DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Status
Claims 1-13 and 15-34 are amended.
Claims 14 and 31 are canceled.
No newly added claims.
Claims 1-13 and 15-30, and 32-34 are presented for examination.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments (Remarks page 9-11) filed in the amendment filed on 12/23/2025, with respect to independent claims 1 and 18 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Mills et al. (US 9380332) as shown below.
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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 patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1, 2, 4-7, 12, 13, 18, 19, 21-24, 28, and 29 are rejected under U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bouret et al. (US 20130346208) in view of Webster et al. (US 20090094160), in further view of Mills et al. (US 9380332).
Regarding claim 1. Bouret discloses, a method of delivering assets to subscribers using communication media, wherein each subscriber has a user equipment device (UED) remote from and in operative communication with an asset decisioning system (Par. 0017, fig. 1, upon establishing communications, AP provides advertisement to terminal, which is stored on the device as a background operation and may be viewed by user upon user request), the method comprising the steps of:
establishing, at the asset decisioning system, information regarding an asset set, the asset set including one or more assets for scheduling for delivery to particular subscribers, the asset set established at least partially based on campaign specification information for each asset of the asset set (Par. 0027, the terminal's profile information is analyzed for location, demographic factors, and/or the like, and the AP selects ads for refreshing based on such factors. Such analysis may be achieved by parsing the terminal's profile and generating an SQL query based on token keywords from the terminal's profile which act to select ads, i.e. AP is playing asset decisioning system that establishes set of ads to be delivered to terminal with specific delivery factor such as (e.g., age, sex, etc., par. 0031). Par. 0031, filtering would be an ad received for a coffee shop that would include filtering that requests that the ad is only displayed if a user is within half a mile of the coffee shop's physical location, i.e. advertisement campaign criteria to target users based on location of user device which is used for selecting or establishing ads (i.e. set of advertisement) to be delivering to the terminals);
instructing a UED associated with one of the subscribers to store assets of the asset set at a memory structure of the UED based on asset impression information that is determined from aggregated subscriber impression information from corresponding UEDs including UEDs other than the subscriber UED, wherein the subscriber impression information represents a level of fulfillment of the campaign specification information for a respective asset of the asset set (Par. 0025, the AP (i.e. access point, par. 0016, ) may request a catalog of ads and ad placement information stored in the terminal's ad buffer. If the AP determines that the number of ad impressions for a given ad has been exceeded, it may send a message to the terminal to purge such ads from the ad buffer. Upon updating its information with obtained terminal placement information, all new ads not found on the terminal, but available in the AP's ad buffer are transferred to the terminal. Par. 0029, The content server may obtain updated ad placement information (e.g., updated add impressions) from an AP. The AP may provide such updates when it calls updated information from terminals 111, i.e. collecting and updating add impressions from plurality of terminals (i.e. plurality which includes terminal used by other subscribers) to determine if fulfillment of number of impression has exceeded, in that case transfer and store new ads on terminal); and
transmitting, in response to an identified asset delivery opportunity, a playlist to the UED that instructs the UED to playback one or more assets of the stored assets within the identified asset delivery opportunity (Par. 0031, when a user enters a retail outlet, as part of the placement information, filtering queries may be provided, such filtering would be an ad received for a coffee shop that would include filtering that requests that the ad is only displayed if a user is within half a mile of the coffee shop's physical location. The filter may include an XML tag delineated request providing the GPS coordinates of the coffee shop (e.g., longitude/latitude) and a deviation amount of half a mile. Although such an ad may have been transferred to terminal A many miles away from the coffee shop location by another terminal, it becomes displayed when the user walks within a half mile of the shops location, i.e. Access point sends instruction to play the advertisement (i.e. playlist or order of playing) to display advertisement based on opportunity to display advertisement based on user location, advertisement has already been received and stored locally on user device prior to the sending this instruction).
Bouret does not disclose, wherein the subscriber impression information includes whether an asset of the asset set was partially delivered to a particular subscriber of the particular subscribers;
wherein the identified asset delivery opportunity comprises a unique opportunity to deliver the one or more assets into a designated spot of designating programing to the subscriber.
