Appeal No. 1998-0277
Application No. 08/478,009
having ordinary skill in the art to apply the above teachings as
proposed according to the examiner's rationale to yield the now
claimed method. At this point, we would simply add that the
Lueghamer patent does not overcome the deficiency of the other
applied art. For the above reasons, the respective rejections of
appellants' claims cannot be sustained.
REMAND TO THE EXAMINER
As indicated above, relative to the prior art disclosed in
the background section of appellants' specification, it is very
clear to us that those having ordinary skill in the art, when
appellants' invention was made, well understood that a planar
heater method of joining single linear pipes to one another was
likewise known to be effective in joining double containment
pipes to one another. With the above understanding of one having
ordinary skill in the art in mind, and the prior art knowledge of
a) non-planar heaters for joining branched single pipes, as
evidenced by Windle and of b) the conventional configuration of
angled or branched single and double containment pipes, the
examiner should assess whether one having ordinary skill in the
art would have been motivated to fabricate a conventional
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