Appeal No. 1998-2591 Page 7
Application No. 08/636,304
We begin by noting the following principles from
In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed.
Cir. 1993).
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. Section 103, the
examiner bears the initial burden of presenting a
prima facie case of obviousness. In re Oetiker, 977
F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir.
1992).... "A prima facie case of obviousness is
established when the teachings from the prior art
itself would appear to have suggested the claimed
subject matter to a person of ordinary skill in the
art." In re Bell, 991 F.2d 781, 782, 26 USPQ2d
1529, 1531 (Fed. Cir. 1993) (quoting In re Rinehart,
531 F.2d 1048, 1051, 189 USPQ 143, 147 (CCPA 1976)).
With these principles and finding in mind, we consider the
examiner's rejection and appellant's argument.
At the outset, we observe that the examiner fails to map
the exact and complete language of the claims to the teachings
of the references. He instead alleges, "Takayama et al (US
5,296,976) disclose a rotary head magnetic
recording/reproducing apparatus having a plurality of
recording heads for writing a plurality of tracks on a tape; a
plurality of playback heads for reading a plurality of
recording tracks on a tape; the playback heads having a track
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