Appeal No. 1997-3923
Application 08/212,203
and thus has failed to make out a prima facie case of obviousness with respect to claim.
We agree with appellants’ argument (see Brief, page 9) that one of ordinary skill in the art,
having only the applied references to Edel and Lee before him/her, would not have found it obvious to
determine a maximum actuator driver current, combine that maximum current with a nominal current to
establish a scale factor, scale a profile velocity using the scale factor to find a demand velocity, and then
output a resultant correction signal to the actuator driver. Thus, we cannot find that the invention
recited in representative claim 1 would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art. We also
agree with appellants’ assertion (see Brief, page 14) that Edel’s quadratic equation involving an average
acceleration factor ([(K /M) ]/[(K /M) ]) fails to teach or suggest appellants’ generation of a
f MES f NOM
demand velocity which is based on a maximum current and represents a scaling of the profile velocity
used to reduce seek time as claimed. We are in agreement with appellant that "[b]oth Edel [’633] and
Lee [’230] are completely silent with regard to the maximum current that can be supplied by the
actuator driver to the actuator coil" (Brief, page 17), and that "there is nothing in Edel [’633] or Lee
[’230] to suggest measuring the maximum current the actuator driver can supply during a seek as
required by claim 1" (Brief, page 18).
Because we find that the salient features (e.g., determining maximum current, employing a
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