Appeal No. 1999-0565
Application 08/700,526
used to teach the plurality of support members. There is no
reason why the material of the support member of the admitted
prior art would have been changed when making the proposed
modification.
Appellant’s third argument is that the modification
proposed by the examiner would not have been obvious to a
person of ordinary skill in the art [brief, page 6]. We find,
however, that the examiner has properly established a prima
facie case of the obviousness of claim 1.
Appellant’s fourth argument is that there is no
suggestion that a plurality of support members with high wear
resistance and high lubricity could be used to support a disk
on the inner periphery without the need for other supporting
members on the outer periphery or a continuously formed
support member on the inner periphery [brief, page 7]. As
noted above, the examiner has properly pointed out that the
presence of support members on the outer periphery of the disk
in Takahashi does not detract from the teachings of the inner
periphery support members. Claim 1 does not preclude such
outer periphery support members as an additional teaching of a
reference. Takahashi still teaches the plurality of support
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