Appeal No. 1997-3158
Application No. 08/490,553
concludes that it would have been obvious to combine Yamada
and Ju in order to modify Yamada by forming the first ends of
magnetic yokes 2 so as to overlap in a gap area. The
rationale presented by the examiner is that one would form the
yokes to have overlapping ends in Yamada in order to achieve
submicron track widths.
While Ju discloses an overlap of the yokes, or rather the
pole tip portions of the yokes, at the gap, claim 1 requires
that the yokes overlap only at the gap and that they
specifically do not overlap anywhere else. While it may be
that this is the case in Ju, we simply do not know as Ju only
shows a portion of the yokes, i.e., the pole tip portions of
the yokes, and there is no disclosure or suggestion within the
disclosure of Ju that the remaining portions of the yokes do
not overlap. Accordingly, to surmise that these other
portions of the yokes in Ju do not, in fact, overlap, would
require a resort to speculation which is not a proper basis
for a rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103. There is clearly no
disclosure in Ju that anything is achieved by overlapping the
yokes at the gap but requiring no overlap at any other point.
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007