Appeal No. 1998-0261
Application No. 08/438,319
The rejection of Claims 2 through 4 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Schwarz is set forth on pages
4 and 5 of the Answer. Appellants contend that the examiner has used impermissible hindsight, in
particular in failing to show how one skilled in the art would have been motivated to provide
“asymmetrically” offset leads. (See Brief, pages 10 and 11.)
The “asymmetric” design of the leads is described at, for example, the second paragraph of
page 5 of appellants’ specification. As appellants point out, “the Examiner has not cited any reference
that discloses or illustrates magnetic heads with leads from the read and write elements.” (Brief, page
10.) We agree with appellants that the evidence provided by Schwarz alone is not sufficient to
establish a case of prima facie obviousness of the subject matter of Claim 2. Since Claims 3 and 4
depend from Claim 2, we do not sustain the Section 103 rejection of Claims 2 through 4.
CONCLUSION
The rejection of Claims 1 and 5-8 is affirmed.
The rejection of Claims 2-4 is reversed.
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