Appeal No. 97-1647 Page 16
Application No. 08/321,255
The examiner begins his rejection of claims 7-12 by
admitting that “Owe et al. in view of Murata et al. does not
disclose to use [sic] a sensor to detect the contact between
the disc and the head.” (Final Rejection at 4.) He notes,
“Fechner teaches to use [sic] an acoustic sensor to detect
contact between the disc and the head in the same field of
endeavor for the purpose of alerting the user so that the a
[sic] technician may repair the problem of head to disk
interaction (col. 2).” (Id. at 5.) The examiner ends the
rejection by concluding that it would have been obvious “to
use an acoustic sensor to detect contact between the disc as
taught by Fechner on the system of Owe et al. in view of
Murata et al. in order to alert the user so that the a [sic]
technician may repair the problem of head to disk
interaction.” (Id.)
We find that Owe, Murata, and Fechner fail to teach or to
have suggested the controller as claimed. Claim 7 recites in
pertinent part “a controller coupled to the sensor and the
laser which controls operation of the laser based upon the
sensor output ....” Comparison of the claim language to Owe,
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