Appeal No. 95-1109
Application 07/917,380
a laser disk according to the output of a tilt sensor mounted
on the pickup," as recited in claims 1 and 4, or to the "laser
disk discriminating means for detecting a data area of said
laser disk," using a tilt sensor as recited in claim 8. Otsubo
does not perform the step of "making a determination that said
disk is a laser disk" in response to a tilt sensor on the
pickup unit when the pickup unit is no longer under the data
area of the disk as recited in method claim 5. The examiner
applies Kusano, which discloses a tilt sensor as part of a
sensor arrangement and concludes that it would have been
obvious "to incorporate the tracking error signal, data signal,
tilt signal, and zero-cross detecting signal sensor mounted on
an optical pick up as taught by Kusano et al. in an apparatus
as taught by Otsubo in order to detect the zero crossing timing
on off-track so as to ensure stable operation of the tracking
servo unit" (Examiner's Answer, page 6). We agree that it
would have been obvious to incorporate the circuitry of Kusano
into Otsubo because it is circuitry for an optical disk player
and Otsubo would be expected to have similar circuitry.
However, the tilt sensor in Kusano is used strictly to measure
tilt and not to discriminate the end of the data domain of an
LD, as claimed. Therefore, even if Otsubo and Kusano were
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