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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 02/26/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s amendments and/or arguments with respect to claim 1 have been considered but are moot because the arguments do not apply in view of newly found reference Kunieda being used in the current rejection. See the new rejection below.
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, 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 1-3 and 9-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US PG Pub 2005/0166224 to Ficco (“Ficco”) in view of US Patent 10,154,319 to Ramakrishnan (“Ramakrishnan”) and US PG Pub 2023/0101328 to Kunieda (“Kunieda”).
Regarding claim 1, “A method of scheduling the display of one or more interactive content items for accommodation in a timeslot in other media content” reads on the method/system where the ad selection factor uses the appropriate time within the time slot to insert the selected ad segment (¶0047) disclosed by Ficco and represented in Fig. 1.
As to “the method comprising: obtaining an estimated interaction duration for the interactive content item…” Ficco discloses (¶0046, ¶0047, ¶0075) that the length (interaction duration) of the ad(s) is determined as represented in Fig. 5. The Examiner is interpreting interaction duration as the length of the ad that is being communicated/transmitted to the user.
As to “determining a display time in the timeslot for the interactive content item based on the estimated interaction duration for the interactive content item” Ficco discloses (¶0047, ¶0074-¶0076) that the system selects the appropriate time within the time slot to insert the selected ad segment by using the length of the ad as represented in Fig. 5.
Ficco meets all the limitations of the claim except “determining a display time in the timeslot for the interactive content item; and providing for display, the interactive content items at the determined display time in the timeslot” However, Ramakrishnan discloses (10:39-11:11; 26:55-58) that the commercial break time is determined that displays a plurality of interactive advertisements scheduled time, where (claim 1) the user equipment displays, an advertisement of the plurality of advertisements during the commercial break time period, and the advertisement being displayed at a time in accordance with its respective timestamp as represented in Fig. 6 (element 620, 624); (10:8-11; 31:22-25) user interacts with the advertisement as represented in Fig. 4. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify Ficco’s system by determining a display time in the timeslot for the interactive content item as taught by Ramakrishnan in order to supply ads that a viewer wishes to see to improve the impact of the advertising on the viewer (1:14-16).
Combination of Ficco and Ramakrishnan meets all the limitations of the clam except “determining an interactivity type associated with an interactive content item, wherein the interactivity type is one of a plurality of interactivity types, wherein each respective interactivity type of the plurality of interactivity types corresponds to a distinct respective predefined action, wherein each respective interactivity type of the plurality of interactivity types corresponds to a respective average interaction duration for a plurality of users; …wherein the estimated interaction duration comprises a respective average interaction duration associated with the interactivity type.” However, Kunieda discloses (¶0027) that the content activity module monitors activity regarding the relevant content where it monitors activities such as chat activity, live gameplay participation, etc. (interactivity type of interactive content item); content activity module monitors any type of activity or interaction between users and digital content; content activity module monitors a volume of activity associated with relevant content over a time period; (¶0031) feedback module monitors accessing the relevant content, selecting the relevant content (e.g., purchasing, renting, or otherwise selecting), an interaction time with the relevant content (e.g., a time period when the relevant content is active on the display, the user scrolling through a chat conversation, etc.) and so on. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify Ficco and Ramakrishnan’s systems by determining an interactivity type associated with an interactive content item where the interactivity type corresponds to a duration for the user as taught by Kunieda in order to parse available content, identify relevant content, and inform the user regarding the same (Kunieda - ¶0003).
Regarding claim 2, “The method of Claim 1 further comprising displaying the interactive content item on a display device in accordance with the determined display time” Ramakrishnan discloses (10:8-11, 39-42) that the advertisement is displayed in a screen during a commercial break interval at the determined display time as represented in Fig. 4 (element 400) and Fig. 6.
Regarding claim 3, “The method of Claim 1, wherein the one or more interactive content items comprise a plurality of interactive content items” Ficco discloses (abstract, ¶0088) that the plurality of advertisements are delivered to the particular recipient.
Regarding claim 9, “The method of Claim 1, wherein obtaining estimated interaction durations for the interactive content items comprises using historical interaction data for the interactive content items” Ficco discloses (¶0068-¶0069) that the system selects/processes ad based on the generated information that includes processes such as tracking the content selected by the recipient in the past/present.
