Appeal No. 96-1346
Application 08/122,611
tracking control and track discrimination pits 70, 71 disposed in the servo control area for
discriminating between odd and even tracks. The examiner indicates that each wobble pit is between
two tracks and is shared by both tracks as a wobble pit on an outer circumferential side of one of the
adjacent recording tracks and as a wobble pit on an inner circumferential side of the other of the
adjacent recording tracks which is situated at an outer circumferential side of the one of the adjacent
recording tracks. The examiner’s answer acknowledges that Sugiyama does not teach pairs of wobble
pits with no information therebetween as information area 69 is positioned between wobble pits 7 and
8. However, the examiner asserts that Verboom teaches such an arrangement of wobble pits.
Appellant contends that the combination of Sugiyama and Verboom fails “…to result in an
optical disk having an adjacent pair of wobble pits and a track discrimination pit in the same servo
control information area.” It is urged that “Sugiyama relies on a determination of whether the pre-pit
pair 7 or pre-pit pair 8 precedes the other for generating a track inversion signal (see col. 10, lines 26-
41) and not on a track discrimination pit”. Appellant asserts that pre-pits 70 and 71 of Sugiyama
cannot function as the track discrimination pits of the claimed invention and only give header information
including even or odd track identification after tracking is achieved.
Inasmuch as appellant does not challenge the prior art rejection of claims 2, 7 and 9-19 with
any reasonable specificity, these claims fall with apparatus claim 1 .2
2Although appellant separately argues method claim 2 in the main brief at the paragraph bridging pages 5 and
6, the argument is in effect the same as made with respect to apparatus claim 1.
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