Appeal No. 2004-1341
Application No. 09/806,220
the appellant and examiner regarding the merits of these
rejections.2
DISCUSSION
Manten, the examiner’s primary reference, discloses a drill
string for use with a rotary impact drilling machine. The string
comprises adjacent drill tubes 1 and 2 joined by a connection
piece 3 having two male threaded collars 3a and 3b which engage
female threaded portions on the opposing ends of the drill tubes.
Manten teaches that the threads should be conical, as opposed to
cylindrical or round, to achieve superior results in terms of
wear resistance, breakage prevention and ease of assembly and
disassembly.
As conceded by the examiner (see page 3 in the answer),
Manten does not respond to the limitation in claim 1 requiring
the crests of the male thread to have a radius of curvature which
is larger than 30% of the pitch of the thread. To overcome this
deficiency, the examiner takes two approaches.
In the first approach, the examiner looks to Jansson’s
disclosure of a percussion drill string comprising adjacent drill
2 The final rejection contains a number of additional
§ 103(a) rejections which have since been withdrawn by the
examiner (see pages 4 and 5 in the answer and page 2 in the reply
brief).
3
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