Appeal No. 2003-0599
Application 09/362,149
insulated from said metal layer by said dielectric layer, and the
second conductive laminate is “free of a spring metal layer” and
comprises a dielectric film (47) and at least one pair of
conductive elements (49) electrically coupled to said first
flexible conductive laminate conductive elements (48). In this
regard, we share appellants’ views as expressed on pages 13-15 of
the corrected brief and, for those reasons, will not sustain the
examiner’s rejection of claim 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second
paragraph.
The next rejection for our review is that of claims 2, 3, 26
and 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over
Simmons in view of McIlvanie. In this instance, we agree with
appellants’ arguments in the corrected brief and reply brief that
neither Simmons nor McIlvanie discloses or teaches a disk drive
suspension comprising a load beam “formed from a single web of
metal” and having a proximal end “fixed directly to an actuator
spindle,” as set forth in both independent claims 26 and 27 on
appeal. As can be readily discerned from Figures 1-3 of the
present application and the more general description thereof in
the specification, one of ordinary skill in the art would have
understood that the load beam (12) of appellants’ disk drive
suspension (10) is a unitary, one-piece structure formed of a
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