Appeal No. 2004-0292
Application 09/726,369
Since it is already recognized in the Specification as a
part of the prior art and separately taught implicitly within the
firmware control of the microprocessor which, in the second
paragraph at page 121 of AHP, controls the actual sector genera-
tion hardware, it appears to us to be clear that the calculation
aspect of disputed clause (a) of representative claim 1 on appeal
and the constructing clause that succeeds it form an entire skip
mask to the extent necessary for a given track since it does so
for the entire disk pack itself. The use of skip mask bit
pointers and the implied skip mask pointer register to the extent
recited in independent claim 16 on appeal is clearly indicated
and noted by the examiner in the Answer in Figure 2 of AHP at the
top of page 122. The microprocessor is again stated in the first
paragraph at page 122 to control the initialization and the
actual data transfer operations.
To the extent appellants argue that there are no tracks per
se recited or noted in AHP, we recognize this from our study of
it. On the other hand, at this point the rule that anticipation
requires that every element of a claim appears in a single
reference accommodates situations where the common knowledge of
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