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 .
Claims 1-34 are presented for examination.
Continued Examination under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on December 23, 2025 has been entered.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on September 25, 2025 and February 3, 2026 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
Claims 1, 5-7, 12-13, 17-19, 24-25, and 30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Fadel Argerich et al. (US 20210150417) (“Fadel Argerich”) in view of Osman et al. (US 20210394073) (“Osman”).
Regarding claim 1, Fadel Argerich discloses “[o]ne or more processors (Fadel Argerich Fig. 6, processor(s) 602 [circuits]), comprising:
circuitry to use one or more neural networks (see mapping of two limitations below) to:
generate suggested interactions between one or more users and one or more objects within a video game (see mapping of immediately following limitation);
generate one or more video frames depicting the suggested interactions being performed (reinforcement learning system may have as its environment the video game ATARI Breakout; the tutor takes a frame from the video game as an input and outputs a suggested direction [interaction] that the bar [object] should be moved; thus, for every timestep, the tutor interacts with the agent [user] and gives [generates] advice [suggested interactions] to the agent for making better decisions – Fadel Argerich, paragraph 163 [note that, when the agent takes the tutor’s advice, the result is a sequence of video frames depicting the suggested interaction being performed]; see also paragraph 102 (discussing the use of neural networks in the system)) …; and
cause a presentation via a display device of at least one video frame of the one or more video frames (processing system can include one or more user interfaces, which may include a display – Fadel Argerich, paragraphs 177 and 184) ….”
Fadel Argerich appears not to disclose explicitly the further limitations of the claim. However, Osman discloses that “the suggested interactions comprise one or more actions to be performed by the one or more users (suggested next move tab of the dashboard may identify a specific move or a specific sequence of moves [one or more actions] that the player [user] can select to perform [i.e., to be performed by the user] – Osman, paragraph 86); and
caus[ing] a presentation … of at least one video frame of the one or more video frames to the one or more users (pop-up dashboard [video] may be provided [presented] to keep the player [user] informed on various metrics – Osman, paragraph 83; suggested next move tab of the dashboard may identify a specific move or a specific sequence of moves that the player can select to perform – id. at paragraph 86) ….”
Osman and the instant application both relate to machine learning systems for video games and are analogous. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Fadel Argerich to generate videos suggesting the interactions, as disclosed by Osman, and an ordinary artisan could reasonably expect to have done so successfully. Doing so would improve the engagement level of the player and spectators watching the player. See Osman, paragraph 1.
Claims 7, 13, and 19 are system, method, and non-transitory computer-readable medium claims, respectively, corresponding to processor claim 1 and are rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim. Similarly, claim 25 is a player training system claim corresponding to processor claim 1 and is rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim, except insofar as claim 25 also contains the following limitation, taught by Fadel Argerich: “memory to store network parameters for the one or more neural networks (processors can perform operations embodying a function, method, or operation by executing code stored on memory – Fadel Argerich, paragraph 179; see also paragraph 164 (disclosing that a threshold parameter may be defined for the agent to control when it will take suggested actions from the tutor instead of using its own decision; this parameter must be stored in memory))”.
Regarding claim 5, Fadel Argerich, as modified by Osman, discloses that “the one or more videos depicting the suggested interactions are presented in response to an identification of the one or more objects (suggestions are provided to the players to assist the players in improving the engagement level of the spectators in the video game; the suggestions to improve the engagement level of the spectators may include requests to the players to perform certain types of actions or a certain sequence of actions in the game play, wherein the actions may be identified based on the preference of the spectators [spectator preference = object] – Osman, paragraph 5; see also paragraph 83 (disclosing that the suggestions are presented on a dashboard [video])).” It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Fadel Argerich to depict the suggested interactions in response to identification of objects, as disclosed by Osman, and an ordinary artisan could reasonably expect to have done so successfully. Doing so would improve the engagement level of the player and spectators watching the player. See Osman, paragraph 1.
