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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Step 1: Yes. Claim 1 recites “a method for characterizing a geological formation comprising: obtaining data…providing the data…and receiving, as an output, at least one parameter characterizing the geological formation, wherein the at least one parameter characterizing the geological formation represents a value of one or more rock properties of the geological formation”, which is a process.
Step 2, Prong One: Judicial exception? Yes.
Recited steps “obtaining…providing…and receiving…” in claim 1 which fall within the groupings of abstract ideas enumerated in MPEP 2106.04(a)(2), i.e. mental process and mathematical calculation. The steps encompass “observation, evaluation, judgement and opinion” which can be performed in the human mind.
They are all data gathering.
Step 2, Prong Two: Practical application? No.
The recited steps when viewed alone or in combination are data gathering and are not performed by any particular machine. The recited steps are recited at a high level of generality and amounts to no more than mere instructions to implement the abstract idea without any details how the outcomes are accomplished.
The recited step “receiving, as an output, at least one parameter…of the geological formation” insignificant extra-solution activity. Even when considered in combination, it represents mere instructions to apply the exception and insignificant extra-solution activity.
The claims when viewed as a whole does not apply the abstract idea with, or by use of, any particular machine, nor does it affect a real-world transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing. Instead, the claim appears to monopolize the abstract idea itself for any purpose or in any practical application where it might conceivably be used. It can cover anything that could be done in the field of generating a merged survey dataset. The recited limitations can also be viewed as nothing more than an attempt to generally link the use of the judicial exception to the technological environment of survey data. It should be noted that because the courts have made it clear that mere physicality or tangibility of an additional element or elements is not a relevant consideration in the eligibility analysis, the physical nature of these components does not affect this analysis. See MPEP 2106.05(I) for more information on this point, including explanations from judicial decisions including Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 573 U.S. 208, 224-26 (2014).
The claim does not appear to represent an improvement to the functioning of a computer or other technology (MPEP 2106.05(a)).
Therefore, the claim when viewed as a whole or in ordered combination does not integrate the
At Step 2B, the claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception, for reasons that are analogous to the discussion of additional elements at Prong 2.
Claim 12 recites a medium and claim 17 recite a system which do not offer a meaningful limitation beyond generally linking the apparatus to a particular technological environment, that is, implementation via a processor. In other words, the device claim is no different from the method claim 1 in substance; the method claim recites the abstract idea while the apparatus claim and medium claim recites generic components configured to implement the same abstract idea. The claims do not amount to significantly more than the underlying abstract idea.
Claims 2, 5, 6, 9, add limitations which is data merely extending the abstract idea without adding any additional elements.
Claims 3 and 4 add limitations which are data gathering merely extending the abstract idea without adding any additional elements.
Claims 7, 8, 10, 11, 13-16, and 18, add limitations which are mathematical concepts merely extending the abstract idea without adding any additional elements.
Claims 19 and 20 add limitations which is data merely extending the abstract idea without adding any additional elements.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Craddock et al. (WO 2020185716) (submitted by Applicants) (Hereinafter “Craddock”).
Regarding claims 1, 12, and 17, Craddock discloses a method for characterizing a geological formation comprising:
obtaining data (data 222) characterizing concentrations of a set of one or more elements in the geological formation based at least in part on at least one measurement of the geological formation (see Pars. 33 and 34);
providing the data characterizing concentrations (Pars. 51-57) of the set of one or more elements in the geological formation as an input to a nonlinear mapping function (see Pars. 48,49, 56, 57 for mapping function);
and receiving, as an output, at least one parameter characterizing the geological formation, wherein the at least one parameter characterizing the geological formation represents a value of one or more rock properties of the geological formation (see Pars.70-73 and 75-82 for output and formation porosity and formation property).
Regarding claim 2, Craddock discloses wherein the geological formation is selected from a group consisting of a rock sample or an earth formation surrounding a borehole (Par. 84).
Regarding claim 3, Craddock discloses wherein the at least one measurement of the geological formation is selected from a group consisting of: X-ray spectroscopy, atomic absorption spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, mass spectroscopy, neutron activation, and combinations thereof (Par. 85).
Regarding claim 4, Craddock discloses wherein the at least one measurement of the geological formation is derived from spectroscopy of gamma rays induced by neutrons (Par. 79).
