Appeal No. 1997-3473
Application No. 08/331,684
protective layer, and does not serve to shape anything.
Claim 10 requires even more consideration of the
specification since “means for” language is used in the claim.
As argued by Appellants:
The means forming a cavity must be construed in
light of the corresponding structure, material or
acts described in the specification and equivalents
thereof. In re Donaldson, 29 U.S.P.Q.2d (BNA) 1845,
1848 (Fed. Cir. 1994). Thus, the cavity-forming
means includes the cavity layer 64 and its aperture,
substantially containing the top magnetic pole piece
44. (Brief-page 9.)
Thus, we will not sustain the 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)
rejection of claims 1 through 6, 8, 10 through 12 and 14.
The Examiner has rejected claims 7, 9 and 13 under 35
U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Kawabe as recited for the 35
U.S.C.
§ 102(b) rejection, taking official notice of the “seed layer”
being “notoriously old and well known in the art”. We note
that Appellants have not contested the Examiner’s position on
the seed layer, nor made specific comments on this rejection.
However, since the Examiner’s basic premise, that Kawabe
meets all the limitations of the independent claims is not
convincing, and since claims 7, 9 and 13 inherently contain
9
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