Appeal No. 97-1398
Application 08/295,225
discussion of the old and new rejections to the non-allowable
claims. However, in the Supplemental Examiner's Answer (at 1),
the examiner changed his mind, stating under the heading "Status
of Claims" that "[t]he statement in the examiner's answer mailed
May 9, 1996 was incorrect. Accordingly, the statement of the
status of the claims contained in the appeal brief filed
February 8, 1996 is correct." In spite of this change in the
examiner's position, appellants did not file a supplemental reply
brief challenging the examiner's withdrawal of allowability.
Consequently, we will address the patentability of all of
appellants' pending claims. We affirm in part and add a new
ground of rejection of claim 3 pursuant to 37 CFR § 1.196(b).
The invention relates to a cleaning cassette for cleaning
the audio, video, and erase heads, the capstan, and the tape
guides (e.g., rollers and pins) in a rotary head magnetic tape
recording apparatus, such as videocassette recorder or camcorder,
collectively referred to as a VCR (Spec. at 6, lines 12-17; Spec.
at 8, lines 10-17). Referring to Fig. 3, the cleaning tape
consists of a magnetically recordable tape portion 34 connected
to a leader portion 36 by adhesive tape 42. One or both sides of
the leader tape portion 36 carry layers 52 and 54 of
microabrasive dry scrubbing material for cleaning the capstan
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