Webster discloses, wherein the subscriber impression information includes whether an asset of the asset set was partially delivered to a particular subscriber of the particular subscribers (Par. 0037, activity relating to the asset being tracked. Usage activity can include, for example, whether an asset was played (either partially or in its entirety), the number of times the asset was played (i.e., the "play count" of the advertisement), the amount of time spent playing an asset, information about the user who consumed the asset. Par. 0038, The reporting server can analyze the usage activity data to verify that the user indeed viewed the advertisement, as well as to conduct various analyses and reports based on the collected data. This information can be useful, for example, to determine the effectiveness of various advertisements, as well as provide information on who, where, and when the advertisement (or other asset) was played).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify Bouret, by teaching of wherein the subscriber impression information includes whether an asset of the asset set was partially delivered to a particular subscriber of the particular subscribers, as taught by Webster, to track the subscriber impression data which take in to consideration that whether any advertisement was partially played to verify that the user indeed viewed the advertisement to get the actual play count of advertisement, as disclosed in Webster, par. 0037-0038.
Bouret in view of Webster does not discloses, wherein the identified asset delivery opportunity comprises a unique opportunity to deliver the one or more assets into a designated spot of designating programing to the subscriber.
Mills discloses, wherein the identified asset delivery opportunity comprises a unique opportunity to deliver the one or more assets into a designated spot of designating programing to the subscriber (Col. 12, line 47-65, A mobile device 602 may be in communication with a video advertisement server 604 that may determine one or more video advertisements to display on the mobile device 602. The video advertisements provided to the mobile device 602 may be cached on the mobile device 602 so that the video advertisement may be available to display to a customer prior to a customer requesting and watching a primary video or content video. For example, when a customer selects a video to watch on the mobile device 602, a video advertisement may be retrieved from the mobile device's cache and displayed to the customer prior, during or after the video. Col. 14, line 43-46, A function of a video advertisement server may be to match video advertisements to customers using client devices based upon a number of customer related criteria (e.g., location, demographics, product type, history, etc.). Col. 14, line 26-36, an advertisement server may instruct the client device to display one or more video advertisements at certain points during the playback of the video, video advertisements may be displayed to the customer at predetermined points before, during and/or after the video, i.e. video advertisement server identifies opportunity to deliver advertisement at predetermined (i.e. designated spot) points of a video (designating the video programming of customer selected) that is selected by the subscriber, also matching advertisement to customer based on location of client device).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify Bouret in view of Webster, by teaching of wherein the identified asset delivery opportunity comprises a unique opportunity to deliver the one or more assets into a designated spot of designating programing to the subscriber, as taught by Mills, to display advertisement at specific points during the playback of user selected media content for viewing, inserting advertisement at specific predetermined point of video content playback would help catching user attention for displayed advertisement, as disclosed in Mills, Col. 14, line 26-36.
Regarding claim 2, The method of claim 1,
Bouret further discloses, further comprising:
obtaining audience feedback information from the UED indicative of subscriber interaction with the UED during asset playback (see fig. 5 par. 0035, various interaction from user for presented ads).
Regarding claim 4, The method of claim 2,
Bouret further discloses, further comprising:
reporting the audience feedback information (Par. 0027, the ad aware terminal will generate a list of ads and current ad placement information (e.g., the number of times each ad has been viewed) from the ad buffer and provide that catalog to the AP, i.e. terminal reporting advertising viewing information (i.e. feedback in form of ad viewed by user) back to AP).
Regarding claim 5, The method of claim 1,
Bouret further discloses, wherein the asset decisioning system is operative to:
obtain, from asset providers, decisioning information for assets, the decisioning information identifying target audiences for the assets (Par. 0029, the ad server may independently iterate the receiving of ads and placement information (e.g., desired target locations, demographics, impression allotment, price paid per impression, ad type, advertiser identifier, etc.) and storage of such information within its own), i.e. ad server receives advertisements (i.e. from advertisement provider) along with its targeting (i.e. desired audience to target based on locations, demographics) information); and
obtain audience classification information for subscribers, the audience classification information including at least one classification parameter of the subscriber (Par. 0027, the terminal's profile information is analyzed for location, demographic factors, and the AP selects ads for refreshing based on such factors. Par. 0031, if a user's terminal device profile includes personal information regarding the user (e.g., age, sex, etc.), then ads may be targeted for exposure based on demographics, i.e. obtaining profile of the user of the terminal which includes classification of user such as location and demographic).
Regarding claim 6, The method of claim 5,
Bouret further discloses, wherein the classification parameter relates to at least one of age, gender, income level, personal interest, or locale of the subscriber (Par. 0027, the terminal's profile information is analyzed for location, demographic factors, and the AP selects ads for refreshing based on such factors. Par. 0031, if a user's terminal device profile includes personal information regarding the user (e.g., age, sex, etc.), then ads may be targeted for exposure based on demographics, i.e. obtaining profile of the user of the terminal which includes classification of user such as location and demographic).