Regarding claim 6, Fadel Argerich/Osman discloses “the one or more videos comprise one or more frames of video content (tutor takes a frame from the video game as an input and outputs a suggested direction that the bar should be moved [i.e., the system suggests that a frame should be modified so that the bar is in the suggested position] – Fadel Argerich, paragraph 163), and … the video content includes one or more segments representing the suggested interactions, the one or more segments further representing resulting behaviors for the suggested interactions (in the Breakout environment, the observation is an RGB image of the screen, which is an array, and four actions are available: no operation; fire (“throwing the ball”); right; and left; the guide function takes as input the pre-processed frame, locates the position of the ball and the bar in the X-axis [ball, bar = segments representing the interaction between the ball and the bar], and returns “fire” if no ball is found or the action to move in the direction of the ball if it is not above the bar [behaviors = fire, left, and right, which are represented/determined by the relative position of the ball and the bar] – Fadel Argerich, paragraphs 172-73).”
Claims 12, 18, 24, and 30 are system, method, non-transitory computer-readable medium, and player training system claims, respectively, corresponding to processor claim 6 and are rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim.
Regarding claim 17, Fadel Argerich, as modified by Osman, discloses that “the one or more videos depicting the suggested interactions is caused to be presented in response to one or more changes to a state of the video game (suggestions are provided to the players to assist the players in improving the engagement level of the spectators in the video game; the suggestions to improve the engagement level of the spectators may include requests to the players to perform certain types of actions or a certain sequence of actions in the game play, wherein the actions may be identified based on the preference of the spectators [announcement of spectator preference = change in state] – Osman, paragraph 5; see also paragraph 83 (disclosing that the suggestions are presented on a dashboard [video])).” It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Fadel Argerich to depict the suggested interactions in response to changes to a state of the game, as disclosed by Osman, and an ordinary artisan could reasonably expect to have done so successfully. Doing so would improve the engagement level of the player and spectators watching the player. See Osman, paragraph 1.
Claims 2, 8, 14, 20, and 26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Fadel Argerich in view of Osman and further in view of Bae et al. (US 20210352307) (“Bae”).
Regarding claim 2, Fadel Argerich/Osman appears not to disclose explicitly the further limitations of the claim. However, Bae discloses that “the circuitry is further to perform instance segmentation to identify features for the one or more objects in one or more input images (if an instance segmentation technique is used, each pixel of the image may be further associated with a label of an instance of objects of the same class; for example, for a class of “individuals,” the instance segmentation technique can differentiate and associate each pixel in the class with labels of “person 1,” “person 2,” and so on [object = individual; feature = number assigned to each individual, e.g., 1, 2, etc.] – Bae, paragraph 97; see also paragraph 4 (indicating that the method is performed with a processor [circuit])).”
Bae and the instant application both relate to the use of neural networks in image processing and are analogous. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Fadel Argerich/Osman to identify features of images with instance segmentation, as disclosed by Bae, and an ordinary artisan could reasonably expect to have done so successfully. Doing so would allow for the determination of more granular features of the image than would be possible with semantic segmentation, thereby enhancing the system’s understanding of the image. See Bae, paragraph 97.
Claims 8, 14, 20, and 26 are system, method, non-transitory computer-readable medium, and player training system claims, respectively, corresponding to processor claim 2 and are rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim.
Claims 3, 9, 11, 15, 21, 23, and 27-28 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Fadel Argerich in view of Bae and Osman and further in view of Akhoundi et al. (US 20210312689) (“Akhoundi”).
