Ex Parte Wassermann et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardNov 30, 201712170573 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 30, 2017) Copy Citation United States Patent and Trademark Office 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 APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 12/170,573 07/10/2008 Ingolf Wassermann TEL4-44346-US(INT0019US2) 1326 44639 7590 12/04/2017 CANTOR COLBURN LLP- BAKER HUGHES INCORPORATED 20 Church Street 22nd Floor Hartford, CT 06103 EXAMINER BOMAR, THOMAS S ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3676 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/04/2017 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): usptopatentmail@cantorcolbum.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte INGOLF WASSERMANN and JOSE I. ALONSO ORTIZ Appeal 2017-002383 Application 12/170,573 Technology Center 3600 Before JENNIFER D. BAHR, MICHELLE R. OSINSKI, and BRANDON J. WARNER, Administrative Patent Judges. OSINSKI, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Ingolf Wassermann and Jose I. Alonso Ortiz (“Appellants”)1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1—3, 9, 10, 14—16, and 18—21.2 We have jurisdiction over the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM-IN-PART. 1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Baker Hughes Incorporated. Appeal Br. 1. 2 Claims 4—8, 11—13, and 17 are cancelled. Appeal Br. 10-11 (Claims App.). Appeal 2017-002383 Application 12/170,573 THE CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER Claims 1, 14, and 18 are independent. Claim 1 is reproduced below and is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal. 1. A method of canceling noise in a logging or measurement while drilling system, comprising: acquiring at least one signal in the system, the at least one signal indicating pressure, flow, gravity, or magnetism; predicting at least one deterministic component of the at least one signal from past signal values of the at least one signal indicating the pressure, the flow, the gravity, or the magnetism using linear prediction based on periodicity of the at least one deterministic component; and subtracting the at least one predicted deterministic component from the acquired at least one signal. EVIDENCE The Examiner relied on the following evidence in rejecting the claims on appeal: Schultz US 2002/0148646 A1 Oct. 17, 2002 REJECTIONS I. Claims 14—16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as being directed to patent-ineligible subject matter.3 Ans. 2. II. Claims 1—3, 9, 10, 14—16, and 18—21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by Schultz. Final Act. 4—5. 3 This was a new ground of rejection introduced in the Examiner’s Answer. Ans. 2. 2 Appeal 2017-002383 Application 12/170,573 OPINION Rejection I In responding to the Examiner’s new ground of rejection of claims 14—16 under 35U.S.C. § 101, Appellants do not present any argument contesting the rejection, but, rather, state that they “withdraw these claims from appeal.” Reply Br. 2. However, the Board’s rules provide that “ja]n appeal, when taken, is presumed to be taken from the rejection of all claims under rejection unless cancelled by an amendment filed by the applicant and entered by the Office.” 37 C.F.R. § 41.31(c). Appellant s have not filed an amendment to cancel claims 14—16, and, thus, the claims remain pending in the application, and the rejection of these claims is before us on appeal. In view of Appellants’ failure to provide any argument directed to this ground of rejection, we summarily sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 14—16 under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as being directed to patent-ineligible subject matter. Rejection II The Examiner finds that Schultz discloses all of the limitations of independent claims 1, 14, and 18, including “acquiring at least one signal in the system ([0090] discloses a signal in the downhole system), the at least one signal indicating pressure, flow, gravity, or magnetism ([0186] discloses the signal to be transmitted may be any type of signal, including pressure).” Final Act. 4. The Examiner also finds that Shultz discloses “predicting at least one deterministic component (the periodic noise, [0090]) of the at least one signal from past signal values of the at least one signal. . . ([0090], beginning at line 20 describes past values of the signal are used to predict future signal values in advance).” Id. According to the Examiner, the pressure signal described in paragraph 186 “will 3 Appeal 2017-002383 Application 12/170,573 necessarily go through the adaptive filtering [described in paragraph 90], as one of the main goals of Schultz is to remove the unwanted noise from a downhole signal for transmission to the surface.” Ans. 3. Appellants argue that “[t]he Examiner errs in asserting that noise cancellation (used by the Examiner to refer to the claimed