Appeal No. 96-1901
Application 07/925,790
claims, the prior art applied against the claims, and the respective views of the examiner and the
appellant as set forth in the Answer and the Brief. We have evaluated the rejections on the basis that
the examiner bears the initial burden of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness (see In re
Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993)), which is established when
the teachings of the prior art itself would appear to have suggested the claimed subject matter to one of
ordinary skill in the art (see In re Bell, 991 F.2d 781, 783, 26 USPQ2d 1529, 1531 (Fed. Cir.
1993)).
The appellant’s invention is concerned with managing the removal of flexible well pipe from a
well bore. We shall focus our detailed analysis on independent claim 2, which is representative of the
invention. This claim is directed to the combination of a flexible well pipe, a well pipe hoisting means,
actuation means for rotating the hoist means, and mounting means for mounting the hoisting means and
the actuation means over the well. The well pipe hoisting means comprises
opposed, circular discs carried on an axle, each of said discs having convex, pipe-
engaging surfaces frictionally engaged with said flexible well pipe . . . wherein said
flexible well pipe is bent between and wrapped over the convex, pipe-engaging
surfaces to be frictionally engaged therewith and thereby pulled upwardly by the
hoisting means upon actuation of the actuation means.
It is the examiner’s position that all of the structure recited in claim 2 is disclosed by Parola, except for
the circular discs, which are taught by Haines, and that it would have been obvious to
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