Appeal No. 95-5142
Application 08/078,917
in the prior art or that knowledge generally available to one
of ordinary skill in the art would lead the individual to
combine the relevant teachings of the references)." Actually,
Hempstead does provide support for using an antiferromagnetic
exchange film to fix the magnetization of the soft magnetic
layer. Specifically, as noted above, Hempstead forms the
antiferromagnetic/ferromagnetic film pair in such a way as to
obtain the required magnetic spin alignment in the
antiferromagnetic film (col. 5, lines 46-54). However, we are
not persuaded that Hempstead's invention involves or suggests
using an exchange layer adjacent to a soft magnetic biasing
layer, as required to satisfy the claim; rather, Hempstead
uses an exchange layer adjacent to an MR layer. While
Hempstead's antiferromagnetic FeMn layer 28 (Fig. 2) overlies
a soft magnetic NiFe layer 27 that is suitable for use as a
soft magnetic biasing layer, layer 27 is not described as,4
and does not appear to be, a biasing layer. Nor do we believe
that Hempstead can fairly be construed as suggesting that an
4Appellant's specification (at 5) includes among the
material suitable for use as the soft magnetic biasing
material Permalloy, which is an 80:20 NiFe alloy (Hempstead,
col. 11, lines 54-56).
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