Regarding claims 5 and 20, Craddock discloses wherein the at least one parameter characterizing the geological formation is selected from a group comprising: matrix grain density, matrix apparent thermal neutron porosity, matrix apparent epithermal neutron porosity, matrix hydrogen index, matrix permittivity, matrix thermal-neutron absorption cross section, matrix fast-neutron elastic scattering cross section, matrix photoelectric factor, matrix permeability, cation-exchange capacity of the matrix, electrical conductivity or resistivity of the matrix, matrix chemical elements, matrix heat capacity, matrix enthalpy, matrix thermal conductivity, matrix reactivity rates with an acid, matrix reactivity rates with respect to carbon dioxide, capacity for injection of carbon dioxide into the matrix, elastic moduli or other mechanical properties, and combinations thereof (Pars. 82-86).
Regarding claims 6 and 19, Craddock discloses wherein the set of one or more elements in the geological formation comprises at least one of: Si, Al, Ca, Mg, K, Fe, Na, Ti, P, Mn, S, Sr, Gd, B, Cl, C, O,orH (Pars. 5 and 6: atomic elements).
Regarding claim 7, Craddock discloses wherein the nonlinear mapping function comprises an artificial neural network (Abstract; Pars. 37, and 44-47).
Regarding claims 8, Craddock discloses wherein the nonlinear mapping function comprises a nonlinear regression (Par. 6) or classification technique (Par. 62) of machine learning selected from a group comprising: a support vector machine, a decision tree, an extended neural network architecture that may comprise a recurrent network, a long-short-term memory (LSTM) network, an attention model, and combinations thereof (Pars. 37, 44, 47).
Regarding claim 9, Craddock discloses wherein the data characterizing concentrations of the set of one or more elements in the geological formation comprise indirect elemental concentration data (Pars. 34-37, 43, 48).
Regarding claim 10, Craddock discloses wherein the nonlinear mapping function comprises at least one activation function configured to introduce nonlinearities into the nonlinear mapping function (Pars. 53, 62).
Regarding claim 11, Craddock discloses wherein the nonlinear mapping function comprises at least one function that enables a determination of uncertainty on the at least one parameter characterizing the geological formation (Pars. 64-66: determine uncertainty estimation).
Regarding claim 13, Craddock discloses wherein the nonlinear mapping function is derived from a minimization of a cost function given a set of data comprising: input data, output data, uncertainties in the input data, missing data, and data of different fidelities as captured by their uncertainties (Pars. 41, 60).
Regarding claim 14, Craddock discloses wherein the cost function is selected from a group comprising: a mean squared error function, a least squares error function, a maximum likelihood error function, a mean absolute error function, and a cross- entropy function (Par. 87).
Regarding claim 15, Craddock discloses wherein the cost function comprises a regularization function configured to optimize accuracy and robustness (Par. 60).
Regarding claim 16, Craddock discloses wherein the cost function is configured to account for both aleatoric uncertainty and epistemic uncertainty (Par. 53).
Regarding claim 18, Craddock discloses wherein the nonlinear mapping function comprises a Bayesian Neural Network (BNN) is configured to account for both aleatoric
uncertainty and epistemic uncertainty (Pars. 53 and 65).
Conclusion
Gau et al. (USPAP. 20210231827) (submitted by Applicants) discloses an earth formation traversed by a borehole is investigated. A borehole tool having a neutron source and a photon detector is located in the borehole and used to obtain photon scatter information in or about the borehole. A chemical element located in a region in or about the borehole is quantified by using the photon scatter information and at least two different spectral standards for that element (Abstract; Pars. 24-30).
Banzarov et al. (USPAP. 20200326452) (submitted by Applicants) discloses systems and methods for measuring formation properties in down-hole operations are provided. The systems and methods include generating, at a neutron source, neutrons that are emitted into a downhole formation (302), registering, at a detector, photons generated by chemical constituents of the downhole formation (304), measuring a response of the photons registered at the detector (306), transforming, with a computing system, the measured responses of the photons registered at the detector into thermal neutron capture probabilities (308), and transforming the thermal neutron capture probabilities into weight concentrations of the chemical constituents of the downhole formation (312) (Abstract; Pars. 24-42).
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/PHUONG HUYNH/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2857 September 19, 2026
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