DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Election
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group II (claims 14-20) in the reply filed on 1/16/2026 is acknowledged. Backfill claims 21-33 have also been examined.
Drawings
Figure 21 is objected to because its graph title has "RMAN" instead of "RAMAN" (note [0111] of the description).
Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. The figure or figure number of an amended drawing should not be labeled as “amended.” If a drawing figure is to be canceled, the appropriate figure must be removed from the replacement sheet, and where necessary, the remaining figures must be renumbered and appropriate changes made to the brief description of the several views of the drawings for consistency. Additional replacement sheets may be necessary to show the renumbering of the remaining figures. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
No objection is made on this point, but applicant should confirm whether both instances of "1.00 m OR 1.55 m" in figure 28A should be "1.00 µm OR 1.55 µm".
Specification Objection
The specification is objected to because line 2 of [0043] reads "EFM" instead of "EBF".
Claim Objections
Claims 25-33 are objected to because their preambles are missing "system" after "DAS" (see claim 24).
Claim 25 is further objected to because the first instance of "or" should be "of".
Claim 31 is further objected to because it recites "Grattings" instead of "Gratings".
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
Claim 30 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. New claim 30 recites a "wavelength division multiplexer (WDM) pump", but no such element was described in the original disclosure. To the extent that claim 30 was intended to refer to embodiments such as shown in figs. 14-15 or 20, it is noted that the pump 1100 (or 1500) is distinct from the WDMs 1000 and 1300.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claims 23 and 30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claim 23 is indefinite because there is insufficient antecedent basis for "the signal strength". No signal strength is mentioned by ancestor claims 21 or 14 (claim 21 mentions a signal strength monitoring module, not a signal strength per se).
Claim 30 is indefinite because there is insufficient antecedent basis for "the proximal circulator". No circulator was designated as a "proximal" circulator in ancestor claim 24.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim 24-28 and 31-33 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2016/0259083 A1 in view of US 2023/0033128 A1.
Claim 24: '083 discloses a distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) system comprising (see mainly figs. 1 and 4):
an interrogator 100 (320 in fig. 4);
a fiber optic cable (the section S1 of 104) attached to the interrogator at a first end;
one or more circulators 106b attached to a second end opposite the first end of the enhanced fiber optic cable; and
a downhole sensing fiber (any section S2 through S5) attached to the circulator 106b. Downhole arrangement is depicted in fig. 4.
'083 states in the last two sentences of [0012] that the sensing fiber (i.e. 104) "can be optimized to generate more optical backscatter to increase the signal-to-noise ratio of the backscatter signal received by the interrogator" and "can have a higher backscatter coefficient than the optical fiber that carriers [sic] the optical signal transmitted by the interrogator", but does not appear to specifically disclose that the fiber optic cable is an enhanced fiber optic cable formed at least in part by a fiber profile.
'128 discloses an enhanced fiber optic cable 106 formed at least in part by a fiber profile. The profile includes for example a density N(z) of scatterers which varies according to distance along the fiber (see e.g. figs. 2-4). '128 discusses how to design such a profile for example at [0023]-[0026].
A person of ordinary skill in the art could have employed an enhanced fiber optic cable having a fiber profile as exemplified by '128 as the sensing fiber in the '083 DAS system with predictable results and a reasonable expectation of success, at least since both references recognize that increasing backscattering can be beneficial and that an enhanced backscattering fiber is applicable to a downhole environment (see e.g. fig. 4 of '083 and fig. 1 of '128). Accordingly it would have been obvious to such a person before the effective filing date of claim 24 to do so, motivated for example by a desire to improve the performance of the system such as by increasing the signal-to-noise ratio for backscattered signals as mentioned in '083 [0012].
Claim 25: The interrogator further comprises one or more Raman Pumps ([0021]).
Claim 26: The interrogator comprises one or more lasers ([0019]; note also [0031] and the tunable laser 516 of the fig. 5 variant).
Claim 27: The interrogator comprises one or more receivers 114.
Claim 28: The interrogator is configured to receive backscattered light from one or more sensing regions (such as S1 ... S5 as labeled in fig. 1).
Claim 31: The DAS system further comprises one or more Fiber Bragg Gratings 110a ... 110d.
Claim 32: A transmitter 112 is connected to the enhanced fiber optic cable.
Claim 33: The transmitter is disposed in a Brillouin Distributed Temperature Sensing (B-DTS) system ([0021], [0030]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 14-22 are allowed. Claim 29 is objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of base claim 24. As to claim 14, the prior art of record does not disclose or suggest a method which includes all the detailed steps set forth in the context of forming an enhanced fiber optic cable. As to claim 29, the applied references are silent as to amplifiers and thus do not disclose or suggest an optical amplifier assembly disposed within the enhanced fiber optic cable.
Contact Information
Examiner: 571-272-2360
Examiner's direct supervisor: 571-272-2397
Official correspondence by fax: 571-273-8300
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from Patent Center. Should you have questions about Patent Center, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free).
/Michael Stahl/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2874