01:42] Speaker 01:
It's more laid out in detail in our reply brief.

[00:01:45] Speaker 01:
That's not a good enough place.

[00:01:49] Speaker 01:
Yes, but we believe we laid it out in our primary opening brief as well.

[00:01:55] Speaker 01:
But it's really fleshed out in our reply brief.

[00:01:58] Speaker 04:
Where is it in your opening brief?

[00:02:20] Speaker 01:
I don't have the actual citations to the opening brief, where after collating everything, we stated most succinctly in the reply brief.

[00:02:36] Speaker 02:
So maybe start with the claim construction argument then.

[00:02:38] Speaker 01:
Yes.

[00:02:41] Speaker 01:
The claim construction argument is the board's construed adhesion layer as a layer that adheres.

[00:02:48] Speaker 01:
And we believe this construction is so broad that it would encompass any adhesive at any stage of its chemical development applied by any method.

[00:02:57] Speaker 01:
And that is wrong.

[00:02:59] Speaker 01:
And the intrinsic record compels a narrower construction.

[00:03:02] Speaker 01:
The parties agree that adhesion layer is not a common term of art, and the panties coined it.

[00:03:07] Speaker 01:
That makes the specification not just irrelevant, but dispositive.

[00:03:11] Speaker 01:
This court's decision in Phillips is clear when inventors used terms idiosyncratically at context is everything.

[00:03:19] Speaker 01:
And the specification's context is unambiguous in two respects.

[00:03:23] Speaker 01:
First, the specification consistently uses

[00:03:25] Speaker 01:
different verbs for adhesive agents and for adhesion layers.

[00:03:31] Speaker 01:
For adhesive agents, pace, epoxies, coatings, the specification always uses the verb apply.

[00:03:39] Speaker 01:
The specification describes the excessively applied adhesive agent.

[00:03:44] Speaker 04:
What about column four lines 57 to 58?

[00:04:03] Speaker 04:
This is in your description.

[00:04:06] Speaker 04:
Page 710.

[00:04:08] Speaker 04:
I was looking at 710 in the 806 patent.

[00:04:12] Speaker 01:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:04:13] Speaker 01:
Column 4, lines 57 to 58.

[00:04:20] Speaker 01:
You're referring to the passage that says, moreover, in the above manufacturing method, the adhesive agent does not overflow the space between the... Yeah, that is what I'm talking about.

[00:04:29] Speaker 01:
Yes.

[00:04:30] Speaker 04:
I mean, that's the summary of your invention, right?

[00:04:33] Speaker 01:
Yes, the summary of the invention.

[00:04:35] Speaker 04:
And you say that there's an adhesive layer that's put on up above in describing this method of manufacturing, but then you say the adhesive agent does not overflow.

[00:04:46] Speaker 04:
And to me, I read that, and I read it as maybe using the word synonymously or suggesting that the adhesive agent becomes the adhesive layer, one of those two.

[00:04:59] Speaker 01:
We believe the correct reading is actually that there's an absence of an adhesive agent and that's why there's no overflow.

[00:05:09] Speaker 01:
The adhesive agent is not used at all.

[00:05:11] Speaker 01:
It's gone.

[00:05:12] Speaker 01:
That's why it does not overflow.

[00:05:14] Speaker 04:
It's a little weird because it's describing the sentences more over in the above manufacturing method.

[00:05:20] Speaker 04:
The adhesive agent does not overflow and so you're telling me that I should assume from that it means that an adhesive agent is not used.

[00:05:29] Speaker 04:
and that's why it doesn't overflow.

[00:05:31] Speaker 01:
Yes, and if you say, it refers back up to the method of manufacturing and you look at the method of manufacturing and it says forming the adhesion layer on the back of the wafer, but this is saying that the adhesive agent does not overflow the space between.

[00:05:50] Speaker 04:
Okay, I'm just trying to, you just said, you said the specification uses the word adhesive layer consistently throughout

[00:05:58] Speaker 04:
the specification.

[00:06:00] Speaker 04:
And I'm saying here is an example where these things, adhesive layer and adhesive agent, are used either synonymously or at least the adhesive agent

[00:06:13] Speaker 04:
could be interpreted as being part of the adhesion layer.

[00:06:16] Speaker 04:
So I understand your response.

[00:06:18] Speaker 04:
Your response is that I'm supposed to understand from that that the adhesion agent is not being used.

[00:06:24] Speaker 01:
And yes, to clarify, one more point is that I'm referring specifically to the verbs apply and adhere.

