Appeal No. 96-0366
Application No. 07/933,893
THE REJECTION OF THE APPEALED CLAIMS FOR OBVIOUSNESS
In his answer, the examiner refers to Paper No. 7 for a
statement of the obviousness rejection of the appealed claims.
Therein, the examiner contends that the seven “primary
references” applied are anticipatory to the appealed claims
with the exception that the references fail to disclose the
substrate surface “bearing ratio percentage for flat peaks” as
required by the claims. This statement is factually correct
only with respect to the Hitachi reference, since none of the
other “primary references” discloses or relates to hard
magnetic disks of the kind claimed. However, Hitachi
discloses that the surface precision of a hard magnetic disk
may be improved by polishing the surface to produce a disk
having excellent head floating characteristics. See the
translation of Hitachi at page 8. Further, at page 9 of the
translation, Hitachi discloses that surface projections above
the height of 0.15 µm (150 nm) are removed. Accordingly, the
Hitachi magnetic hard disk appears to be representative of a
prior art hard magnetic disk such as disclosed in figure 27 of
appellants’ application (specification, page 15, lines 16 and
17) which inherently has a bearing ratio of
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