ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,289,877, issued on April 29, was assigned to TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Semiconductor device including unilaterally extending gates and method of forming same" was invented by Yu-Jen Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Wen-Hsi Lee (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Ling-Sung Wang (Hsinchu, Taiwan), I-Shan Huang (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Chan-yu Hung (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A semiconductor device includes: first and second active regions extending in a first direction and separated by a gap relative to a second direction substantially perpendicular to the first direction; and gate structures correspondingly...