Appeal No. 96-0775
Application 07/990,769
inductive write head and a magnetoresistive read head which
includes biasing means. It is the examiner's position that the
magnetic heads of both Mowry and Tanabe "will inherently exhibit
the claimed read head magnetic center, read head physical center,
and write head physical center positional relationships" during
the operation of the magnetic heads. It is appellants' belief
(Brief, page 15) that:
[A]n accidental achievement of a product or process
does not constitute proper anticipation. A true
accident is never fully understood and gives no
assurance that the same result can be achieved by
others at a later time (emphasis in original).
The bias sources in Mowry and Tanabe will indeed move a read
head and a write head with respect to each other, but the
specifically claimed offset amounts and positional relationships
certainly "cannot be said to be 'the natural result flowing from
the operation as taught'" in each of the references. See In re
Oelrich, 666 F.2d 578, 581, 212 USPQ 323, 326 (CCPA 1981).
Accordingly, we agree with appellants that inherency may not be
established by probabilities or possibilities. The anticipation
rejections of claims 2, 3, 9 and 10 based upon Mowry and Tanabe
are reversed.
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