Appeal No. 1999-2285
Application 08/826,277
taken from. In this art, however, each physical change in the
suspension assembly results in a plurality of effects on the
overall operation of the assembly. The artisan must consider
each of these effects on the assembly when making a
modification to a known assembly. The examiner’s finding that
a thinning of arms in the height direction would have been
obvious in view of the thinning of arms in the width direction
is based on nothing more than pure speculation that no
differences would result from such a modification. Even if
this conjecture by the examiner were proven to be true, which
has not happened, the examiner has still failed to explain why
the artisan would have been motivated to make this change so
as to arrive at the claimed invention. The fact that an
equivalent result could be achieved in a proposed modification
does not make the modification obvious unless the prior art
suggests the desirability of this modification. There is no
suggestion in the applied prior art to thin gimbal arms in the
height direction as set forth in each of the claims on appeal.
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