Appeal No. 1998-0601 Application 08/225,322 It is true that inherency requires that something necessarily be so. It would have been safer for the Examiner to rely on obviousness reasoning rather than inherency. Nevertheless, the limitation of "a selector for selecting the reading drive signal if the error signal is active and otherwise selecting between the reading drive signal and the writing drive signal based on the mode signal" is not in means-plus-function format so as to require specific structure and we find that the function is taught by the combination of the APA and Miura. When the tracking error is inactive, Miura selects between the read and write levels based on the mode signal as further expressly taught in the APA. When the tracking error is active, Miura teaches selecting a decreased power level from a range including the read level using the control signal from 32. Claim 11 does not require more. Even if the control signal in Miura continuously decreased the current instead of using a bi-level switch (no matter how unlikely that possibility may be), eventually it would select a decreased power level, which is all that is required. For the reasons stated above, the rejection of claims 11 and 12 is sustained. - 15 -Page: Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007