Appeal No. 97-3469
Application 08/188,427
all require a rotating recording medium having at least an
inner track and an outer track. The rejection is over Mowry
and Mowry has a number of tracks between the inner track and
the outer track. To the extent the examiner focusses on just
one track, this interpretation does not meet the language of
the claims. The examiner has not shown how the claimed
subject matter is anticipated by or obvious over Mowry.
The examiner states that "having the read gap within the
'shadow' of the write gap has been determined to be a well
known design goal in order to prevent crosstalk between the
tracks" (EA8; see also EA6). This fact has not been
established by the examiner to be well known and is not
discussed in Mowry; however, it might be inferred to be true
from appellants' disclosure and the fact that appellants have
not challenged this statement. Assuming, arguendo, that
having the read gap in the write gap shadow was a well-known
goal, the examiner has not established that decreasing the
read gap width was a known or obvious way to accomplish the
goal. We recognize that independent claims 1, 6, and 11
merely recite the result of having the read gap (means for
reading) within the shadow of the write gap (means for
- 12 -
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007