Appeal No. 1997-3742
Application 08/405,561
determination of obviousness, the court must answer whether
one of ordinary skill in the art who sets out to solve the
problem and who had before him in his workshop the prior art,
would have been reasonably expected to use the solution that
is claimed by the Appellants.
We disagree with the Examiner that the advantages of
modifying Cooper’s stator, rotor, and coils with the
micromotor of Ahn in the area of magnetic drives were known to
one of ordinary skill in the art. Cooper is concerned with a
disk file of reduced size by putting discrete and separate
components together. More specifically, Cooper in col. 6,
lines 56 and 57 discloses that a ring of rotor magnets is
attached to the rim of each disk. However, Cooper is silent
with regard to an integrated and one-piece disk and rotor
combination. Ahn teaches a magnetic micromotor formed on a
silicon wafer using micromachining process. Ahn on page 1,
col. 1 further indicates that such micromotors are useful in
biomedical applications without making any reference to other
applications such as storage devices.
We fail to find any suggestion or teaching to use Ahn’s
micromotor in combination with Cooper’s data storage device
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