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 .
DETAIL ACTION
Notice to Applicant(s)
This application has been examined. Claims 1-17 are pending.
The prior arts submitted on October 04, 2024 and September 11, 2025 have been considered.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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) A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, nowwitstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1, 2, 4-9, 11-14, 16 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over MacDonald et al. (6,206,108) in view of Smith (2017/0274333).
With respect to claim 1, MacDonald et al. disclose a system for measuring the rheology of drilling fluid used in a borehole having an annulus (see at least figure 1; column 6, lines 46-65), the system includes one or more microchip sensors configured to traverse at least a portion of the annulus along with the drilling fluid to thereby measure pressure and temperature as functions of depth or time in said portion (see at least the abstract; figure 3A; 3, lines 14-43); and a rheology analyzer comprising a computing platform, including a processor and a memory, the rheology analyzer configured to implement a viscosity mapper, the viscosity mapper operable to receive said pressure and temperature measurements (see at least figures 1, 10A, 11A, 11B; column 3, lines13-33).
MacDonald et al. do not explicitly disclose the limitation of applying a Poiseuille's formula to determine a mapping of rheological properties of the drilling fluid. However, such formular is well known and taught in at least paragraphs 0041 and 0048 of the Smith reference. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the invention to incorporate the teaching of Smith into the system of MacDonald et al. with a reasonable expectation of success in order to provide the system with the enhanced capacity of determining more accurately a mapping of rheological properties of the drilling fluid by application the known Poiseuille’s formula into account.
With respect to claim 2, MacDonald et al. disclose that the viscosity mapper is further configured to receive one or more of drilling fluid flow rate, equivalent shear, annulus radius and distance between different microchips to apply to the modified Poiseuille's formula (see at least figure 11B; column 5, lines 39-59; column 6, line 66 to column 7, line 14).
With respect to claim 4, MacDonald et al. disclose that the one or more microchip sensors each comprise at least one magnetometer to detect a position of each of the plurality of microchip sensors against the depth of the annulus (see at least column 8, lines 18-29; figure 5).
With respect to claim 5, MacDonald et al. disclose that the one or more microchip sensors each comprise at least one accelerometer to detect a position of each of the plurality of microchip sensors against the depth of the annulus (see at least column 16, lines 8-44; column 23, lines 1-9).
With respect to claim 6, MacDonald et al. disclose that the mapping of rheological properties of the drilling fluid further comprises fluid flow speed and viscosity of the drilling fluid inside the annulus (see at least the abstract; column 5, lines 39-59).
With respect to claim 7, MacDonald et al. disclose that the plurality of microchip sensors further comprise a recovery mechanism for receiving the said pressure and temperature measurements from the microchip sensors for delivery to the viscosity mapper (see at least figures 3A, 3B; column 5, lines 21-58).
With respect to claims 8, 9, 12-14 and 17, the limitations of these claims have been noted in the rejections above. They are therefore considered rejected as set forth above.
With respect to claims 11 and 16, MacDonald et al. disclose that delivering one or more microchip sensors along with the drilling fluid into the annulus occurs continuously during an in-situ drilling process to provide a semi-continuous data stream from the annulus (see at least figures 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 7, 10A, 10B).
Claims 3, 10 and 15 are 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 the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
Claims 1, 2, 4-9, 11-14, 16 and 17 are rejected. Claims 3, 10 and 15 are objected.
The following references are cited as being of general interest: Arzte et al. (6,412,337), Ye et al. (11,085,285), Cooper (2003/0029640) and Kumar (2013/0118733).
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July 14, 2026
/TAN Q NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3661
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