DETAILED ACTION
This action is in response to the Applicant Remarks received on October 6, 2025. Claims 10-16 and 22 are pending with claims 1-9 and 17-20 withdrawn, claim 21 canceled, claim 10 currently amended, and claim 22 newly presented.
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 .
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 10-14, 16, and 22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Keener [US20080270541A1] and Chang [US20160286244A1].
Regarding claims 1-9, the Applicant has elected to withdraw the claims.
Regarding claim 10 (Currently Amended), Keener discloses:
A system, comprising:
at least one processor; and
a non-transitory computer-readable medium in communication with the at least one processor,
wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute instructions embodied in the computer-readable medium to perform operations comprising:
generating an instructor user interface configured to capture a video of a lecture (Keener, [0021], “FIG. 14 shows a physical embodiment of the mobile talent client applet module.”);
obtaining the video of the lecture (Keener, [0012], “FIG. 5 shows the operations being part of the process of viewing the live streaming audio/video feeds made available as part of this system.”);
generating, based at least in part on the video, an interactive module (Keener, claim 1, “viewers interacting with the talent-person”);
providing the interactive module to a viewer receiving instruction (As cited directly above, Keener discloses the viewers interacting with the talent person.).
receiving a viewer-initiated chat request or potential question (Keener, [0052], “As displayed in FIG. 5, while the talent-person is speaking live to the viewers, the viewers are able to make comments or ask questions by inputting text data into a chat process on the talent-person's web page.”);
associating an identifier with the viewer-initiated chat request or potential question (Keener, [0053], “The viewer is provided a choice of using an optional self-assigned name or system-assigned random name for the purpose of identifying comments or questions and chat inputs to the viewer to viewer chat.”);
responsive to determining that the identifier is in a queue, providing the identifier and timecode to the instructor user interface (Keener, [0038], “the message is send to the question and answer window queue … question is posted in talent list (Module:607)”); and
obtaining answer data responsive to the viewer-initiated chat request or potential question, the answer data comprising a video stream or a recorded video associated with the at least one of the chat request or the potential question (Keener, claim 5, “if the talent-person so desires, responds to the comment or question verbally and visually through a live audio-visual communication over the internet.”).
Keener discloses an interactive module where viewers may pose chat requests or potential questions to the presenter, but Keener does not explicitly disclose a plurality of segments and segment metadata and associating a timecode of an initiation time of the viewer-initiated chat request or potential question with the timecode representing a time from a start of the video.
Chang, however, discloses:
a plurality of segments and segment metadata (Chang, [0066], “these engagements may be aggregated with metadata for the broadcast, for example in broadcast metadata 166.” and [0088], “automatically condense large broadcast streams into summary snippets or include only the most interesting segment to create the replays 220”) and
a timecode of an initiation time of the viewer-initiated chat request or potential question with the timecode representing a time from a start of the video (Chang, [0062], “The information about the engagement [of the viewer with the broadcaster/presenter] may include an identifier for who provided the signal and when it was provided, for example by identifying the time in the timestamp packet associated with the frame being displayed when the engagement was received.”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have segmented video content and collected metadata for the segmented video content for data processing as in Chang in the system of Keener with the motivation of introducing a more efficient pipeline for data storage and data filtering as taught by Chang over that of Keener.
Furthermore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include in the interactive media delivery system of Keener the ability to associate a timecode with a chat request or potential question as taught by Chang since the claimed invention is merely a combination of old elements, and in the combination each element merely would have performed the same function as it did separately, and one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the results of the combination were predictable.
Regarding claim 11 (Original), Keener/Chang discloses:
The system of claim 10, wherein the instructor user interface is further configured to render an indication of when the at least one of the chat request or the potential question occurred with respect to at least one of the plurality of segments (Chang, [0088], “The engagements may indicate a relevance/importance/likeness of certain segments of the broadcast.”).
