Ex Parte Marsh et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMay 26, 201611058972 (P.T.A.B. May. 26, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 111058,972 02/16/2005 15604 7590 05/31/2016 Baker Botts L.L.P. 910 Louisiana Street, One Shell Plaza Houston, TX 77002 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Laban M. Marsh UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE United States Patent and Trademark Office Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 www .uspto.gov ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 2004-IP-013370 9982 EXAMINER BULLOCK, JOSHUA ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2162 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/31/2016 ELECTRONIC Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding. The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication. Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the following e-mail address( es): susan.stewart@bakerbotts.com debie.hernandez@bakerbotts.com tami.day@bakerbotts.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Exparte LABAN M. MARSH and WILBERT JOSEPH CHENEVERT Appeal2014-003988 Application 11/058,972 Technology Center 2100 Before THU A. DANG, CAROLYN D. THOMAS, and DEBRA K. STEPHENS, Administrative Patent Judges. THOMAS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Examiner's final rejection of claims 43---68, all the pending claims in the present application. Claims 1--42 are canceled. We have jurisdiction over the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM-IN-PART. The present invention relates generally to classification and storage of acquired well data. See Abstract. Appeal2014-003988 Application 11/058,972 Claim 43 is illustrative: 43. A system for handling well information, comprising: a sensor associated with a well and to produce sensor data; a memory coupled to receive sensor data and store the sensor data; an electronic storage; and a processor, wherein the processor is configured to perform executable instructions stored in a non-transitory tangible medium, wherein the instructions cause the processor to: receive sensor data from the sensor; determine whether the sensor data is active data, based, at least in part on whether the sensor data is from a current well, and if the sensor data is active data: storage; storing the sensor data in the memory; otherwise, if the sensor is not active data: storing the sensors data in the electronic where the memory is capable of being read at higher speed than the electronic storage. Appellants appeal the following rejections: 1 RI. Claims 43, 46, 47, 49-53, 55, 56, 59, 60, 62---66, and 68 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Harvey (US 6,519,568 Bl, Feb. 11, 2003) and Coram (US 2002/0107835 Al, Aug. 8, 2002); and R2. Claims 44, 45, 48, 54, 57, 58, 61, and 67 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Harvey, Coram, and 1 The Examiner withdrew the rejections of claims 43, 46, 47, 49-56, 59, 60, and 62---68 under 35 U.S.C. § l 12(a) or 35 U.S.C. § 112 (pre-AIA), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement (see Ans. 2). 2 Appeal2014-003988 Application 11/058,972 Poedjono (US 2003/0074139 Al, Apr. 17, 2003). PROCEDURAL HISTORY This application came before the Board in prior appeal 2009-007984. In the prior appeal, the Board affirmed claims 1--4, 6-24, 26-34, and 36-42 on one of the same ground of rejection now before us in the present appeal, i.e., under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Harvey and Coram. Decision dated July 25, 2011 ("Prior Decision"). To the extent that Appellants reiterate arguments previously advanced in the prior appeal and found to be unpersuasive in our Prior Decision, we incorporate these same findings into the present Decision in their entirety by reference herein. We add the following for emphasis and completeness. ANALYSIS Claims 43--45, 48, 50--58, 61, and 63-68 Issue 1: Did the Examiner err in finding that the combined teachings of Harvey and Coram teaches or suggests determining whether the sensor data is active data ... otherwise, if the sensor is not active data, as set forth in claim 43? Appellants contend "Harvey's system does not address the delivery of any data other than real time data, so Harvey has no need (and makes no disclosure of) determining whether the sensor data is active or not, as required by the claim" (App. Br. 9) and "it does not handle any data other than active sensor data" (id. at 10). 3 Appeal2014-003988 Application 11/058,972 The Examiner finds that "Harvey teaches gathering of real-time data, wherein real-time data is 'active data'" (Ans. 3) (citations omitted) and Harvey is [merely] cited to teach 'determination of active data"' (id.) as "Harvey does not explicitly disclose 'if the sensor is not active data ... "'(id. at 4), as Coram is cited to disclose "if the sensor is not active data" (see Final Act. 6). We agree with the Examiner. In other words, the Examiner specifically relies upon Harvey for disclosing determination of active data (see Final Act. 5) and relies upon Coram for disclosing "not active data" (see Final Act. 6). Here, Appellants' contentions fail to address the Examiner's findings regarding Coram. As such, Appellants' arguments amount to arguing the references individually. Specifically, Appellants' arguments do not take into account what the collective teachings of the prior art would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art and is therefore ineffective to rebut the Examiner's prima facie case of obviousness. