Appeal No. 1997-1162
Application 08/200,455
known in the art. The translation of Voll describes that the
elimination of inner and outer races "causes a higher
positioning exactness since individual seating locations with
their tolerance are eliminated" (translation, page 5,
lines 4-5), which sounds very much like the Examiner's
reasoning of allowing precise alignment. Voll also discloses
that elimination of the inner race by putting a groove on the
spindle allows the spindle to be thicker (translation, pages
4-5). Thus, Voll expressly discloses advantages for a stepped
shaft that provide express motivation for use in a compact
disk drive. We do not rely on the translation in Voll because
it was not relied on during prosecution. Nevertheless, we
maintain that one of ordinary skill in the art of designing
disk drives would have been motivated to use a stepped shaft
spindle because he or she would have had a sufficient level of
skill to recognize the advantages of a stepped shaft from the
drawings in Voll and Fruge. The fact that Voll is a rotating
spindle drive rather than a fixed spindle drive as claimed
does not lessen the obviousness of using a stepped shaft
spindle.
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