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 .
On response filed on 12/11/2025, no claims were/was amended; claims 21-22 were added; no claims were cancelled. As a result, claims 1-22 are pending, of which claims 1, 8 and 15 are in independent form.
Response to Arguments
On page 1 of Remarks filed on 12/11/2025, applicant argues that regarding independent claims 1, 8, and 15, Pan reference does not disclose “receiving, by the first computing device from the second computing device, a list of one or more text candidates”…because all text candidates are generated by Pan’s client device 110, not by Pan’s remote computing device.
The examiner respectfully disagrees with applicant. The claim limitation as re-created here reads as: responsive to sending the request, receiving, by the first computing device from the second computing device, a list of one or more text candidates associated with the text input. The way the claim is written requires the client somehow receives a list of text candidates in response to a query request sent to a second computing device. The examiner notes that Pan provides resources to the client computing device so that the client computing device 110 utilizes the resource from the remote computing device 150 to generate list of text candidates...which enables the client user to acquire the list of text candidates. The examiner didn’t find limitation that narrows the limitation of receiving the list of text candidates to receiving the list of text candidates generated at the second computing device. For the same reason the examiner disagrees with the applicant’s argument that “because the same device that receives the user’s text generates the replacement text candidates, there is never a ‘request for text candidates’ ‘sent, by the computing device to a second computing device’ at page 3 of Remarks filed on 12/11/2025.
The examiner notes that Scott et al. (US 2013/0346872) discloses that the servers’ services or engines at the server location generate text candidates to be rendered at the client device (see para. [0070]-[0088] and Fig. 15B).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-3, 8-10, 15-17, 22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Pan et al. (US 2023/0229869 A1) hereinafter Pan.
As to claim 1, Pan teaches a method comprising:
detecting, by a first computing device (e.g., client computing device 110 in Fig. 1), a text input to a user interface (UI) element of an application (see para. [0025], e.g., application 166) executing on the first computing device (see Fig. 4, step 402 “Client IME detects input of original text”; see para. [0018] “…as the user types, a client IME component on the client computing device provides a user interface (UI) of a third-party IME and generates a candidate window.”; see para. [0048]);
responsive to the detection of the text input, sending, by the first computing device to a second computing device (e.g., Remote Computing Device 150 in Fig. 1), a request for text candidates associated with the text input (see Fig. 4, step 404; see para. [0048] “At step 404, client IME 134 transmits the original text to agent IME 168 as a composition string command…”);
responsive to sending the request, receiving, by the first computing device from the second computing device, a list of one or more text candidates associated with the text input (see para. [0050] “At step 412, client IME 134 generates candidates in the conversion language based on the original text detected at step 402”); and presenting, by the first computing device, the list of one or more text candidates in a composition window (see para. [0051], “…to carry out a method 500 of adding a selected candidate to composition window 170…”), the composition window being part of an input method editor (IME) executing on the first computing device (see para. [0038] “The caret is a rectangle located at the position of composition window 170 at which the user is currently inputting text. In response to receiving the caret position command, client IME 134 updates a position of candidate window 136 with respect to remote desktop image 132.”), the composition window displayed on a screen of the first computing device (see Figs. 2F and 2H; It is noted that the Remote Desktop Image 132 residing on Remote Desktop Client 130 includes Composition Window 170).
Claims 8 and 15 includes similar limitations as claim 1 and thus claims 8 and 15 are rejected under the same rationale as in claim 1.
As to claim 2, in view of claim 1, Pan teaches further comprising, responsive to the detection of the text input, disabling, by the first computing device, a local IME of the first computing device (see para. [9944] and [0045]).
Claims 9 and 16 include similar limitations as claim 2 and thus claims 9 and 16 are rejected under the same rationale as in claim 2.
As to claims 3, 10, and 17, in view of claims 1, 8, and 15, respectively, Pan teaches wherein the request for text candidates includes an indication of a language associated with the IME (see para. [0050] “client IME 134 generates candidates in the conversion language based on the original text detected at step 402. At step 414, client IME 134 generates candidate window 136 including the candidates generated at step 412. At step 416, remote desktop client 130 displays remote desktop image 132 and superimposes candidate window 136 over remote desktop image 132”).
As to claim 22, in view of claim 1, Pad teaches wherein the text input is in a first language and at least one text candidate of the list of one or more text candidates is in a second language (see para. [0004] “…one or more embodiments provide a method of generating text in a first language for incorporation into a remote desktop image to be displayed at a client device, based on inputs made at the client device in a second language different from the first language.”)
