Appeal No. 1997-3478
Application 08/397,648
BACKGROUND
The subject matter on appeal is directed to a disc
cassette for use in a disc player, wherein the cassette
housing has an opening for disc recording/playback which has a
sliding shutter for exposing or concealing the disc (see
appellants’ Figure 11 and page 1 of the specification). As
indicated in the specification (see page 3), when several disc
cassettes are stacked for playing in succession (Figures 13
and 14), the shutter of one disc suffers from the problem that
it gets hung on the disc below it (see Figures 15 and 16).
To overcome this problem with conventional disc cassettes,
appellants provide a disc cassette as shown in Figure 5 which
has an angled back wall 3a’ at the opening 3 of the disc
housing, thus preventing disc cassettes stacked on each other
from hanging up (e.g., see Figures 6 and 7). Thus,
appellants’ invention of a disc housing having an angle back
wall, as recited in claims 1 to 6 on appeal, provides an
important advantage over prior art disc cassettes.
As further discussed, infra, we find that the applied
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