[00:06:32] Speaker 01:
They use the verb apply consistently throughout the spec as

[00:06:37] Speaker 01:
as being, whenever an adhesive agent is used, it is applied.

[00:06:43] Speaker 01:
When an adhesion layer is used, it's adhered.

[00:06:46] Speaker 04:
And what does your claim say?

[00:06:49] Speaker 01:
My claim... It says forming, right?

[00:06:53] Speaker 01:
Forming, that's correct.

[00:06:54] Speaker 04:
Did you seek a special interpretation of forming?

[00:06:58] Speaker 01:
No, we did not provide a dictionary definition, but we believe in this context the forming is putting things together and not chemically forming.

[00:07:14] Speaker 04:
But you didn't ask for that interpretation?

[00:07:17] Speaker 01:
No, we didn't ask for that interpretation.

[00:07:24] Speaker 01:
So if I can move on.

[00:07:28] Speaker 01:
So every time adhesive agent is used, the verb apply is used.

[00:07:34] Speaker 01:
But whenever the thermal compression sheet, which is the embodiment of the adhesion layer that is described, the specification consistently uses the verb adhere.

[00:07:46] Speaker 01:
It is adhered to the back of the wafer.

[00:07:49] Speaker 01:
So this distinction is not accidental.

[00:07:51] Speaker 01:
Question.

[00:07:52] Speaker 04:
Is there a difference between adhesion layer and thermal compression sheet?

[00:07:56] Speaker 01:
Adhesion layer is the claim term.

[00:08:00] Speaker 01:
We believe it's broader than just the embodiment thermal compression sheet and it is broader than it is the claim term and it is different from the thermal compression sheet but the thermal compression sheet is the described embodiment that's used throughout the specification.

[00:08:24] Speaker 02:
Key point, do I understand correctly, is that you think that this layer must be a layer before it gets attached.

[00:08:37] Speaker 01:
It must be a layer at the wafer stage.

[00:08:39] Speaker 02:
Yes.

[00:08:40] Speaker 02:
Wait, what do you mean at the wafer stage?

[00:08:42] Speaker 01:
So semiconductors are made from wafers that are round.

[00:08:46] Speaker 02:
Right, but the trouble is, at the wafer stage could still be, after you've smeared a whole lot of paste on it and let it dry, that's still at the wafer stage.

[00:08:57] Speaker 02:
And you say that can't be, that's what you're trying to exclude, right?

[00:09:03] Speaker 02:
No?

[00:09:03] Speaker 01:
No.

[00:09:04] Speaker 01:
At the wafer stage, a layer

[00:09:09] Speaker 01:
A solid pre-formed sheet is adhered.

[00:09:11] Speaker 01:
And the specification, it's the one.

[00:09:15] Speaker 02:
I think we're talking past each other.

[00:09:19] Speaker 02:
My understanding of your argument is that there might conceivably be two ways of having a layer that sticks to

[00:09:32] Speaker 02:
a particular chip or all the chips that are going to be cut out of a wafer.

[00:09:37] Speaker 02:
One is put paste, let it dry.

[00:09:40] Speaker 02:
The other is pick a sheet, like a dryer sheet or something, off the shelf, put it on there.

[00:09:47] Speaker 02:
And you say only that pre-existing sheet, not paste that becomes dry.

[00:09:55] Speaker 01:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:09:55] Speaker 01:
That's absolutely where our position is.

[00:10:00] Speaker 01:
That complete pre-formed sheet is adhered to the back surface of the wafer.

[00:10:06] Speaker 01:
The wafer is then cut into individual chips.

[00:10:09] Speaker 01:
And this goes to the whole purpose of the invention is such that

[00:10:16] Speaker 01:
that there's, to prevent this overflowing.

[00:10:19] Speaker 02:
But why doesn't the patent essentially say that purpose is fulfilled when you do this at the wafer stage, it's all dry, and you don't do the cutting until it's all dry, so that when you do the cutting, there's no overflow of the individual chips that you just cut out.

[00:10:38] Speaker 01:
Because when you use a sheet, there's no drying.

[00:10:42] Speaker 01:
When you use a sheet, it's a solid sheet that's already formed.

[00:10:45] Speaker 01:
There's nothing to be dried.

[00:10:47] Speaker 01:
You just cut it.

[00:10:49] Speaker 04:
What about the fact that the prior art that's relied upon here that uses the paste expressly says that the advantage of it

[00:10:59] Speaker 04:
because it's put on the wafer before it's cut, is that it's quite even.

