ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,315,809, issued on May 27, was assigned to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan).

"Via for semiconductor device and method" was invented by Chia-Pang Kuo (Taoyuan, Taiwan), Chih-Yi Chang (New Taipei, Taiwan), Ming-Hsiao Hsieh (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Wei-Hsiang Chan (Hsinchu, Taiwan), Ya-Lien Lee (Baoshan Township, Taiwan), Chien Chung Huang (Taichung, Taiwan), Chun-Chieh Lin (Taichung, Taiwan) and Hung-Wen Su (Jhubei, Taiwan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A structure includes a first conductive feature in a first dielectric layer; a second dielectric layer over the first dielectric layer; and a second conductive featur...