Regarding claim 3, neither Fadel Argerich, Osman, nor Bae appears to disclose explicitly the further limitations of the claim. However, Akhoundi discloses that “the one or more neural networks include a variational autoencoder (VAE) to encode the features of the one or more objects into a latent space, the VAE further maintaining one or more mappings between the suggested interactions and the one or more objects (in a system for enhanced pose generation based on conditional modeling of inverse kinematics, a variational autoencoder that generates a latent feature space based on distributions of latent variables [features] may be used – Akhoundi, paragraphs 58-60; the encoder of the autoencoder may learn to map input features of poses to the latent feature space, and a decoder may map the latent feature space to an output defining features of poses; thus, the autoencoder may be trained to generate an output pose that reproduces an input pose – id. at paragraph 40 [object = character being posed; interaction = generation of a pose (which entails the system suggesting that the pose should be generated), so the mapping of the pose features to a latent feature space and vice versa is a mapping between the character/object and the generation of its poses]).”
Akhoundi and the instant application both relate to the use of neural networks on visual input and are analogous. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Fadel Argerich, Osman, and Bae to employ a variational autoencoder to encode features of objects into a latent space, as disclosed by Akhoundi, and an ordinary artisan could reasonably expect to have done so successfully. Doing so would allow the system to generate new data once trained, thereby allowing the system to adapt to previously unknown situations. See Akhoundi, paragraph 60.
Claims 9, 15, 21, and 27 are system, method, non-transitory computer-readable medium, and player training system claims, respectively, corresponding to processor claim 3 and are rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim.
Regarding claim 11, Fadel Argerich, as modified by Osman, Bae, and Akhoundi, discloses that “the VAE is trained using unsupervised learning to determine the suggested interactions for one or more potential states (autoencoder is an unsupervised machine learning technique capable of learning efficient representations of input data – Akhoundi, paragraph 56; autoencoder may learn to map input features of poses to a latent feature space; a decoder may learn to map the latent feature space to an output defining features of poses; thus; the autoencoder may be trained to generate an output pose that reproduces an input pose [state = pose; interaction = generation of the pose] – id. at paragraph 40).” It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Fadel Argerich, Osman, and Bae to train the VAE using unsupervised learning to determine an interaction, as disclosed by Akhoundi, and an ordinary artisan could reasonably expect to have done so successfully. Doing so would allow the system to generate new data once trained, thereby allowing the system to adapt to previously unknown situations. See Akhoundi, paragraph 60.
Claims 23 and 28 are non-transitory computer-readable medium and player training system claims, respectively, corresponding to processor claim 11 and are rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim.
Claims 4, 10, 16, 22, and 29 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Fadel Argerich in view of Osman and Bae and further in view of Akhoundi and Robinson et al. (US 20220227379) (“Robinson”).
Regarding claim 4, the rejection of claim 3 is incorporated. Osman further discloses “one or more videos depicting [the] suggested interactions”, as shown above in the rejection of claim 1. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Fadel Argerich to show videos depicting the suggested interactions, as disclosed by Osman, for substantially the same reasons as given in the rejection of claim 1.
Neither Fadel Argerich, Bae, Osman, nor Akhoundi appears to disclose explicitly the further limitations of the claim. However, Robinson discloses that “the one or more networks include a generative network for generating the … suggested interactions, the generative network accepting as input at least the latent space and the mappings (in a system for the detection of edge cases through application of a neural network to predict future vehicle environment data, sensor data are encoded by mapping the sensor data onto a corresponding latent space; encoded data are sent to a fusion node in a level above the node, and the fusion node combines encoded sensor data from multiple nodes; the encoded combination is decoded into the latent space of the node [i.e., the mapped latent space is input to the decoder] – Robinson, paragraphs 155-56; neural network processes the environment data to determine predicted environment data for a second time and, in response to determining that predicted environment data indicate an environmental state associated with danger, an alert is issued to a vehicle control system to recommend [suggest] taking remedial action [interaction] to adapt to the predicted environmental state – id. at paragraph 27; the system may form a generative adversarial network – id. at paragraph 102).”
Robinson and the instant application both relate to generative networks used to determine suggested actions and are analogous. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Fadel Argerich, Osman, Bae, and Akhoundi to use a generative network that accepts a latent representation of the data as input to generate the recommendations, as disclosed by Robinson, and an ordinary artisan could reasonably expect to have done so successfully. Doing so would allow the system more accurately to produce output by training the generator to produce better outputs using the feedback of the discriminator. See Robinson, paragraph 102.
