Saudi Arabian Oil CompanyDownload PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardMar 12, 202015061545 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Mar. 12, 2020) Copy Citation 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. 15/061,545 03/04/2016 Fahad A. Al-Amri 0004159.005473 4236 35979 7590 03/12/2020 Bracewell LLP P.O. Box 61389 Houston, TX 77208-1389 EXAMINER MORELLO, JEAN F ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2861 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/12/2020 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): docketing@bracewell.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte FAHAD A. AL-AMRI ____________ Appeal 2019-003325 Application 15/061,545 Technology Center 2800 ____________ Before MONTÉ T. SQUIRE, MERRELL C. CASHION, JR., and JANE E. INGLESE, Administrative Patent Judges. INGLESE, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellant1 requests our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Examiner’s decision to finally reject claims 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 19, and 20.2 We have jurisdiction over this appeal 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 the Saudi Arabian Oil Company as the real party in interest. Appeal Brief filed December 21, 2018 (“Appeal Br.”) at 3. 2 Final Office Action entered July 26, 2018 (“Office Act.”) at 1. Appeal 2019-003325 Application 15/061,545 2 CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER Appellant claims a method for determining a salt concentration in crude oil (independent claim 1), a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having executable code stored thereon for determining the salt concentration in crude oil (independent claim 8), and a plant information system (independent claim 14). Appeal Br. 3–5. Claim 1 illustrates the subject matter on appeal, and is reproduced below with contested subject matter italicized: 1. A method for determining a salt concentration in crude oil, comprising: periodically obtaining at a time interval, at a plant information system, a plurality of parameters associated with a desalting process, the plurality of desalting process parameters comprising a demulsifier flowrate, a crude oil temperature, a crude oil flowrate, a desalting electrostatic grids voltage, a wash water flowrate, and a disposal water flowrate; determining, at the plant information system, the salt concentration in crude oil output from the desalting process using the plurality of parameters according to a first order continuous variables model; comparing the determined salt concentration to a threshold concentration; and adjusting at least one of the plurality of parameters associated with the desalting process based on the comparison. Appeal Br. 27 (Claims Appendix) (emphasis added). REJECTIONS The Examiner maintains the following rejections in the Examiner’s Answer entered January 25, 2019 (“Ans.”):3 3 The Examiner withdrew the rejection of claims 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 19, and 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 101 set forth in the Final Action (Final Act. 6–9) in the Answer. Ans. 3. Appeal 2019-003325 Application 15/061,545 3 I. Claims 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 19, and 204 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Snawerdt (US 2011/0100877 Al, published May 5, 2011); and II. Claim 17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Snawerdt in view of Al-Shafei et al. (US 2013/0026082 Al, published January 31, 2013). 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 rejections of claims 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 19, and 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103, for reasons set forth in the Appeal and Reply Briefs, and below. Claim 1 requires the recited method to comprise, in part, determining the salt concentration in crude oil output from a desalting process, using a plurality of recited parameters associated with the desalting process according to a first order continuous variables model. Independent claims 8 and 14 also include these limitations. The Examiner finds that Snawerdt discloses obtaining desalting process characteristics corresponding to those recited in each of the independent claims, performing a statistical calculation of the desalting process performance based upon the measured process characteristics, and adjusting a control setting of the desalting process as a function of the 4 Although the Examiner includes claim 17 in the header for this rejection (Rejection I) in the Final Action (Final Act. 9), the Examiner does not address claim 17 in the body of the rejection, while addressing the remaining claims listed in the header. Final Act. 9–12. The Examiner, however, sets forth a separate rejection directed to claim 17 in the Final Action. Final Act. 12. We, therefore, treat inclusion of claim 17 in the header for Rejection I as an inadvertent typographical error. Appeal 2019-003325 Application 15/061,545 4 statistical calculation. Final Act. 9–10 (citing Snawerdt ¶¶ 8, 9, 20, 32–34, 37–44, 109; claims 1, 7, 8, 11, 12, 18, and 109). The Examiner finds that although Snawerdt “fails to teach the use of a first order continuous variables model,” Snawerdt “consider[s] all of the same data and controllable process parameters [as recited in the independent claims] in desalting crude oil.” Final Act. 10. The Examiner concludes that “[t]o consider all of the same data and controllable parameters in desalting crude oil in any abstract interpretation of the data compared to baseline data that is obtainable from conventional measurement techniques, would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art as of the effective filing date of the invention.” Id. (emphasis added). Appellant argues that the Examiner does not provide objective evidence or articulated reasoning with rational underpinning for why consideration of “all of the same data and controllable parameters in desalting crude oil in any abstract interpretation of the data compared to baseline data that is obtainable from conventional measurement techniques” would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present application. Appeal Br. 25. Appellant argues that it would not have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to determine a salt concentration according to a first order continuous variables model using the process parameters recited in the independent claims because Snawerdt discloses directly measuring salt concentration at a measurement station. Id. at 23–24 (citing Snawerdt ¶ 36). Appellant argues that the Examiner does not provide evidence for why, in the absence of impermissible hindsight, “one of ordinary skill in the art would find it obvious to use a completely different technique to determine salt Appeal 2019-003325 Application 15/061,545 5 concentration when Snawerdt teaches a technique that is clearly suitable for the invention described therein.” Id. at 24. Appellant points out that Appellant’s Specification discusses direct measurement of salt concentration from desalted crude oil, and describes various drawbacks of such direct measurement, which are addressed by Appellant’s claimed invention. Id. at 24 (citing Spec. ¶ 2). The Examiner responds to Appellant’s arguments in the Answer by asserting that Appellant’s