Regarding claim 12 (Original), Keener/Chang discloses:
The system of claim 10, wherein the instructor user interface is further configured to render a presentation of at least one of the plurality of segments to provide context for the at least one of the chat request or the potential question (As cited in claim 10, Keener teaches the instructor/talent-person/broadcaster is capable of responding to chat requests or potential questions via a presentation, and Chang, [0052], “The interactive video sharing engine 170 may also provide the engagement indications to the broadcasting computing device 102.”.).
Regarding claim 13 (Original), Keener/Chang discloses:
The system of claim 10, wherein generating, based at least in part on the video, the interactive module including the plurality of segments and segment metadata comprises:
tagging a question or an answer in the video (Chang, [0080], “the stream correlator 204 may obtain user-provided input on the video stream (e.g., tagging the video, tagging objects in the video, keywords, hash tags)”) based at least in part on at least one of:
performing speech recognition to identify a keyword or phrase for a start of the question or the answer in the video (Chang, [0079], “The audio analyzer 212 may include a natural language processing (NLP) unit 214 configured to detect keywords from the speech of the audio.”), or
the instructor user interface being further configured to indicate the start of the question or the answer in the video.
Regarding claim 14 (Original), Keener/Chang discloses:
The system of claim 10, wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute instructions embodied in the computer-readable medium to perform operations comprising:
publishing the answer data as an answer for at least one of the plurality of segments (As cited above, Keener discloses publishing the answer data in real time.); and
associating the answer with the at least one of the plurality of segments, at least one of a plurality of questions, and the segment metadata (Chang, [0064], “The interactive video sharing engine 170 may store the engagement indications with the stored video stream, as well as the broadcast metadata.”).
Regarding claim 16 (Original), Keener/Chang discloses:
The system of claim 14, wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute instructions embodied in the computer-readable medium to perform operations comprising:
tagging the at least one of the plurality of questions with at least one of a difficulty or a topic (Chang, [0080], “the stream correlator 204 may obtain user-provided input on the video stream (e.g., tagging the video, tagging objects in the video, keywords, hash tags)”).
Regarding claim 22 (New), Keener/Chang discloses:
The system of claim 10, wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute instructions embodied in the computer-readable medium to perform operations comprising:
initiating an interactive session with the viewer responsive to the viewer-initiated chat request or potential question via an input from the instructor user interface (Keener discloses an interactive session between the viewer and talent-person as the viewer submits a comment/question, the talent-person responds, and this may continue in a loop as the viewer may submit another comment/question for the talent-person to respond.).
Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Keener/Chang as applied to claims 1-14, 16, and 22 above, and further in view of Vizia as disclosed in the YouTube video, “Vizia Tutorial” by Briton Tarter [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7maEqJMGpuU] on March 24, 2017 (hereinafter, “Vizia”).
Regarding claim 15 (Original), Keener/Chang discloses the system of claim 14, but Keener/Chang does not disclose the ability to adjust timecodes.
Vizia, however, discloses:
The system of claim 14, wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute instructions embodied in the computer-readable medium to perform operations comprising:
modifying a timecode associated with the at least one of the plurality of questions (Vizia, 2:15 of 4:39, The instructor may modify the timecode associated with a question by clicking on the timeline of the video to add the question and clicking any interactions previously added then clicking “Delete” to remove the question.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to allow administrators of content, such as educators and broadcasters, to modify timecodes associated with user interaction for creating an accurate representation of when one form of content is relevant to another form of content by including the ability for the administrator to modify inaccurate or inefficient timecode information for proper association of content as in the improvement discussed in Vizia in the system of Keener/Cheng. As in Vizia, it is within the capabilities of one of ordinary skill in the art to include in an administrator’s interface the ability to modify timecodes with the predicted result of efficiently associating correlated content as needed in Keener/Cheng.
Regarding claims 17-21, the Applicant has elected to withdraw the claims.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see pages 8-9 of the Remarks, filed October 6, 2025, with respect to the rejection of claims 10-16 under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
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/Z.J.P./Examiner, Art Unit 3715
/XUAN M THAI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3715