Appeal No. 2001-1702
Application 09/186,429
the applied prior art references, and to the respective positions
articulated by appellants and the examiner. As a consequence of
our review, we have made the determinations which follow.
We turn first to the examiner's rejection of claims 1,
4, 7, 8, 10, 13, 14 and 16 through 19 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Borseth in view of Berne and Carlsen.
Although we might agree with the examiner that it would have
been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of
appellants’ invention to provide the vessel of Borseth with
stabilizers like those of Berne so as to further enhance the
vessel’s roll stability in heavy seas when underway or when on
site and tethered by its turret mechanism (500) to risers from
subsea wells, we must agree with appellants’ assessment in the
brief and reply brief with regard to the examiner’s further
attempted use of Carlsen to somehow modify the resulting vessel
and stabilizer arrangement arrived at by combining Borseth and
Berne. Like appellants, we see the examiner as merely picking
and choosing from the prior art only to the extent it might
support his determination of obviousness, while ignoring aspects
of the prior art that provide a full appreciation of what the
prior art actually would have suggested to one of ordinary skill
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