Appeal No. 95-5142
Application 08/078,917
Hempstead et al. (Hempstead) 4,103,315 July 25,
1978
Claims 1-7 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
obvious over the admitted prior art shown in Appellant's
Figure 1 and described at pages 1-2 of the specification in
view of Hempstead.
Inasmuch as Appellant treats all of the appealed claims as
standing or falling together (Brief at 3), we will
specifically discuss only claim 1.
As evidence of the obviousness of adding an exchange
layer to the prior art device show in Appellant's Figure 1,
the examiner cites Hempstead, which discloses magnetic
read/write heads in which the magnetoresistive film is formed
as a single domain by using exchange anisotropy to bias
magnetic films in a unique direction which is defined during
device fabrication (col. 3, lines 41-47). This is
accomplished either by depositing an antiferromagnetic film
onto a ferromagnetic film in the presence of a magnetic field,
or by depositing a ferromagnetic film onto an
antiferromagnetic film followed by heating and cooling the
films in a magnetic field in order to obtain the required
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