HALLIBURTON ENERGY SERVICES, INC.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Nov 27, 2020

2020001265 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 27, 2020)

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.
14/781,423 09/30/2015 Burkay Donderici 164.2013-IP-080762 U1 US 5338
138627 7590 11/27/2020
Gilliam IP PLLC (Halliburton)
7200 N. Mopac
Suite 440
Austin, TX 78731
EXAMINER
CORDERO, LINA M
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2857
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/27/2020 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):
uspto@gilliamip.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte BURKAY DONDERICI, LUIS EMILIO SAN MARTIN, and
JUNSHENG HOU
____________

Appeal 2020-001265
Application 14/781,423
Technology Center 2800
____________

Before ROMULO H. DELMENDO, JEFFREY R. SNAY, and
JANE E. INGLESE, Administrative Patent Judges.

INGLESE, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant1 requests review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the
Examiner’s final rejection of claims 1–41.2 We have jurisdiction under 35
U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.

1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to the “applicant” as defined in 37
C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant identifies Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. as the
real party in interest. Appeal Brief filed April 22, 2019 (“Appeal Br.”) at 3.
2 Final Office Action entered November 28, 2018 (“Final Act.”) at 1.
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CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
Independent claim 1 illustrates the subject matter on appeal, and reads
as follows:
1. A method for obtaining information indicative of casing-
corrected formation properties, comprising:
positioning a well logging tool within a borehole in a
subterranean geologic formation;
inducing via an electrode array of the well logging tool at
least one of a voltage and a current in the formation using the
well logging tool;
receiving a raw measurement at one or more monitor
electrodes of the well logging tool corresponding to the at least
one induced voltage and current; and
calculating the casing-corrected formation properties
with casing interference removed using the received raw
measurement and an inversion process;
wherein inversion process includes measuring a
difference between the received raw measurement and
modeled measurements,
wherein a weighting is associated with the
received raw measurement, the weighting being based on
a depth of the well logging tool at which the received raw
measurement is measured with respect to a casing
termination point, and
wherein the weighting indicates a level by which
the received raw measurement affects inversion results of
the inversion process; and
determining a model indicative of the casing-
corrected formation properties based on the difference.
Appeal Br. 15, 18–19 (Claims Appendix) (emphasis and spacing
added).
The remaining independent claims on appeal—claims 19, 23,
28, 32, and 33—recite subject matter similar to claim 1, including
calculating or obtaining casing-corrected formation properties with
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casing interference removed using received raw measurement and an
inversion process. Appeal Br. 5–9.
REJECTION
The Examiner maintains the rejection of claims 1–41 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 101 as directed to a judicial exception without significantly more in the
Examiner’s Answer entered October 3, 2019 (“Ans.”).
FACTUAL FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS
Upon consideration of the evidence relied upon in this appeal and
each of Appellant’s contentions, we reverse the Examiner’s rejection of
claims 1–41 under 35 U.S.C. § 101, for the reasons set forth in the Appeal
and Reply Briefs, and below.
35 U.S.C. § 101 states that “[w]hoever 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.” According to the Supreme
Court, “[p]henomena of nature, though just discovered, mental processes,
and abstract intellectual concepts are not patentable, as they are the basic
tools of scientific and technological work.” Mayo Collaborative Servs. v.
Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66, 70–72 (2012) (quoting Diamond v.
Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 185 (1981) (quoting Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S.
63, 67 (1972)). “And monopolization of those tools through the grant of a
patent might tend to impede innovation more than it would tend to promote
it.” Id.
As stated in Alice:
Accordingly, in applying the § 101 exception, we must
distinguish between patents that claim the building blocks of
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human ingenuity and those that integrate the building blocks
into something more, thereby transforming them into a patent-
eligible invention. The former would risk disproportionately
tying up the use of the underlying ideas, and are therefore
ineligible for patent protection. The latter pose no comparable
risk of pre-emption, and therefore remain eligible for the
monopoly granted under our patent laws.
Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208, 217 (2014) (internal quotation
marks and citations omitted). In Alice, the Court extended a framework that
had been used in Mayo for distinguishing claims pre-empting laws of nature,
natural phenomena, and abstract ideas from claims amounting to patent-
eligible applications of those concepts. As stated in Alice:
First, we determine whether the claims at issue are directed to
one of those patent-ineligible concepts. If so, we then ask, what
else is there in the claims before us? To answer that question,