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981 )("The test for obviousness is not whether the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure of the primary reference; nor is it that the claimed invention must be expressly suggested in any one or all of the references. Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art.") (citations omitted). This reasoning is applicable here because Appellants fail to rebut the Examiner's findings that Coram, not Harvey, teaches storing "not active data" in an electronic storage. In fact, the Examiner concedes that Harvey does not explicitly teach determining between active and not active data (see Ans. 4). Thus, we find unavailing 4 Appeal2014-003988 Application 11/058,972 Appellants' contention that Harvey "does not handle any data other than active sensor data" (App. Br. 10), given that the Examiner relies upon Coram for the other data. Regarding the active data, the Examiner finds, and we agree, that "Harvey teaches gathering of real-time data, wherein real-time data is 'active data' ... Harvey further teaches storage of said data" (Ans. 3) (citations omitted). For example, Harvey discloses "a data delivery system for delivering oilfield data from at least one data acquisition site to a remote delivery site .... in near real time" (col. 4. 11. 22-36). Appellants' contentions fail to distinguish the claimed "active data" from Harvey's "real- time data." As noted in our Prior Decision, "Appellants do not define the term 'active data' in the Specification to limit its meaning. Rather, Appellants describe 'active' somewhat broadly, generally, and in permissive and exemplary terms, which can include, among other examples, data when the corresponding sensor is collecting information or any other criteria" (Prior Decision 4 ). Furthermore, the Examiner finds that Coram discloses determining whether a result set is stored in a cache (i.e., the cache-worthiness of the result set) (see Coram i-f 16). It is the combined teachings of Harvey and Coram that the Examiner is relying on to teach or suggest the claimed "determin[ing] whether the sensor data is active ... otherwise, if the sensor is not active data" limitations. Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner's rejection of claim 43. Appellants' arguments regarding the Examiner's rejection of independent claim 56 and dependent claims 44, 45, 48, 50-55, 57, 58, 61, and 63---68 rely on the same arguments as for claim 43 (see App. Br. 8-15). We, therefore, 5 Appeal2014-003988 Application 11/058,972 also sustain the Examiner's rejections of claims 44, 45, 48, 50-58, 61, and 63-68. Claims 46, 47, 59, and 60 Issue 2: Did the Examiner err in finding that Coram teaches or suggests determining whether sensor data stored in the memory is no longer active data and, if so, identifying the sensor data as not active, as set forth in claim 46? Appellants contend that "Coram does not disclose handling sensor data and does not make any determination of whether sensor data store[d] in memory is no longer active data" (App. Br. 12). The Examiner finds that Coram discloses the aforementioned limitation in paragraph [0016] (see Ans. 4). We disagree with the Examiner. For example, Coram discloses "determining whether a result set corresponding to the informational database request is stored in a cache .... If the result set is not stored in the cache, then the informational database request is sent to a database for processing. A determination is then made whether to add the result set to the cache" (Coram i-f 16). In other words, Coram stores results in either a cache or the database, and if the result set is in the database, determining whether to add such data to the cache. However, the Examiner has not shown, where in Coram's paragraph [0016], it discloses determining whether data stored in the cache is no longer active data and, if so, identifying the data as not active, as required by claim 46. At best, paragraph [0016] of Coram merely discloses adding active data to the cache, instead of determining if the data in the cache is no longer active data. 6 Appeal2014-003988 Application 11/058,972 We are, therefore, constrained by the record before us to find that the Examiner erred in finding that Coram teaches the aforementioned limitation. We, accordingly, do not sustain the rejection of claim 46, or the rejections of claims 4 7, 59, and 60 for similar reasons. Claims 49 and 62 Issue 3: Did the Examiner err in finding that Harvey discloses determining whether the sensor data is from a current run, as set forth in claim 49? Appellants contend that "[t]he cited portions of Harvey do not disclose any consideration of whe[ther] the data is from the current run to determine if it is active data" (App. Br. 12). The Examiner finds that "Harvey discloses real-time data from a sensor or logging tool, wherein this real-time data is indicative that the data is from a current run" (Ans. 5) (citations omitted). We agree with the Examiner. In essence, the Examiner concludes that if Harvey is logging data in real-time, Harvey is necessarily determining that it is looking at a current run. We find that Appellants' contention fails to persuasively rebut this reasonable presumption. Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner's rejections of claims 49 and 62. DECISION We reverse the Examiner's§ 103(a) rejections of claims 46, 47, 59, and 60. 7 Appeal2014-003988 Application 11/058,972 We affirm the Examiner's§ 103(a) rejections of claims 43--45, 48-58, and 61---68. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l )(iv). AFFIRMED-IN-PART 8 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation