Appeal No. 1998-0695
Application 08/400,320
Only those arguments actually made by appellant have been
considered in this decision. Arguments which appellant could
have made but chose not to make in the brief have not been
considered [see 37 CFR § 1.192(a)].
We consider first the rejection of claims 1 and 6-8
based on the teachings of Crapo, Elsasser and Tanaka. Claims
1, 6 and 7 stand or fall together [brief, page 5], and we will
consider independent claim 1 as the representative claim for
this group. With respect to claim 1, the examiner cites Crapo
as teaching various features of a disc drive. The examiner
admits that Crapo does not show the labyrinth seal structure
between the flange, the outer race of the upper ball bearing
and the inner surface of the bearing sleeve as recited in
claim 1. The examiner points to Figure 1 of Elsasser and
asserts that Elsasser teaches a labyrinth seal of the type
recited in claim 1. The examiner concludes that it would have
been obvious to the artisan to replace the shaft/hub assembly
of Crapo with the shaft/hub assembly of Elsasser because they
are art recognized equivalents [answer, pages 4-6]. Tanaka is
cited to teach the features of the intermediate flange as
recited in claim 1.
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