Appeal No. 1998-0601
Application 08/225,322
It is true that inherency requires that something
necessarily be so. It would have been safer for the Examiner
to rely on obviousness reasoning rather than inherency.
Nevertheless, the limitation of "a selector for selecting the
reading drive signal if the error signal is active and
otherwise selecting between the reading drive signal and the
writing drive signal based on the mode signal" is not in
means-plus-function format so as to require specific structure
and we find that the function is taught by the combination of
the APA and Miura. When the tracking error is inactive, Miura
selects between the read and write levels based on the mode
signal as further expressly taught in the APA. When the
tracking error is active, Miura teaches selecting a decreased
power level from a range including the read level using the
control signal from 32. Claim 11 does not require more. Even
if the control signal in Miura continuously decreased the
current instead of using a bi-level switch (no matter how
unlikely that possibility may be), eventually it would select
a decreased power level, which is all that is required.
For the reasons stated above, the rejection of claims 11
and 12 is sustained.
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