Appeal No. 1999-2283
Application No. 08/690,525
nitrides. As indicated at page 3 of the English translation
of JP ‘517, the increasing thickness of the abrasion-resistant
layer toward the sides of the head structure, coupled with the
fact that the gap is not clogged with the abrasion resistant
material, provides wear protection and improved performance
without damaging the recording medium. The SU ‘151 reference,
on the other hand, rather than providing a relatively thick
two layer of wear-resistant material, attacks the wear
protection problem by providing a single layer of coverage
material (predominately aluminum oxide) and extending it into
the transducing gap. In our view, these structural teachings
are so opposite in approach that any motivation to combine
them must have resulted from an improper attempt to
reconstruct Appellant’s invention in hindsight. In our
opinion, any suggestion to extend the two layer wear resistant
protective layers of JP ‘517 into the transducing gap as
recited in the appealed claims could only come from
Appellants’ disclosure and not from the teachings of the
applied references.
We have also reviewed the IBM 333 and IBM 1199 references
applied by the Examiner to address the specific recitation in
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