Regarding claim 7, The method of claim 5,
Bouret further discloses, wherein the asset set comprises assets for which the corresponding decisioning information matches the audience classification information of the subscriber (Par. 0031, if the user is in a convenience store and the user is known to be over 21 years of age, then ads for alcohol may be selected from the ad buffer, i.e. asset set includes ads that is decided to display based on matching audience demographic classification).
Regarding claim 12, The method of claim 1,
Bouret further discloses, wherein the asset set is established in relation to the identified asset delivery opportunity (Par. 0027, the terminal's profile information is analyzed for location, demographic factors, and the AP selects ads for refreshing based on such factors, i.e. set of advertisement is refreshed on terminal based on opportunity to deliver ads based on determined location and democratic of the user of the terminal).
Regarding claim 13, The method of claim 1,
Bouret further discloses, wherein an indication indicative of the stored assets corresponds to the identified asset delivery opportunity (Par. 0031, filtering would be an ad received for a coffee shop that would include filtering that requests that the ad is only displayed if a user is within half a mile of the coffee shop's physical location, i.e. advertisement opportunity to indicate target users based on location of user device which is used for selecting advertisement to be displayed).
Regarding claims 18, Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills meets the claim limitations as set forth in claim 1.
Regarding claims 19, 21-24, 28, and 29, Bouret meets the claim limitations as set forth in claim 2, 4-7, 12, and 13.
Claims 3 and 20 are rejected under U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bouret et al. (US 20130346208) in view of Webster et al. (US 20090094160), in further view of Mills et al. (US 9380332), in further view of Agarwal et al. (US 20100251278), in further view of Kerns (20180218400).
Regarding claim 3, The method of claim 2,
Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills does not disclose, wherein the subscriber interaction, in relation to at least one asset associated with the playlist, includes asset playback speed, asset playback volume, and asset playback runtime.
Agarwal discloses, wherein the subscriber interaction, in relation to at least one asset associated with the playlist, includes asset playback speed, and asset playback runtime (Par. 0016, telephone carrier, IPTV service, device being PCs or other device. Par. 0075, the duration of the ad played back unit user interruption, type of user interruption during ad playback such as fast forward (i.e. speed of asset playback)).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills, by teaching of the subscriber interaction includes asset playback speed, and asset playback runtime, as taught by Agarwal, to relevant and accurate measurement data and feedback that will be valuable advertisers in IPTV environment, as disclosed in Agarwal, par. 0003.
Modified Bouret does not disclose, wherein the subscriber interaction, in relation to at least one asset associated with the playlist, includes asset playback volume.
Kerns discloses, wherein the subscriber interaction, in relation to at least one asset associated with the playlist, includes asset playback volume (Par. 0039, a user's interaction with the device at which media content is streamed/played can include but are not limited to: volume of the player in which an advertisement is being played).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills in further view of Agarwal, by teaching of the subscriber interaction includes asset playback volume, as taught by Kerns, to consider other secondary factor of user interaction to determining an activity level of a user based on the monitored interactions, as disclosed in Kerns, par. 0007.
Regarding claim 20, Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills in further view of Agarwal in further view of Kerns in further view of meets the claim limitations as set forth in claim 3.
Claims 8-11 and 25-28 are rejected under U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bouret et al. (US 20130346208) in view of Webster et al. (US 20090094160), in further view of Mills et al. (US 9380332), in further view of Bagherjeiran et al. (US 10891653).
Regarding claim 8, The method of claim 5,
Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills does not disclose, wherein each asset of the asset set is associated with an asset delivery request received by the asset decisioning system, each asset delivery request indicative of a request to deliver a corresponding asset to the subscriber.
Bagherjeiran discloses, wherein each asset of the asset set is associated with an asset delivery request received by the asset decisioning system, each asset delivery request indicative of a request to deliver a corresponding asset to the subscriber (Column 3, line 19-32, when ad request is received, gender, age associated with the request are used to determine any of these (i.e. gender or age) corresponds to terms associated with targeting expression of advertisement), i.e. each asset is associated with an criteria in asset delivery request, where asset is indicative of matching criteria in request to deliver corresponding asset to the specific demographic of the subscriber).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills, by teaching of the asset is associated with an asset delivery request received by the asset decisioning system, each asset delivery request indicative of a request to deliver a corresponding asset to the subscriber, as taught by Bagherjeiran, by having indication of asset criteria in advertisement request helps with better targeting of advertisement campaign, as disclosed in Bagherjeiran, col. line 55-67.
