Appeal No. 2002-1212
Application No. 09/349,745
The Examiner asserts the invention of Coffey differs from the claimed invention in
that there is no express disclosure of a seed layer containing NiFeCr. (Answer, p. 4). To
remedy this deficiency, the Examiner relies on Kanai. According to the Examiner, Kanai
discloses “a MR sensor having a pre-seed Ta layer (12a) is part of a seed layer also
having a NiFeCr (12c) seed layer under a MR sensor layer structure.” (Answer, p. 4).
The Examiner concludes “one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to
furnish the MR sensor assembly having a seed layer under the MR sensor layers as shown
in Coffey et al ‘725 with the seed layer being made of NiFeCr as shown by Kanai ‘323
because it would have allowed further abatement of noise in the head by allowing a
marked decrease in the anisotropic magnetoresistive effect.” (Answer, Paragraph
bridging pages 4 and 5).
Appellant argues that the free layer 33 of Coffey serves a different function and
has different magnetic properties than the antiferromagnetic NiMn layer 13 of Kanai.
Appellant argues that there is no reason to believe that the seed layer(s) of Kanai would
provide Coffey with a noise reduction. Appellant specifically states “the two-layer
structure 12 of Kanai et al. is specifically tailored to seeding layers of NiMn (col. 1 lines
18-19) and NiMn alloys (col. 5 lines 47-50), but nowhere does Kanai et al. teach or
suggest that it could be applied to seeding any other alloy class. As described above, both
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