[00:11:06] Speaker 04:
And thus, it doesn't extend beyond a mounting surface of the die.

[00:11:11] Speaker 04:
I mean, it seems to really disclose the very advantage that you're talking about.

[00:11:16] Speaker 01:
I point you to Appendix 1297, which is Figure 2 of the Masta Vasade reference that you're referring to.

[00:11:26] Speaker 01:
It has a very specific method of the Masta Vasade reference.

[00:11:34] Speaker 01:
And it starts by saying, yes, you coat on the adhesive, right?

[00:11:40] Speaker 04:
I understand.

[00:11:40] Speaker 04:
You're going to point out the cure adhesive step 120.

[00:11:44] Speaker 04:
Yes, and it's important.

[00:11:46] Speaker 04:
I guess I was using the disclosure of the prior art to suggest that

[00:11:54] Speaker 04:
It's not clear from your specification and the part seems to support it that the advantage comes from having a preformed layer as opposed to putting on the adhesive, whether it's a paste layer or a thermo layer, putting it on before you cut.

[00:12:14] Speaker 01:
There is because this adhesive

[00:12:18] Speaker 01:
Move.

[00:12:19] Speaker 01:
It reflows.

[00:12:20] Speaker 01:
That's... Mostafa Zadeh says you have to preheat the lead frame and the diet patch head so the adhesive will reflow.

[00:12:27] Speaker 01:
It has to flow again.

[00:12:28] Speaker 01:
That completely defeats the purpose of the invention.

[00:12:32] Speaker 01:
where there's no flowing.

[00:12:34] Speaker 01:
Just before mounting the chip, the die, individual die, it's been cut out, has to reflow.

[00:12:41] Speaker 01:
And then it cured, is cured.

[00:12:43] Speaker 01:
So it never reaches its final form.

[00:12:45] Speaker 01:
That reflowing is the key problem of Mazda Vasade.

[00:12:49] Speaker 01:
And even though it does say, yes, you're coating it on at the wafer stage, but because it's method of using an adhesive that reflows, that creates the very problem the invention is seeking to solve.

[00:13:02] Speaker 02:
You've you're into your rebuttal time.

[00:13:04] Speaker 02:
So why don't you save the rest and okay?

[00:13:07] Speaker 02:
Thank you for mr. Dufresne

[00:13:29] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honors.

[00:13:30] Speaker 00:
May I please the court?

[00:13:31] Speaker 00:
If I may, I thought I would pick up with the question Judge Taranto was asking about whether the sheet that you can essentially pull off the shelf is what's required by Katana's argument.

[00:13:43] Speaker 00:
I understood it that same way, and it's clear from the blue brief on page 32 that their position is that the adhesion layer must be a fully formed solid layer before being adhered to the wafer chip.

[00:13:53] Speaker 00:
That's, I'm quoting from the brief on page 32.

[00:13:56] Speaker 00:
Now that view is completely inconsistent and conflicts with the structure of the claims in these patents.

[00:14:03] Speaker 00:
And I'm talking particularly about the forming claims, the method claims that require forming the layer on the wafer.

[00:14:10] Speaker 03:
Instead of fixing, they would read the claim to mean fixing a first layer on the back.

[00:14:19] Speaker 00:
That's their position.

[00:14:20] Speaker 00:
They say that that that forming or fixing or applying that's the way they would like to read the client Yeah, essentially putting it on the wafer Applying it applying it And that could be a meaning of forming you could you could form something by putting things together That's true But there's no reason to exclude from forming and there was no construction proposed for forming to exclude the notion of forming on a surface like a layer of frost forming on a window for example That's another common use of the word forming creating

[00:14:47] Speaker 00:
Creating, exactly.

[00:14:48] Speaker 00:
And if the claims were read the way... That's the it of the case.

[00:14:57] Speaker 03:
I mean, if we decide that forming is broader than fixing,

[00:15:03] Speaker 00:
I agree that that is what I find the most persuasive.

[00:15:08] Speaker 00:
I think that's enough to resolve the case.

[00:15:10] Speaker 00:
The board relied on that.

[00:15:12] Speaker 00:
That was intrinsic evidence in the claims.

[00:15:14] Speaker 00:
There's additional intrinsic evidence in the claims that we have to go into with claim two of the 860 patent.

[00:15:19] Speaker 00:
There's also a host of different pieces of evidence in the specification that support the board's construction that it relied on.

[00:15:26] Speaker 00:
And the board also made findings based on the intrinsic evidence, the prior art, and the expert testimony.

