Appeal No. 2005-1869
Application No. 09/902,051
The examiner points us to column 6, line 55, of Patti, to
support the allegation that Patti does disclose that the filter
circuit responds to the thermal asperity signal “in accordance
with said data rate.” The cited portion of Patti recites that
The programmable thermal asperity recovery circuit
132... provides flexibility thereby allowing
utilization in read channels having potentially
different or varying characteristics (e.g., different
data rates, different causes for the thermal
interference, etc.).
Appellants argue that Patti’s variable resistance circuit
132 chooses resistances to achieve cutoff frequencies for filter
112, but that circuit 132 does not respond to data rates. In
fact, argue appellants, Patti does not disclose any circuit to
determine a data rate and, consequently, there is no way of
adjusting the programmable thermal asperity recovery circuit 102
based on different data rates, as required by the instant claims.
The examiner’s response is that the claimed language, “in
accordance with” is not synonymous with “in response to,” and
that anything that is “in conformity”, or “in agreement,” is “in
accordance,” as claimed. The examiner points out that in the
instant invention, the offset correction circuit is in agreement
with the data rate because the offset correction circuit is
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