Regarding claim 10, “The method of Claim 1, wherein obtaining estimated interaction durations for the interactive content items comprises using historical interaction data for the interactive content items having one or more attributes in common with the interactive content item” Ficco discloses (¶0069-¶0070, ¶0073) that the system gather information about user’s past/present content selection and selects ad segment based on the ad selection factor as represented in Fig. 5 (elements 200, 240, 260).
Regarding claim 11, “The method of Claim 1, wherein obtaining estimated interaction durations for the interactive content items comprises using historical data of a plurality of users that have interacted with the interactive content item” Ramakrishnan discloses (34:21-24) that the system checks friend’s viewing history regarding advertisement content.
Regarding claim 12, “The method of Claim 1, wherein each interactive content item includes interaction duration metadata and obtaining estimated interaction durations for the interactive content items comprises reading the interaction duration metadata” Ramakrishnan discloses (9:28-31) that the metadata about the advertisement is obtained that supplies characteristics and information about the advertisement; (10:62-67) metadata for each advertisement include respective timestamp/duration as represented in Fig. 6 (elements 630, 634).
Regarding claim 13, see rejection similar to claim 1.
Regarding claim 14, see rejection similar to claim 2.
Regarding claim 15, “A non-transitory computer-readable medium tangibly embodying instructions executable to perform the method of Claim 1” Ramakrishnan discloses (12:36-46) that the programming instructions is encoded on computer readable media.
Claims 4-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ficco in view of Ramakrishnan and Kunieda as applied to claim 3 above, and further in view of US PG Pub 2003/0139966 to Sirota (“Sirota”).
Regarding claim 4, combination of Ficco, Ramakrishnan, and Kunieda meets all the limitations of the claim except “The method of Claim 3, wherein determining the display time for at least one of the interactive content items comprises determining which of a first and second media interactive content item to be displayed in the timeslot has a longer estimated interaction duration, and assigning an earlier display time to whichever of the first and second interactive content item is determined to have a longer estimated interaction duration.” However, Sirota discloses (¶0031) that the advertisements with plurality of different lengths such as 30 seconds and 60 seconds are used by the system for insertion, where (¶0035) if the slot time is greater than 60 seconds than the system selects 60 seconds advertisement followed by 30 seconds advertisement. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify Ficco, Ramakrishnan, and Kunieda’s systems by selecting longer duration content item for an earlier display time as taught by Sirota in order to ensure that adequate ads would be available to collect additional revenues for the same ad time slots (¶0036, ¶0007).
Regarding claim 5, “The method of Claim 3, wherein the interactive content items comprise interactive advertisements” Ramakrishnan discloses (3:57-64; 10:8-11) that the viewer interacts with the advertisement as represented in Fig. 4.
Regarding claim 6, “The method of Claim 5, further comprising selecting a plurality of interactive advertisements for display during the timeslot” Ramakrishnan discloses (10:59-62) that the plurality of ads are displayed during the commercial break as represented in Fig. 6.
Claims 7-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ficco in view of Ramakrishnan and Kunieda as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of US PG Pub 2013/0312018 to Elliott (“Elliott”).
Regarding claim 7, combination of Ficco, Ramakrishnan, and Kunieda meets all the limitations of the claim except “The method of Claim 1, wherein obtaining estimated interaction durations for each of the one or more interactive content items comprises obtaining one or more attributes of the interactive content items, and determining the estimated interaction duration for the interactive content item based on the one or more attributes.” However, Elliott discloses (¶0064-¶0065, ¶0072) that the data elements are measured for each end user such as a viewing device for each advertisement and app viewed/interacted with and the duration of each interaction. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify Ficco, Ramakrishnan, and Kunieda’s systems by determining duration of the content item based on the obtained attribute as taught by Elliott in order to allow service providers to realize some financial benefit from the responsible and ethical collection and use of measurement data to customize the marketing of products and services (¶0003).
Regarding claim 8, “The method of Claim 7, wherein the one or more attributes comprise an attribute indicative of whether the interaction requires the launching of an application on a user device” Elliott discloses (¶0064-¶0065, ¶0072) that the data elements are measured for each end user such as a viewing device for each advertisement and app viewed/interacted with and the duration of each interaction.
Conclusion
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/PINKAL R CHOKSHI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2425
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