[00:15:31] Speaker 00:
They're entitled to deference and also support its construction.

[00:15:37] Speaker 02:
Was anything made of the tense, if that's the right term, of the word adhere?

[00:15:46] Speaker 02:
So it's adhered to as opposed to?

[00:15:50] Speaker 02:
adhering to.

[00:15:51] Speaker 00:
Is your honor talking about the claim language?

[00:15:55] Speaker 02:
Yes, I am.

[00:15:57] Speaker 00:
I don't recall.

[00:15:58] Speaker 02:
I don't remember anybody making anything of this, but it's conceivable that one would use that particular tense of the verb adhere to mean to put together in a sticky way two things that pre-exist in the form that the noun

[00:16:19] Speaker 02:
that the noun indicates so that you'd be having a layer that you then adhere to something else as opposed to a layer that becomes such when you apply something that doesn't start out as a layer.

[00:16:41] Speaker 00:
So to answer your initial question, I don't remember anybody making any arguments based on that word.

[00:16:45] Speaker 00:
I do agree with Your Honor that the tense of that word could include a sense of adhering something like putting a sheet down onto a wafer.

[00:16:55] Speaker 00:
I would submit that it also would equally be appropriate to include and cover a situation where a layer was rolled on or put on there with adhesive and allowed to dry, and then that layer that would be there would also be adhered to the surface.

[00:17:10] Speaker 00:
I think that would be a perfectly natural way to refer to that as well.

[00:17:15] Speaker 00:
Again, it highlights the problem with Katana's arguments in this case.

[00:17:19] Speaker 00:
We have this claim language throughout the claims, throughout the specification, that is perfectly susceptible to reading it, that these claims can cover both types of adhesion layers, both types of mounting media.

[00:17:30] Speaker 00:
And what they're trying to do is shoehorn in here some

[00:17:33] Speaker 00:
Very restrictive negative limitations that would exclude any kind of adhesive that taking any part in this in the formation of an adhesion layer And there's just no basis to do that anywhere in the intrinsic record And that's contrary to the findings of the board on the intrinsic evidence as well If there are no more questions, I would see the rest of my time Thank you

[00:18:42] Speaker 01:
Your honor, just to address the forming, very quickly on forming, the board picked up on our experts' testimony that a layer can be formed through hardening as it's cured.

[00:19:02] Speaker 01:
And if you look at that part, very clearly in the Masa Vazadeh reference,

[00:19:13] Speaker 01:
when hardening and curing, that occurs after the reflowing.

[00:19:19] Speaker 01:
And it's not the claim, claim 30A is very specific that it is, that the forming has to be on the wafer, not on the chip.

[00:19:30] Speaker 01:
So if Masa Vazadeh forms the wafer,

[00:19:37] Speaker 01:
adhesion layer on the chip.

[00:19:40] Speaker 01:
It's already a chip.

[00:19:41] Speaker 01:
The wafer is long gone, so it doesn't meet the claim.

[00:19:46] Speaker 01:
And so that's addressing the the forming issue.

[00:19:51] Speaker 01:
So regardless of what you hold forming means, forming it chemically, Massa Vazadeh says, yes, based on the board's own

[00:20:06] Speaker 01:
finding, which is that, yes, it forms a layer after it hardens by curing.

[00:20:12] Speaker 01:
Well, Mostavazade says the hardening, the forming occurs on the chip when it's in chip form and you cure it at the very last step of the Mostavazade process.

[00:20:28] Speaker 01:
That's not forming on the wafer as required by claim 38.

[00:20:32] Speaker 01:
It's very simple.

[00:20:33] Speaker 01:
It's the language of the claims.

[00:20:41] Speaker 01:
The board also said as to the drying, oh yes, the drying is a layer.

[00:20:47] Speaker 01:
But the Musso Fasada is cleared when it's dried, the layer becomes non-sticky.

[00:20:57] Speaker 01:
The construction the board adopted was a layer that adheres.

[00:21:02] Speaker 01:
So a non-sticky means it cannot adhere.

[00:21:05] Speaker 01:
Layer can be a layer that adheres.

[00:21:07] Speaker 01:
No, we don't believe it cannot.

[00:21:09] Speaker 01:
A non-sticky layer after the drying step cannot be a layer that adheres.

[00:21:15] Speaker 02:
OK.

[00:21:15] Speaker 02:
I think we have the party's arguments.

[00:21:18] Speaker 02:
Yeah.

[00:21:18] Speaker 02:
Thank you so much.

[00:21:19] Speaker 02:
Thanks to all council cases submitted.