Regarding claim 9, The method of claim 8,
Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills in further view of Bagherjeiran further discloses, wherein the stored assets include assets delivered via a computer-based content exchange remote from the asset decisioning system (Bouret Par. 0016, fig. 1, data flows between three actors: user 131, 132 terminals 101, 102, access points 111, 112, and content servers 121, i.e. AP being computer based ad exchange (i.e. exchanges ads between remote ad server and terminals) delivers ads to terminals, and AP receives ads from ad server (server that decides what ads to be delivered based on ad placement criteria) which is remote from AP).
Regarding claim 10, The method of claim 9,
Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills in further view of Bagherjeiran further discloses, wherein the computer-based content exchange delivers assets to the UED at least partially based on at least one asset delivery request associated with an asset of the asset set (Bagherjeiran Column 3, line 19-32, when ad request is received, gender, age associated with the request are used to determine any of these (i.e. gender or age) corresponds to terms associated with targeting expression of advertisement), i.e. each asset is associated with an criteria in asset delivery request, where asset is indicative of matching criteria in request to deliver corresponding asset to the specific demographic of the subscriber).
Regarding claim 11, The method of claim 9,
Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills in further view of Bagherjeiran further discloses, wherein the computer-based content exchange comprises an IP-based data network (Bouret Par. 0016, The ad server may have an ad server database with tables regarding the various APs by providing each AP with a unique identifier, e.g., its IP address).
Regarding claims 25-28, Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills in further view of Bagherjeiran meets the claim limitations as set forth in claim 8-11.
Claims 15 and 32 are rejected under U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bouret et al. (US 20130346208) in view of Webster et al. (US 20090094160), in further view of Mills et al. (US 9380332), in further view of Yang et al. (US 20120191541).
Regarding claim 15, The method of claim 1,
Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills does not disclose, further comprising:
receiving an indication indicative of a time of delivery by the UED of at least one asset associated with the playlist; and
based on the receiving, updating the subscriber impression information for the at least one asset associated with the playlist.
Yang discloses, further comprising:
receiving an indication indicative of a time of delivery by the UED of at least one asset associated with the playlist (Par. 0126, ad impression can be counted and reported with associated context information, time of day, location of recipient); and
based on the receiving, updating the subscriber impression information for the at least one asset associated with the playlist (Par. 0126, ad impression can be counted (i.e. updating impression information) and reported with associated context information, time of day, location of recipient).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills, by teaching receiving time of the delivery of asset and based on the received information updating impression information, as taught by Yang, to enables the operators to forecast the number of impressions and the characteristics of users that are likely to be available to receive impressions ready to be allocated to those users at a future date and time, as disclosed in Yang, par. 0126.
Regarding claim 32, Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills in further view of Yang meets the claim limitations as set forth in claim 15.
Claims 16, 17, 33, and 34 are rejected under U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bouret et al. (US 20130346208) in view of Webster et al. (US 20090094160), in further view of Mills et al. (US 9380332), in further view of Yang et al. (US 20120191541), in further view of Leigh et al (US 20120072282).
Regarding claim 16, The method of claim 15,
Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills in further view of Yang does not disclose, wherein the campaign specification information includes a frequency of delivery parameter, the frequency of delivery parameter indicative of a maximum impression count corresponding to a number of instances the subscriber views assets of the asset set.
Leigh discloses, wherein the campaign specification information includes a frequency of delivery parameter, the frequency of delivery parameter indicative of a maximum impression count corresponding to a number of instances the subscriber views assets of the asset set (Par. 0048, advertising campaign restriction as shown in table 1, max impression = 4 per day).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills in further view of Yang, by teaching of the campaign specification information includes a frequency of delivery parameter, the frequency of delivery parameter indicative of a maximum impression count corresponding to a number of instances the subscriber views assets of the asset set, as taught by Leigh, to optimizes the placement of advertisements within the opportunities respecting the restrictions of placement that the advertisers specify on the placement of their advertisements, as disclosed in Leigh, par. 0016.
Regarding claim 17, The method of claim 16,
Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills in further view of Yang in further view of Leigh further discloses, wherein the campaign specification information includes a minimum time interval parameter, the minimum time interval parameter indicative of a minimum time period between the instances of the subscriber viewing the first asset within an identified period (Leigh Par. 0048, advertising campaign restriction as shown in table 1, minimum spacing = 1 hour, i.e. minimum time period between the two impression, here within identified period would be time between instances of impressions).
Regarding claim 33-34, Bouret in view of Webster in further view of Mills in further view of Yang in further view of Leigh meets the claim limitations as set forth in claim 16-17.
Conclusion
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/A.D./Examiner, Art Unit 2422
/BRIAN P YENKE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2422