Appeal No. 95-4066
Application 07/963,189
The examiner relies on what he characterizes as
"appellants' admissions" in each of his rejections of
appellants' claims. Rejections founded on evidence of what
appellants have conceded to be prior art with respect to their
claimed invention is not without precedent. See In re Nomiya,
509 F.2d 566, 570-71, 184 USPQ 607, 611 (CCPA 1975).
Accordingly, we shall first determine the scope and content of
"appellants' admissions."
As "appellants' admissions", it appears that the examiner
relies on appellants' Figure 1 of the drawings which is
characterized by appellants as "an example of the structure of
a typical writable storage medium such as a compact disk."
(page 3, lines 34 through 36 of the specification). In Figure
1 there is described a layered structure comprising a plastic
substrate; an organic dye recording layer; a metal reflector
layer, typically gold; and, a protective overcoat, such as
lacquer (page 1, lines 16 through 24 of the specification).
Appellants allege to have discovered that the problems
associated with a gold reflector layer may be mitigated by
substituting for gold a silver-palladium alloy with a
palladium content of from 1 to 15 atomic percent (claims 1, 4,
5
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