Claims 10, 16, and 22 are system, method, and non-transitory computer-readable medium claims, respectively, corresponding to processor claim 4 and are rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim.
Regarding claim 29, Fadel Argerich, as modified by Bae, Osman, Akhoundi, and Robinson, discloses that “the one or more neural networks include a generative adversarial network (GAN) to accept the latent space as input and generate the one or more recommendations based at least in part upon the one or more cumulative changes of state determined from the latent space (in a system for the detection of edge cases through application of a neural network to predict future vehicle environment data, sensor data are encoded by mapping the sensor data onto a corresponding latent space; encoded data are sent to a fusion node in a level above the node, and the fusion node combines encoded sensor data from multiple nodes; the encoded combination is decoded into the latent space of the node [i.e., the latent space is input to the decoder] – Robinson, paragraphs 155-56; neural network processes the environment data to determine predicted environment data for a second time and, in response to determining that predicted environment data indicate an environmental state associated with danger, an alert is issued to a vehicle control system to recommend taking remedial action to adapt to the predicted environmental state [change of state] – id. at paragraph 27; the system may form a generative adversarial network – id. at paragraph 102).” It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Fadel Argerich, Bae, Osman, and Akhoundi to use a GAN accepting a latent space as input to provide recommendations based on state changes, as disclosed by Robinson, and an ordinary artisan could reasonably expect to have done so successfully. Doing so would allow the system more accurately to produce output by training the generator to produce better outputs using the feedback of the discriminator. See Robinson, paragraph 102.
Claims 31-34 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Fadel Argerich in view of Osman and further in view of Bennett (US 20200134447) (“Bennett”).
Regarding claim 31, Fadel Argerich, as modified by Osman and Bennett, discloses that “the one or more users are one or more human users (in a system for providing synchronized input feedback in a video game, an input event [from a human] that precedes an action of an avatar in the video stream is placed at a time in the audio stream of the video game before the actions of the avatar occur; encoded input embedded in the output stream during reproduction is undetectable to a user who is a human being with average vision and hearing faculties – Bennett, paragraph 23).”
Bennett and the instant application both relate to the use of machine learning in video games and are analogous. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Fadel Argerich/Osman such that the system receives input and interacts with a human user, as disclosed by Bennett, and an ordinary artisan could reasonably expect to have done so successfully. Doing so would allow the system to tailor its output such that it is integrated seamlessly with the user experience. See Bennett, paragraph 23.
Claims 32-34 are system, method, and non-transitory computer-readable medium claims, respectively, corresponding to processor claim 31 and are rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed December 23, 2025 (“Remarks”) have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues that the amended claims are distinguishable over the combination over Fadel Argerich and Osman because (a) Fadel Argerich allegedly does not disclose that the video frames depict suggested interactions to be performed by the user because the video of Fadel Argerich is only displayed after the agent has already performed the interaction; and (b) Osman’s disclosure of producing on-screen overlay of text instructions is allegedly different from the claimed presentation of video frames of the suggested interaction. Remarks at 9-10. However, regarding (a), without taking a position on whether Fadel Argerich discloses this element, Osman does, and the rejection is based on the combination. One cannot show nonobviousness by attacking references individually where the rejections are based on combinations of references. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 208 USPQ 871 (CCPA 1981); In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091, 231 USPQ 375 (Fed. Cir. 1986). Regarding (b), the claims do not require that the display of a graphical depiction of the suggestion of the sequence of actions in the process of being performed by a character controlled by the user. At most, they require “a presentation … of at least one video frame of the one or more video frames to the one or more users”. Since a text-based display of a suggested action on a television or computer screen is clearly a video frame, Osman reads on this limitation.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RYAN C VAUGHN whose telephone number is (571)272-4849. The examiner can normally be reached M-R 7:00a-5:00p ET.
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/RYAN C VAUGHN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2125