Appeal No. 96-1841
Application 08/101,324
page 1, describes a structure having equipotential strips
for biasing the MR material so as to linearize the
reproduction. In our opinion, one of ordinary skill in the
MR sensor art would have recognized that the structure in
Kuijk '748 could be substituted as one of the "variety of
means" to bias the MR element in Smith. Appellant does not
argue why such a substitution of one well-known biasing
structure for another would have been nonobvious to one
having ordinary skill in the MR sensor art. In addition, we
refer to the discussion of Krounbi, infra, for its teaching
of using alternate biasing techniques.
We also agree with the examiner's statement that
"[a]lternatively, it would have been obvious to a person
having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention
was made to provide the MR head of Kuijk ['748] with a
hard-magnetic layer and spacer as taught by Smith" (EA5).
The two bias fields provide separate functions. One skilled
in the MR art would have sought to use the hard-magnetic
material 42 and insulating layer 40 as taught in Smith with
a MR head for the described purpose of suppressing
Barkhausen noise.
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