Appeal No. 2005-2750
Application 09/460,221
Regarding claim 26 there is no antecedent basis for “N synthetic
optical systems”.
Regarding claim 30 the phrase “the N converging grating couplers”
lacks proper antecedent basis.
August 17, 1992, Office action at 2-3.
Claim 21 was rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶ 4 for failing to further limit claim
11, on which it depended. Id. at 3.
Finally, the examiner rejected claims 1 and 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) for
anticipation by the above-mentioned Nishiuchi et al. patent, which discloses apparatus
for writing to and reading from optical discs having substrates with any of a number of
different thicknesses. Referring to Figure 1, the apparatus employs, inter alia, a single
objective lens (8), a single laser diode (3), a single beam splitter (6), and a pair of
photodetectors (14, 15). The tracking and focusing positions of the lens are controlled
by a voice coil 17 responsive to a controller 16. In order to accommodate optical discs
having either of two different thicknesses, a plate actuator 11 responsive to controller 16
moves a transparent plate (9 in Fig. 1; 22 in Fig. 5(b)) into the light path when the
thinner of the two discs is present. Various plate configurations are shown in Figures
2(a)-(d). A disc shape detector (10 in Fig. 1) is used to detect the thickness of the
optical disc.
The examiner read claims 1 and 6 on Nishiuchi as follows:
The reference shows an optical recording and reproducing
apparatus comprising N converging means (elements 8 and 9 of Fig. 1
10
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