Appeal No. 1998-0139
Application No. 08/503,320
Appellants assert Kato does not disclose the particular composition of the
reproducing layer or the combination of a reproducing layer and a recording layer of
claim 1. Further, Kato discloses too many possible alloys to render the claimed
invention obvious. (Brief, pp. 4-8).
The subject matter of claim 1 is directed to a magneto-optical recording medium
comprising a substrate and a bilayer comprising Nd (TbFeCoCr) wherein x is an
x 100-x
atomic percentage greater than 0 and recording layer comprising TbFeCoCr. Kato
discloses the first and second magnetic layers can comprise a variety of elements
including the elements contained in the recording and reproducing layers of claim 1.
(Cols. 2 and 3). Kato’s embodiment 3 describes a magneto-optical recording
composition comprising a first layer containing Nd, Co, Fe and Cr and a second layer
containing Tb, Fe, Co and Pt. Kato’s embodiment 4 describes a magneto-optical
recording composition comprising a second layer containing Tb, Fe, Co and Cr. Kato’s
embodiment 7 describes a magneto-optical recording composition comprising a first
layer containing Nd, Tb, Fe and Co and a second layer containing Nd, Tb, Fe and Co.
The magneto-optical recording composition of embodiment 3 differs from claim 1 in
that the first layer does not contain Tb and the second layer contains Pt instead of Cr.
From our perspective, the idea of forming a magneto-optical recording medium
comprising a first layer containing Nd, Co, Fe, Cr and Tb and a second layer containing
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