predicting and subtracting) is performed on a signal that indicates pressure.” Appeal Br. 5— 6. In particular, Appellants assert that “[a] pressure sensor is not among the sensors discussed at paragraph [0108] of Schultz as being used in the adaptive signal processing to detect drill bit failure.” Id. at 6. According to Appellants, the pressure signal disclosed by Shultz “relates to [a] method of signaling a surface operator but does not relate to [a] method of detecting drill bit failure [(for which Schultz discloses the use of the adaptive filtering technique)], as implied by the Examiner.” Id. at 7 (citing Schultz 1183). An Examiner’s factual finding regarding what a reference discloses must be supported by a preponderance of the evidence. See In re Caveney, 761 F.2d 671, 674 (Fed. Cir. 1985) (“preponderance of the evidence is the standard that must be met by the PTO in making rejections”). In order to satisfy this standard, the evidence must demonstrate that it is more likely than not that the alleged facts are actually true. See Bosies v. Benedict, 27 F.3d 539, 542 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (the preponderance of the evidence standard requires the finder of fact to believe that the existence of a fact is more probable than its nonexistence). Shultz discloses adaptive signal processing used to remove unwanted noise from some signals obtained by drill bit sensors. Shultz 190. In particular, Shultz discloses using sensors to collect data from a drill bit, and feeding data signals into an adaptive filter, which predicts future signal 4 Appeal 2017-002383 Application 12/170,573 measurements using past signal measurements. Id. 1100. “The difference between the predicted sensor readings and the actual sensor readings is used to compute a prediction error,” which is then “used to detect probable bit failure.” Id. 100, 101. According to Shultz, downhole “[sjensors might include temperature, acceleration, or any other type of sensor that will be affected by a bit failure.” Id. 1108. The Examiner finds that Schultz “discloses transmission of other signal information to the surface, including, but not limited to, pressures.” Ans. 3 (citing Schultz 1186). Shultz discloses that “changes in sensor readings which do indicate failure are reported to the operator through variations in downhole pressure.” Shultz 1109. Namely, “[i]f a failure is detected[,] a port is opened[,] which causes a drop in the surface pump pressure” that “can easily be seen by the surface operator, serving as a warning that a failure is in progress in the bit.” Id. 1183; see also 1186 (disclosing that a valve can be “used to ‘transmit’ binary encoded data by alternately shifting between open and closed valve positions thereby causing corresponding low and high surface flowing pressures which can be observed at the surface”). In other words, although Shultz discloses using pressure as a type of signal to alert a surface operator, Shultz is silent as to whether noise- cancelling adaptive filtering (i.e., equivalent to the claimed predicting and subtracting steps) is applied to this pressure signal. Although it may be possible that adaptive filtering is applied to this pressure signal as the Examiner proposes, it appears equally possible that adaptive filtering is not applied to this drop in pressure that merely serves as a warning to a surface operator of downhole bit failure. The Examiner has not established a finding 5 Appeal 2017-002383 Application 12/170,573 supported by a preponderance of the evidence that Shultz discloses applying the adaptive filtering technique to the pressure signal for alerting an operator of bit failure described in Schulz. Regarding the disclosure of Schultz, one of ordinary skill in the art can only speculate as to whether a pressure signal would be subject to adaptive filtering to remove noise. In this regard, the Examiner relies on a speculative finding that the pressure values used in Schultz's warning system would necessarily be filtered to remove noise, and such speculation is insufficient to support the anticipation rejection under review. For the foregoing reasons, we are persuaded that the Examiner erred in finding that Schultz discloses all of the limitations of independent claims 1, 14, and 18, and we do not sustain the rejection of these claims under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by Schultz. We also do not sustain the rejection of claims 2, 3, 9, 10, 15, 16, and 19—21, which depend therefrom. DECISION The Examiner’s decision to reject claims 14—16 under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as being directed to patent-ineligible subject matter is affirmed. The Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1—3, 9, 10, 14—16, and 18— 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by Schultz is reversed. 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 6 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation