ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,279,415, issued on April 15, was assigned to SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS Co. Ltd. (South Korea).

"Method of fabricating semiconductor memory device having protruding contact portion" was invented by Minsu Choi (Incheon, South Korea), Myeong-Dong Lee (Seoul, South Korea), Hyeon-Woo Jang (Suwon-si, South Korea), Keunnam Kim (Yongin-si, South Korea), Sooho Shin (Hwaseong-si, South Korea) and Yoosang Hwang (Yongin-si, South Korea).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Disclosed are a semiconductor memory device and a method of fabricating the same. The device includes a substrate including an active pattern with doped regions, a gate electrode crossing the a...