claimed invention requires direct measurement of the salt concentration of desalted crude oil “in order to establish a first order continuous variable.” Ans. 5 (citing Spec. ¶¶ 34–36, 40; Fig. 2). The Examiner asserts that “the concept of creating a model (first order continuous variables model) requires . . . an initial laboratory measurement of salt concentration to validate the model.” Id. at 6. The Examiner further asserts in the Answer that, before the effective filing date of the present application, one of ordinary skill in the art “would have gathered data known to be associated with the desalting process of Snawerdt and made a model (or data table or a solvable set of linear equations) based on the known desalting parameters and a measured salt concentration. This was routine mathematical practice that does not rise above the level of one of ordinary skill in the art.” Id. at 5. The Examiner concludes that “based on what was known in the art to be measured and controlled during desalting (in order to desalt crude oil) as taught by Snawerdt, and what was within the scope of one of ordinary skill in the art, appellant’s claimed invention would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention.” Id. at 6. Appeal 2019-003325 Application 15/061,545 6 Contrary to the Examiner’s assertions, as Appellant points out in the Reply Brief, Appellant’s claimed invention does not require direct measurement of salt concentration. Reply Br. 2–3. The portion of Appellant’s Specification cited by the Examiner to support the Examiner’s assertions is an experimental example that describes generating a salt concentration model from desalting process parameters, including the demulsifier flow rate, the crude oil temperature, the crude oil flow rate, the desalting electrical grid voltage, and the wash water flowrate. Spec. ¶¶ 30– 33. The Specification explains that a salt concentration model was generated by modeling the process parameter data using regression analysis, and the resulting model “was then verified by comparing the actual salt concentration determined by laboratory analysis with the salt concentration calculated by the salt concentration model.” Spec. ¶ 34. The Specification further indicates that “[i]n some embodiments, the accuracy of the salt concentration model may be verified by comparing the calculated salt concentration from the model against actual salt concentrations from laboratory analysis (block 218).” Spec. ¶ 40. Thus, rather than indicating that direct measurement of salt concentration is a required aspect of Appellant’s invention as the Examiner asserts, the Specification indicates that direct salt concentration measurement may be performed to verify the accuracy of a salt concentration model generated by measuring process parameters associated with a desalting process according to Appellant’s invention. The Specification’s use of “may” indicates that such verification is optional, as does the Specification’s indication that verification may be performed “in some embodiments” of Appellant’s invention. Appeal 2019-003325 Application 15/061,545 7 Furthermore, consistent with the Specification, the plain language of the pending claims does not require direct measurement of salt concentration, because the claims do not recite such a process step. Nor do the claims require determining the salt concentration according to the recited model with any particular degree of accuracy. Consequently, as Appellant argues, the Examiner’s assertion that the claims require direct salt measurement improperly imports limitations from the Specification into the claims. Moreover, although the Examiner asserts that one of ordinary skill in the art “would have gathered data known to be associated with the desalting process of Snawerdt and made a model (or data table or a solvable set of linear equations) based on the known desalting parameters and a measured salt concentration,” the Examiner does not articulate a reason having a rational underpinning as to why one of ordinary skill in the art would have generated a first order continuous variables model from desalting process parameters disclosed in Snawerdt to determine the concentration of salt in desalted crude oil. The Examiner does not explain why, in view of Snawerdt’s disclosure of directly measuring the concentration of salt in desalted crude oil, one of ordinary skill in the art would have used a different approach to measuring the salt concentration by generating a first order continuous variables model based on desalting process parameters. KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007) (“[R]ejections on obviousness grounds cannot be sustained by mere conclusory statements; instead, there must be some articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of obviousness.”). Appeal 2019-003325 Application 15/061,545 8 In addition, the Examiner does not provide any objective evidence to support the Examiner’s assertion that it would have been “routine mathematical practice” in the art to generate a first order continuous variables model from desalting process parameters disclosed in Snawerdt. Even if it would have been within the level of ordinary skill in the art to generate a first order continuous variables model from desalting process parameters disclosed in Snawerdt, simply because one of ordinary skill in the art could have done so would not have made it obvious to do so absent a reason that would have motivated one of ordinary skill in the art to so modify Snawerdt’s process. Belden v. Berk-Tek LLC, 805 F.3d 1064, 1073 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (“[O]bviousness concerns whether a skilled artisan not only could have made but would have been motivated to make the combinations or modifications of the prior art to arrive at the claimed invention.”). Accordingly, on this appeal record, the Examiner does not provide a persuasive, reasoned explanation, supported by objective evidence, for why the relied-upon disclosures of Snawerdt would have led one of ordinary skill in the art to determine the salt concentration in crude oil output from a desalting process, using a plurality of parameters associated with the desalting process according to a first order continuous variables model, as required by independent claims 1, 8, and 14. It follows that the Examiner does not establish a prima facie case of obviousness of the subject matter recited in claims 1, 8, and 14 within the meaning of 35 U.S.C. § 103. In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445 (Fed. Cir. 1992) (“[T]he examiner bears the initial burden, on review of the prior art or on any other ground, of presenting a prima facie case of unpatentability”) We, accordingly, do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of Appeal 2019-003325 Application 15/061,545 9 independent claims 1, 8, and 14, and claims 3, 4, 6, 10, 12, 16, 17, 19, and 20, which each depend from either claim 1, 8, or 14, under 35 U.S.C. § 103. CONCLUSION Claims 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s) /Basis Affirmed Reversed 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20 103 Snawerdt 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 19, 20 17 103 Snawerdt, Al-Shafei 17 Overall Outcome 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20 REVERSED Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation