Appeal No. 1998-2493
Application No. 08/658,120
1
i.e., “closed,” and this is met by the normal operation of Hamachi loading and playing a
cassette after the door is closed. But the claim recites further that this occurs during one of
2
two alternative states of the recording medium . The recording medium is either being
ejected or it is positioned in the inserting port. While appellants apparently argue in the
reply brief that either of these operations take place during an ejection process, the claim
is not so limited. If this is what was intended, the claim could have recited that “during the
process of ejecting the disk recording medium, the transferring means is responsive to
said signal from the detecting means for immediately loading said disk recording medium
thereinto when it is detected that said console panel is not open and the disk recording
medium is either being ejected or the recording medium is
positioned in said recording medium inserting port, having been ejected.” However, as
written, the claim does not require the second alternative, i.e., the medium positioned in
the inserting port, to be the result of an ejection operation.
Therefore, even though we agree with appellants that Hamachi does not provide for
1We realize that appellants would like to cover situations wherein the door is between open and
closed positions but clearly a door being closed meets the limitation of a door being “not open,” as
claimed.
2The claim is not in the most grammatically correct condition at this point in the claim but our
interpretation of one of two alternative states appears consistent with appellants’ explanation of the
instant invention.
7
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007