Appeal No. 2003-1210
Application No. 09/295,212
This rejection cannot be sustained.
We fully agree with the appellant’s position that the
applied prior art contains no teaching or suggestion for the
above noted combination proposed by the examiner. As correctly
argued by the appellant, Bayh’s electrical connector means (which
the examiner refers to as a “bridging means” in his above quoted
obviousness conclusion) is in a completely different environment
than Kramer’s guard device 10 (which the examiner refers to as a
“bridging means” in his obviousness conclusion). Bayh’s
electrical connector means 45 is disposed within tubing string 20
(e.g., see figure 1), and this tubing string is disposed within a
casing string which is not shown (e.g., see lines 54-58 in column
2). As the examiner seems to appreciate, fluid is directed up
through the tubing string 20 via pump
70 (e.g., see the sentence bridging columns 2 and 3). On the
other hand, Kramer’s guard device 10 is disposed within well
casing 12 for holding drop pipe 11, electrical conductor 17 and
safety rope 18 (e.g., see figure 1). Similar to the tubing
string 20 of Bayh, the drop pipe 11 of Kramer carries water which
is forced through this pipe via pump 15 to discharge line
16 (e.g., see the paragraph bridging columns 1 and 2).
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