Appeal No. 1998-2499
Application No. 08/632,639
element having a width between 1/3 and 1/2 of the width of the
data cylinder.
Since the APA appears to teach away from the claimed
subject matter, the examiner is missing a critical feature of
the instant claims (both independent claims 1 and 11 require
the read element to have a width between 1/3 and 1/2 of the
width of the data cylinder) which is not provided by any of
the applied references. Accordingly, no prima facie case of
obviousness has been provided.
Moreover, since APA teaches away from the claimed subject
matter, we find no basis for combining Moon and APA. Further,
the examiner has provided no convincing rationale as to why
the skilled artisan would have sought to combine the separate
read/write heads of APA with the single head system of Moon.
The examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1, 3, 4, 6, 8,
11 and 12 under 35 U.S.C. 103 is reversed.
REVERSED
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