Appeal No. 97-3345
Application 08/332,936
having ordinary skill in the art for making this modification
would have simply been to
obtain the expected benefits of a known alternative uniform
diameter pipe configuration, as evidenced by the teachings of
Sweeney (Figs. 4 and 5) and St. Onge (Figs. 5, 7 and 8; column
4, lines 62 through 67 and column 5, lines 40 through 43).
For this reason, the rejection of claim 14 is determined to
be appropriate.
As to claims 33 and 34, we conclude that the
applied art would have been reasonably suggestive of the
content of claim 33, but not of claim 34.
A reading of the Sweeney document (Fig. 6) reveals
to us that it would have been clearly suggestive of a
technique (column 6, lines 24 through 51) for pushing pipe
sections together which uses a C-clamp 34 (clamp on right side
of Fig. 6) configured to pass over a male connector and engage
one end of a first tubular member 2N, as required by claim 33.
7
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