Appeal No. 97-1398
Application 08/295,225
As for independent claim 2, the new ground of rejection
based on Fujimura in view of Sasaki fails for the same reason as
the rejection based on Sasaki in view of Siddiq: Even assuming or
the sake of argument that it would have been obvious to combine
Sasaki's cleaning leader with Fujimura's cleaning/instructional
tape, it would not have been obvious from these references to
make the leader short enough to prevent it from reaching the
magnetic head. As a result, the rejection of claim 2 is
reversed, as is the rejection of dependent claims 4-6, 11, 13,
14, 28, 38, and 41, which were also rejected as unpatentable over
these two references. The rejections of the remaining dependent
claims (i.e., claims 6-10, 17, and 39) are reversed because the
foregoing deficiency is not cured by the additional references
cited against those claims in the Answer (i.e., Nelson, Nagaoka,
and Kubota).
In summary, the rejection of claims 2-6, 11-14, 17, 28,
30-32, 35, 38, 40, and 41 as unpatentable over Sasaki in view of
Siddiq is reversed, as are the rejection of claims 7 and 8 based
on Sasaki in view of Siddiq and Nelson and the rejection of
claims 9, 10, 17, and 39 based on Sasaki in view of Siddiq,
Nagaoka, and Kubota. The rejection of claims 3, 12, 35, and 40
as unpatentable over Fujimura in view of Sasaki is affirmed. The
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