Detailed Action
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
IDS
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on April 15, 2024 is being considered by the Examiner.
Drawing
The drawing filed on April 15, 2024 is accepted by the Examiner.
Specification
The lengthy specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
Claim rejection – 35 U.S.C. §101
35 U.S.C. §101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
In reference to claims 12-16: the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The instant claims do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the claim is directed to a machine-readable storage medium, since the claim interpretation affects the evaluation of such claims in which the courts have indicated “…that claims to a "machine-readable medium" were not to a statutory category. In Mentor Graphics, the court interpreted the claims in light of the specification, which expressly defined the medium as encompassing "any data storage device" including random-access memory and carrier waves. Although random-access memory and magnetic tape are statutory media, carrier waves are not because they are signals similar to the transitory, propagating signals held to be non-statutory in Nuijten. 851 F.3d at 1294, 112 USPQ2d at 1133 (citing In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 84 USPQ2d 1495 (Fed. Cir. 2007)). Accordingly, because the BRI of the claims covered both subject matter that falls within a statutory category (the random-access memory), as well as subject matter that does not (the carrier waves), the claims as a whole were not to a statutory category and thus failed the first criterion for eligibility.
Therefore, one way to come around such issue would be to modify the machine-readable storage medium to “a non-transitory machine-readable medium” would make it statutory.
Allowance
Claims 1-11 and 17-20 are allowed. The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
In reference to claims 1 and 17: Iranpour (U.S. Patent No. 8,947,976, hereon Iranpour) discloses generating multiple seismic sweep sequences and acquiring corresponding measurements in response to the sweep sequences. The frequency spectra of each measurement typically contain energy related to the detected main event as well as harmonic energy. For purposes of improving the overall signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the measured seismic data, the measurements are processed to suppress, or attenuate, the harmonic content, and as described herein, the harmonic attenuation is significantly aided by the manner in which the sweep sequences are generated. More specifically, the sweep rates of the seismic sweep sequences are purposely varied to distribute the harmonic energy in the measurements in a manner that facilitates removal of the harmonic energy (see Iranpour, Abstract). The system determine optimum sweep rates for sweep sequences, generates sweep sequences, vary sweep rates of sweep sequences to cause corresponding acquired measurements to have harmonics that are time-shifted relative to each other, acquire seismic measurements and process measurements to suppress harmonic distortion including using time-shifted of harmonics caused by varied sweep rates to suppress harmonic energy in composite measurements (see Iranpour, Fig. 4).
The instant application differs in that it “ attenuating a fundamental order harmonic signal of the ground sweep and attenuating a given harmonic signal by: correlating the given harmonic signal of the ground sweep with the recorded seismic data; autocorrelating the given harmonic signal of the ground sweep; finding and selecting a matching time between the autocorrelated given harmonic signal and the given harmonic signal correlated with the recorded seismic data; decorrelating the given harmonic signal of the ground sweep with the recorded seismic data based on the matching time to generate a decorrelated signal; and subtracting the decorrelated signal from the recorded seismic data,” in combination with the rest of the claim limitations as claimed and defined by the Applicants.
The remaining claims depend on their respective base claims and include further limitations.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Wei et al. (U.S. Patent No. 8,909,480) discloses a vibrator-coupled ground filter that improves seismic data recorded during a seismic operation. This filter is based on a ground model that takes into consideration the vibrator system, the coupling system between the baseplate and captured ground, and the coupled ground system.
Hegna (U.S. Patent No. 9,001,618) discloses a system for attenuating noise in seismic signals detected in a marine seismic streamer. Further, the system comprise seismic detectors positioned in the streamer and interconnected to form a plurality of wavenumber filters, with each of the wavenumber filters attenuating signals within a range of wavenumbers.
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/ELIAS DESTA/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2857
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