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.
Claim(s) 4-6, 11-13, 18-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pad, in view of Liu et al. (US 2018/0329960 A1) hereinafter Liu.
As to claims 4, 13, in view of claims 1, 8, respectively, Pan does not explicitly teach but Liu teaches “wherein the application is a web application.” (see par. [0023]-[0025], [0034], [0079], and [0080]; It is noted that the application(s) integrating an input method editor (IME) capable of searching and integrating expression sticker character(s) based on keywords being typed in a composition window area is/are built on a thin web-based browser at client side and on a cloud service using System as a Service (SaaS) at server side.)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of Pad and Liu before him or her, to modify the scheme of Pad by including Liu. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to facilitate client’s access to IME-based dynamically upgradable application through client’s lightweight web-browser based user interface without burden of managing and developing the application and the supporting cloud infrastructure, as briefly discussed in Liu, [0023] and [0034].
As to claims 5, 12, 18, in view of claims 1, 8, and 15, respectively, Pan does not explicitly teach but Liu teaches “wherein the application is a Software as a Service (SaaS) application” (see par. [0023]-[0025], [0034], [0079], and [0080]; It is noted that the application(s) integrating an input method editor (IME) capable of searching and integrating expression sticker character(s) based on keywords being typed in a composition window area is/are built on a thin web-based browser at client side and on a cloud service using System as a Service (SaaS) at server side.)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of Pad and Liu before him or her, to modify the scheme of Pad by including Liu. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to facilitate client’s access to IME-based dynamically upgradable application through client’s lightweight web-browser based user interface without burden of managing and developing the application and the supporting cloud infrastructure, as briefly discussed in Liu, [0023] and [0034].
As to claims 6, 13, and 19, in view of claims 1, 8, and 15, respectively, Pan does not explicitly teach but Liu teaches “wherein one or more text candidates associated with the text input is determined based on a query of a candidate repository associated with the second computing device/(the remote computing device)” (see par. [0060], and [0080] “In a further embodiment, the user may input one or more keywords into the IME, and these keywords may be used to search, sort, and filter the collected expression stickers to determine most likely-to-be-used expression stickers to display. For example, if the user enters “happy,” then only those expression stickers which are most likely to correspond to the feeling of “happy” will be displayed, with those”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of Pad and Liu before him or her, to modify the scheme of Pad by including Liu. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to facilitate client’s access to IME-based dynamically upgradable application through client’s lightweight web-browser based user interface without burden of managing and developing the application and the supporting cloud infrastructure, as briefly discussed in Liu, [0023] and [0034].
Claim(s) 7, 14 and 20-21 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pad, in view of Scott et al. (US 2013/0346872 A1) hereinafter Scott.
As to claims 7, 14, and 20, in view of claims 1, 8, and 15, respectively, Pan does not explicitly teach but Scott teaches “wherein the request for text candidates associated with the text input is sent from the first computing device via a secure network to the second computing device/(the remote computing device)” (see para. [0161]-[0163] and para. [0086] “The IME 306 or the application may pre-store the authentication credentials of the user to log onto and use such services.”; The examiner views the IMEs requiring authentication credentials of the user as indicative of secure network.)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of Pad and Scott before him or her, to modify the scheme of Pad by including Scott. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to securely obtain text candidates by authenticating the application user.
As to claim 21, in view of claim 1, Pan does not explicitly teach but Scott teaches “wherein the list of one or more text candidates associated with the text input is generated by the second computing device” (see para. [0008] “…the IME may host an engine pool including a plurality of scenario-tuned and type-specific input candidate engines, such as a chat-tuned text candidate engine and a chat-tuned rich candidate engine. The IME may use one of such specific engines to search input candidates based on the determined scenario of the user input and the type of input candidates. The engine pool may be hosted at a remote server.” and Fig. 15B and para. [0165] for remote server hosting the pool 1525 of engines for generating text candidates)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of Pad and Scott before him or her, to modify the scheme of Pad by including Scott. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to securely obtain text candidates by authenticating the application user.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to HEE SONG whose telephone number is (571)270-3260. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon – Fri, 7:30 AM – 5:00 PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Eleni Shiferaw can be reached on (571)272-3867. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-7291.
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/HEE K SONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2497