Appeal No. 1996-3811
Application 08/188,078
this grouping and, in fact, it simplifies the analysis.
Appellants are not trying to gain an advantage by grouping
unlike claims together. Thus, we stay with Appellants'
grouping.
Obviousness
Appellants argue (Br5, Sec. A) that while Kaminaka is
silent as to the material forming the seedlayer, one of
ordinary skill in the art would presume from Frey's
disclosure that "use of a magnetic seed layer is
conventional in formation of a two-pole thin film inductive
head" (Frey, col. 5, lines 63-65) and from Appellants'
statement that the prior art as of 1993 used magnetic
seedlayers, that Kaminaka's seedlayers are magnetic. Frey's
disclosure that magnetic seedlayers were conventional does
not prove that all seedlayers were magnetic. In fact, the
existence of "conventional" magnetic seedlayers might
suggest that "non-conventional" non-magnetic seedlayers were
known, especially since Frey does not disclose any
non-magnetic seedlayer materials, which suggests that such
materials were known to those of ordinary skill in the art.
However, we have no evidence on this record that
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