Appeal No. 2007-0464
Application 09/964,874
not disclose measuring temperature a number of times and taking responsive action based on the
difference between the measured temperature and the measured temperature immediately
preceding the most recently measured temperature. Answer at page 13, Lines 12-15. For that
feature of the claimed invention, the examiner relies on Kulakowski and alternatively on Takagi.
The examiner’s reading of Kulakowski is incorrect. Kulakowski compares a measured
temperature with a first threshold and also a second threshold. There is no basis to read a
threshold temperature to which a measured temperature is compared as itself a measured
temperature and one measured either at startup of the disk drive as is required by claim 24 or one
measured immediately preceding the most recently measured temperature as is further specified
in claim 25. The portions of Kulakowski cited by the examiner do not describe either the first or
the second threshold value as a measured temperature.
Takagi, on the other hand, does disclose continual measurement of the temperature inside
the optical disk drive near the optical head (FF. 32). The measured values are transmitted to a
control unit which continually determines a temperature change from the time the last control
adjustment was made, and when that difference in temperature exceeds a predetermined value,
steps are taken to make a further adjustment (FF. 33).
The applicant argues that Takagi’s polling of the operating temperature is not the same as
determining the difference between the most recently measured temperature and the measured
temperature immediately preceding the most recently measured temperature. The argument is
misplaced. Precise sameness is not the issue. If it were, then certainly Takagi’s looking at the
difference between the most recently measured temperature and the measured temperature at the
time of the last control adjustment is not precisely the same as looking at the difference between
the most recently measured temperature and the immediately preceding measured temperature.
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