Appeal No. 97-1628
Application No. 08/442,610
in the manner proposed, and that even if such were proper, the
result would not be the claimed invention.
We will not sustain the rejection. Our reasons for
arriving at this conclusion follow.
Broding, the primary reference, teaches interrogating the
materials installed in the borehole, and does so by the use of
a transducer that emits both shear waves and compression
waves. Broding so positions the transducer as to insure that,
while shear waves are present in the casing, they are
converted to compression waves as they exit the casing and
proceed into the next material. These waves are converted
back to shear waves when they reenter the casing. In the
Broding system it is only compressional waves that are the
means for detecting anomalies outside of the casing. See
column 2, line 44 et seq. and column 7, lines 5-26.
While set forth in different manners in the twelve
independent claims before us, each of the appellants’ claims
requires that there be a shear portion of acoustic energy that
is reflected from an interface of at least one material
situated between the borehole casing and the formation in
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