Appeal No. 1996-1655
Application 08/036,157
references, and the respective viewpoints of appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of our
review of the record before us, we find that either of the applied references would have taught or
suggested the feature of a support pad having a "well-radiused convex curvature cross-sectional
profile." However, we find that the applied prior art fails to teach or suggest the feature of
representative claim 1 on appeal of a partially thinned support pad.
We find that the applied references to Hatch or Wanlass each fail to individually teach or
suggest at least the feature of a load beam of a given thickness having a support pad being partially
thinned to a thickness less than the thickness of the load beam, as defined in claims 1 and 3 on appeal.
Accordingly, we will reverse the examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1 and 3 on appeal as being
obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
The examiner admits that "Hatch et al ‘103 and Wanlass ‘898 do not expressly show the
support pad partially thinned to a thickness less than the thickness of the load beam" (Answer, page 4),
and then asserts that to thin the support pad of either Hatch or Wanlass would have been obvious. The
examiner’s reasoning for making this modification to the references is that the artisan would have found
it obvious to do so "as a means of optimizing the space taken up by the load arm and reducing the
overall size of the disk drive" (Answer, page 5). In response, appellant rebuts by arguing that "[t]here is
no motivation or suggestion in either reference to partially thin the pad" as claimed (Reply Brief, page
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