Appeal No. 2002-1235
Application No. 08/823,823
While we agree with appellant that the examiner has not
established a prima facie case of obviousness for the appealed
claims, we do not agree with appellant that "[t]he examiner has
not cited any prior art that teaches or suggests covering a
functional area of a medium" (page 1 of Reply Brief, second
paragraph). Example 2 of Takahashi expressly discloses "a
recording inhibition sheet member which is removably attached to
at least cover the recording area of the optical disk memory body
for blocking the recording light, allowing only the reproduction
light to pass through the sheet" (page 4 of translation, third
paragraph). As stated at page 5 of the translation, "this
invention provides a method that removably adheres a recording
inhibition sheet having a filtering function for specific optical
frequencies (recording frequency) at least in the area of the
recording region to inhibit the data overwriting" (first
paragraph). The exemplification of this process can be found at
page 10 et seq. of the translation. Accordingly, based on this
section of the Takahashi disclosure which has not been relied
upon by the examiner nor addressed by appellant, this application
is remanded to the examiner to determine the obviousness of
covering the power calibration area of a disk in the same manner
the recording area of the disk is covered in Takahashi. Since it
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