Patent 7474505 was granted and assigned to Sony on January, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A magnetic tape medium having superior dimensional stability in the width direction and off-track resistance is provided although having a very high track width in the width direction. As a non-magnetic substrate of a magnetic tape medium in which the track density in the width direction is 50 tracks/mm or more, the off-track margin is 5 μm or less, and the maximum permissible amount of change in dimension in the width direction caused by environment factors is 0.10% or less, a laminate composed of a plastic film and films provided on two surfaces thereof is used, the films being formed of a material selected from the group including a metal, a semi-metal, an alloy, and an oxide or composite formed of the aforementioned material, having a Young's modulus of 7×103 kg/mm2 or more and a coefficient of thermal expansion of 18×10−6/° C. or less.