we consider the elements of each claim both individually and as
an ordered combination to determine whether the additional
elements transform the nature of the claim into a patent-eligible
application. We have described step two of this analysis as a
search for an “inventive concept”—i.e., an element or
combination of elements that is sufficient to ensure that the
patent in practice amounts to significantly more than a patent
upon the ineligible concept itself.
Alice, 573 U.S. at 217–18 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
The USPTO published revised guidance on the application of § 101.
2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. 50
(Jan. 7, 2019) (“2019 Guidance”). Under Step 1 of the Guidance, as revised,
we determine whether the claimed subject matter falls within the four
statutory categories. Under the 2019 Guidance, as revised, we then look to
whether a claim recites:
(Step 2A, Prong 1) any judicial exceptions, including certain
groupings of abstract ideas (i.e., mathematical concepts,
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certain methods of organizing human activity such as a
fundamental economic practice, or mental processes); and
(Step 2A, Prong 2) additional elements that integrate the
judicial exception into a practical application (see MPEP
§§ 2106.05(a)–(c), (e)–(h)).
2019 Guidance 54–55.
Only if a claim: (1) recites a judicial exception; and (2) does not
integrate that exception into a practical application, do we then look to
whether the claim:
(Step 2B) adds a specific limitation beyond the judicial
exception that is not “well-understood, routine,
conventional” in the field (see MPEP § 2106.05(d)); or
simply appends well-understood, routine, conventional
activities previously known to the industry, specified at a
high level of generality, to the judicial exception.
2019 Guidance 56–57.
The USPTO published an Update to the 2019 Guidance, October
2019 Update: Subject Matter Eligibility, available at https://www.uspto.gov/
sites/default/files/documents/peg_oct_2019_update.pdf (Oct. 17, 2019)
(“Updated 2019 Guidance”), which emphasized that “the Prong Two
analysis considers the claim as a whole. That is, the limitations containing
the judicial exception as well as the additional elements in the claim besides
the judicial exception need to be evaluated together to determine whether the
claim integrates the judicial exception into a practical application. The
additional limitations should not be evaluated in a vacuum, completely
separate from the recited judicial exception. Instead, the analysis should
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take into consideration all the claim limitations and how those limitations
interact and impact each other when evaluating whether the exception is
integrated into a practical application.” Updated 2019 Guidance 12
(emphasis added).
Under Step 1, we find that claim 1 recites a “method” comprising
certain steps. Therefore, the claimed method falls within one of the statutory
categories as a process.
The Examiner determines that under Step 2A, Prong One of the 2019
Guidance, the following element of claim 1 recites an abstract idea in the
form of a mathematical concept because it involves applying mathematical
concepts to transform collected data into another type of data:
calculating the casing-corrected formation properties
with casing interference removed using the received raw
measurement and an inversion process;
wherein inversion process includes measuring a
difference between the received raw measurement and
modeled measurements,
wherein a weighting is associated with the
received raw measurement, the weighting being based on
a depth of the well logging tool at which the received raw
measurement is measured with respect to a casing
termination point, and
wherein the weighting indicates a level by which
the received raw measurement affects inversion results of
the inversion process; and
determining a model indicative of the casing
corrected formation properties based on the difference.
Ans. 3–4.
The Examiner determines that under Step 2A, Prong Two of the 2019
Guidance, the additional elements recited in claim 1 (“positioning a well
logging tool within a borehole,” “inducing via an electrode array of the well
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logging tool at least one of a voltage and a current,” and “receiving a raw
measurement at one or more monitor electrodes of the well logging tool”) do
not integrate the recited abstract idea into a practical application, because the
additional elements add extra-solution activities in the form of data
gathering recited at a high level of generality, while generally linking use of
the judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of
use. Ans. 4.
The Examiner concludes that claim 1, therefore, is “directed to an
abstract idea rather than to a particular practical application of the abstract
idea.” Ans. 5.
Appellant argues that even if claim 1 recites an abstract idea, which
appellant does not concede, the recited abstract idea is integrated into a
practical application because the claimed method improves the accuracy of
formation property data generated from raw measurements obtained near a
formation casing by removing casing interference effects, thus improving
the technology for obtaining information on properties of geological
formations. Appeal Br. 12, 14–15, 21–22 (citing Spec. ¶¶ 22, 23); Reply Br.
5–6 (citing Spec. ¶¶ 39, 40).
Appellant’s arguments identify reversible error in the Examiner’s
rejection, for reasons that follow.
Applying Step 2A, Prong 1 of the 2019 Guidance, we determine, like
the Examiner, that the following elements in claim 1 recite an abstract idea,
consistent with the description of these elements in Appellant’s
Specification, as discussed below:
calculating the casing-corrected formation properties
with casing interference removed using the received raw
measurement and an inversion process;
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wherein inversion process includes measuring a
difference between the received raw measurement and
modeled measurements,
wherein a weighting is associated with the
received raw measurement, the weighting being based on
a depth of the well logging tool at which the received raw
measurement is measured with respect to a casing
termination point, and
wherein the weighting indicates a level by which
the received raw measurement affects inversion results of
the inversion process; and
determining a model indicative of the casing
corrected formation properties based on the difference.
The Specification explains that a known technique used to evaluate
geological formations involves determining an apparent resistivity of a
formation by injecting a current from a location within a borehole into a
portion of the formation, and conductively measuring a resulting voltage
induced by the current. Spec. ¶ 1. The Specification indicates that such
resistivity information may provide a general indication of formation
composition or geometry. Spec.¶ 1. The Specification explains that
boreholes include a cased section, but the casing “may cause spurious effects
in raw acquired data[,] . . . mak[ing] obtaining measurements near-casing
zones difficult.” Spec. ¶ 3; Fig. 4A.
The Specification describes a method for correcting raw resistivity
measurements obtained near a borehole casing. Spec. ¶ 22. The
Specification explains that the method involves using a numerical inversion
process to measure the difference between raw measurements received from
monitor electrodes, and modeled measurements included in a signal library,
and determining the model with the least difference between the raw
measurements and modeled measurements. Spec. ¶ 63.
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The Specification indicates that the signal library includes modeled
raw measurements as a function of all possible formation models and casing
models. Spec. ¶¶ 41, 62. The Specification further indicates that the
inversion process can be a least squares-type inversion, and explains that
weighting coefficients may be utilized to give relative priority to raw
measurements obtained at specific depth with respect to other depths. Spec.
¶¶ 63, 70.
Consistent with these disclosures in the Specification, “calculating the
casing-corrected formation properties with casing interference removed
using the received raw measurement and an inversion process . . . and
determining a model indicative of the casing-corrected formation properties
based on the difference,” as recited in claim 1, involves one or more
mathematical relationships and/or calculations, which are mathematical
concepts. The “calculating” step recited in claim 1 thus constitutes an
abstract idea.
We determine under Step 2A, Prong 2 of the 2019 Guidance,
however, that the limitations of claim 1 as a whole integrate the recited
abstract idea (mathematical concept) into a practical application, as
described in Appellant’s Specification. More specifically, the Specification
explains that the method of claim 1 involves positioning a well logging tool
within a borehole in a subterranean geologic formation, inducing via an
electrode array of the well logging tool at least one of a voltage and a current
in the formation, receiving raw resistivity measurements at monitor
electrodes of the logging tool, and correcting raw measurements obtained
near the borehole casing to eliminate distortions in the raw measurements
caused by the casing, so as to calculate casing-corrected formation properties
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with casing interference removed. Spec. ¶¶ 57–67, 75–81. The
Specification explains that removing the casing interference effects
improves the accuracy of data generated from raw resistivity measurements
obtained near a formation casing, thereby improving the technology of
measuring formation resistivity to determine properties of a geologic
formation. Spec. ¶¶ 22, 23, 39, 40; Figs. 3A and 3B.
The “calculating” step recited in claim 1, in combination with the
steps of “positioning a well logging tool within a borehole,” “inducing via an
electrode array of the well logging tool at least one of a voltage and a
current,” and “receiving a raw measurement at one or more monitor
electrodes of the well logging tool” recited in the claim, thus integrate the
recited mathematical concept into a practical application because the
claimed method as a whole improves the technology of determining
properties of a geological formation, as described in Appellant’s
Specification.
The Examiner’s analysis under Step 2A, Prong 2 does not consider all
of the elements of claim 1 in combination. Ans. 4–5. Instead, the
Examiner’s analysis under Step 2A, Prong 2 considers—in isolation—only
those elements of claim 1 that do not include the judicial exception, without
analyzing the judicial exception together with the additional elements;
consequently, the Examiner does not appear to appreciate that “it is the
combination of elements that provide the practical application” in the
present case. 2019 Guidance 55.
Because our analysis under Step 2A of the 2019 Guidance is
dispositive, we need not consider Step 2B. And because our analysis for
claim 1 also applies to the other independent claims due to their recitation of
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the same or similar limitations as claim 1, we do not sustain the Examiner’s
rejection of claims 1–41 under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

CONCLUSION

Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1–41 101 Eligibility 1–41

REVERSED