Appeal No. 1999-2145 Page 5
Application No. 08/781,605
From these teachings, the examiner concludes that the applied prior art would have
suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art that it would have been obvious to construct the
coiled band disclosed by Reinforcement Digest of the material required by claim 33 and to
utilize it in conjunction with filling depressions in a weakened region of a pipe to restore the
burst strength of the pipe in the manner of the method recited in the claim. The examiner
further points out, in support of this conclusion, that Pipeline Reinforcement, which also
discloses the CLOCK SPRING crack arrestor, states on the last page that the coiled strip
can be used to restore a damaged region of a pipe to its original pressure capabilities.
We do not agree with the examiner’s conclusion, and to appreciate both the
appellant’s invention and the reasons why we have not sustained the rejection, it is
necessary to understand the evolution of the invention, as derived from the appellant’s
specification, the applied references, and the evidence submitted by the appellant in the
Fawley declarations and their accompanying exhibits.
In December of 1985, the appellant filed a patent application directed to crack
arrestors for stopping a propagating ductile fracture in pipes such as those used in
pipelines, which matured into the Fawley patent that has been applied as a reference
against the claims in the present application. The disclosed pipe arrestor was in the form
of a spiral band of an elastic high tensile strength material. It is described in the patent as
being made of a composite material containing high tensile strength fibers arranged
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007