Appeal No. 1996-1626
Application No. 07/642,848
We refer to the Final Rejection (Paper No. 20), the Examiner's Answer (Paper No. 31), the
Supplemental Examiner’s Answer (Paper No. 34), and the Second Supplemental Examiner’s Answer
(Paper No. 40) for a statement of the examiner's position and to the Brief (Paper No. 30), the Reply
Brief (Paper No. 33), the Supplemental Reply Brief (Paper No. 41), and the Second Supplemental
Reply Brief (Paper No. 43) for appellants’ position.
OPINION
The examiner contends that EPO ‘512 discloses an optical disk having a plastic body
“consisting essentially of” polycarbonate and fluorescent coloring material. (Answer, page 3.)
Although “pits” as claimed are not disclosed by the reference, the examiner takes notice that pits were
well known “for address signal and/or synchronizing signal.” (Id. at 3-4.) The examiner further
contends that arriving at the claimed weight percent of the coloring material, and optimizing for an
acceptable bit error rate (in respect to appellants’ Claims 9 and 10) would have been routine in the art.
(Id. at 4-5.) The examiner concludes that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious to a
person having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made.
Appellants submit two separate arguments in rebuttal: (1) EPO ‘512 does not disclose or
suggest an optical disk having a fluorescent dye; and (2) the language in independent claims 1 and 10,
setting forth that the disk body is formed of a material “consisting essentially of” polycarbonate resin
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