Appeal No. 97-2421
Application 08/202,411
this feature. Still further, we do not understand how the examiner proposes to modify Carteau to use
an L-shaped lever since Carteau uses a wire to raise and lower the head, not a lever that is raised and
lowered while contacting the suspension as recited in claim 19. For all these reasons the rejection of
claim 25 is reversed.
NEW GROUND OF REJECTION PURSUANT TO 37 CFR § 1.196(b)
Claims 17 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Carteau.
Carteau discloses that the head should be lowered from an idle position height H to the hovering
height h at a velocity between a pair of predetermined values because if the velocity is excessive there
is a risk of a head crash, whereas if the velocity is too slow the head is likely to oscillate which may
also cause a head crash (column 4, lines 7-17). Carteau's desired lowering speed is between 8 and
16 mm/sec. (column 4, lines 11-12); appellants' desired lowering speed is between 5 and 15 mm/sec.
(specification, page 50). The difference between Carteau and the subject matter of claim 17 is that
Carteau does not discuss the speed of raising or the relative speed of raising versus lowering. It
would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to raise the head in Carteau at a faster
speed than the head is lowered because the artisan would have been motivated to use the fastest
raising and lowering speeds possible (without a crash) to minimize the access time and because raising
the head does not have the same restrictions on speed as lowering the head because the head is
moving away from the disk. The maximum speed during lowering is limited by the need to gradually
establish a stable air cushion and to prevent the momentum of the head from causing it to crash onto
the disk, two conditions which do not exist during raising. Consider the fairly old example of cuing
- 11 -
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007