Appeal No. 2003-0065
Application 09/491,284
The examiner maintains that spacing the leading edge of a
slider pad from the leading edge of a slider was old and well
known in the art of magnetic head sliders and, therefore, it
would have been obvious to have spaced the leading edge of the
pad from the leading edge of the slider (EA9). The examiner also
repeats the obviousness reasoning of the rejection (EA9-10).
Parent claim 10 does not recite any slider structure other
than the transducer and the pad; for example, it does not recite
a pad attached to a slider. No drawing figure appears to
correspond to this claim. The slider could consist only of the
pad and the head, such as the one-piece slider 16 and head 17 in
Figs. 2 and 3 of Brezoczky. Thus, it is indefinite what slider
structure is being referred to in claim 27. We leave it to the
examiner and appellants to fix this problem. For purposes of the
appeal, we assume that the slider is a separate structure to
which the pad is attached. We also note that claim 27 does not
say in which direction the leading edge of the pad is spaced from
the leading edge of the slider, although this is a matter of
claim breadth, not indefiniteness.
Numeral 104 in Kubo is a leading surface of the slider that
serves as a contact surface. Numeral 40 points to an inclined
edge. The leading surface 104 is spaced from the front edge of
the slider by the length determined by the inclined edge 40.
While Kubo does not show a separate pad attached to a slider
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