Appeal No. 95-2413
Application 07/936,865
lengths and sizes must be used in an actual design, appellants
have not shown that whatever errors are present in Suzuki are
not also present in their design.
Appellants argue (Br8-9):
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the goal of the
total arc length limitation was known at the time of the
present invention, nothing in any of the prior art cited
by the examiner teaches, suggests or makes obvious how
one could have actually constructed a closed-loop magnet
that achieved that goal. Simply telling the reader to
modify the design of FIG. 9 of Suzuki, et al., using
interpolation to close the gaps, would not attain the
goal. As described above, minor variations in a magnet
shape can result in significant variations in the
resulting erosion profile. Thus, a magnet which is
"almost" the right shape may produce an erosion profile
which is unacceptable and which, therefore, requires
considerable empirical fine-tuning effort to obtain
acceptable results.
There can be no doubt that the goal of the total arc length
limitation was known in view of the discussion of figure 4(a)
and the condition of 'L(r)/r = constant in Suzuki. One of
ordinary skill in the art was instructed to define a closed
loop magnet where this condition is true at all radii. This
could be done by graphical, analytical, or even trial and
error techniques, since no process is recited.
Appellants argue that they were "the first to provide a
clear teaching as to how to construct a mathematically defined
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