Appeal No. 2001-2262
Application 09/006,014
note that a patent granted on this application would expire
before the Ruigrok patent anyway [brief, pages 5-9].
The examiner responds by repeating his assertion that it
would have been obvious to the artisan to modify a single channel
magnetic head so that it was a multi-channel head as taught by
Takino. The examiner also responds that the rejection is made to
prevent an unjustified or improper timewise extension of the
Ruigrok patent [answer, pages 6-8].
We will not sustain this rejection of claim 11. Although
the examiner refers to an improper timewise extension of the
patent, he does not address the fact that a patent granted on
this application would in fact expire before the Ruigrok patent.
Nevertheless, we agree with appellants that there is nothing on
this record which would motivate the artisan to turn the single
channel head of Ruigrok into a multi-channel head. The mere fact
that some single channel heads can be replicated to form multi-
channel heads does not mean that all such single channel heads
can be so modified. We agree with appellants that the particular
single channel head of Ruigrok, which is specifically designed
for single channel use, cannot simply be transformed into a
multi-channel head as proposed by the examiner. The examiner has
not addressed the argument that the specific properties of the
9
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