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 .
Response to Amendment
This is in response to Applicant’s amendment which was filed on 08/27/2025 and has been entered. Claims 1-20 are currently pending. Claims 1, 11, and 17 are amended herein. No claims have been cancelled and no claims have been added.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 08/27/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Applicant has amended the independent claims to recite in part “wherein the application on the recipient device has configured a caller identification process on the recipient device to display, in response to receiving the call from the outbound phone number, the name of the organization and the reason for the call, based on the information received from the intermediate service prior to the call being received.
Applicant argues the applied prior art Kats does not teach where information is sent from the initiating side and preloaded into the recipient’s application before the call arrives. Examiner respectfully disagrees.
Kats discloses a client-server approach where a first user communicates media content to a server which pushes the media content to a recipient specified by the first user. In para. [0170], the App on the recipient device, may periodically query the content server 112 for newly published or updated content or a content update may also be triggered via a push message from the server 112. The App may automatically download newly published or updated content and may synchronize the local data store on the device 102. Additionally, Kats discloses the recipient device displays the previously received media content when an incoming call is received from the first user. In para. [0613] the business caller can provide specific content that can be rendered on the incoming call notification screen (e.g., a portion of the lock screen) of a target recipient, including interactive content and [0623] the architecture 100 may further update the target recipient device (e.g., send an updated SCCMC data structure and the like) approximately at the start of the future start time, so that an incoming call from the caller can be handled as intended.
The amended claims remain rejected in view of US Publication No. 2021/0344792 (“Kats et al.”).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claims 1-3, 7, 9-13, and 15-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by US Publication No. 2021/0344792 (“Kats et al.”).
Regarding claim 1, Kats discloses a method, comprising:
identifying, by an initiating device of an organization (fig. 1, user A’s mobile phone, a business calling a customer), a user and a reason for a call to a recipient device of the user, the recipient device having an inbound phone number (fig. 5B each recipient is associated with user first name last name and number, [0605] the reason for the call);
informing, by the initiating device, an intermediate service (fig. 1, content server 112; [0057] sender control media (SCM) platform/app) about the call to the recipient device and the reason for the call ([0621] a registered caller data structure 5106 may include information that facilitates identification of the caller (e.g., caller ID 5108), the content/call intent (e.g., call code 5110), and at least one target recipient (e.g., recipient 5112), [0605] SCCMC content can support various types of interactions; for example, a business calling a customer may have a variety of reasons for calling that preferably come with different audiovisual interactions, these may include interactions around late payments, credit offers, appointments, deliveries and many others),
wherein the intermediate service is configured to coordinate information with an application on the recipient device to inform the recipient device of the call, an outbound phone number of the call, a name of the organization, and the reason for the call ([0170] in a client-server approach, the App, on the recipient device, may periodically query the content server 112 for newly published or updated content or a content update may also be triggered via a push message from the server 112. The App may automatically download newly published or updated content and may synchronize the local data store on the device 102);
calling, from the initiating device and using the outbound phone number, the recipient device at the inbound phone number, wherein the application on the recipient device has configured a caller identification process on the recipient device to display, in response to receiving the call from the outbound phone number, the name of the organization and the reason for the call, based on the information received from the intermediate device prior to the call being received ([0613] the business caller can provide specific content that can be rendered on the incoming call notification screen (e.g., a portion of the lock screen) of a target recipient, including interactive content and [0623] the architecture 100 may further update the target recipient device (e.g., send an updated SCCMC data structure and the like) approximately at the start of the future start time, so that an incoming call from the caller can be handled as intended).
Claim 11 recites a tangible, non-transitory, computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a processor on a computer, cause the computer to perform a process recited in claim 1. Thus claim 11 is rejected in view of Kats et al. for the same reason discussed with respect to claim 1.
Claim 17 recites an apparatus, comprising: one or more network interfaces; a processor coupled to the one or more network interfaces and configured to execute one or more processes; and a memory configured to store a process that is executable by the processor, the process when executed preforming the method of claim 1. Thus claim 17 is rejected in view of Kats et al. for the same reason discussed with respect to claim 1.
Regarding claims 2, 12 and 18, Kats et al. discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the reason for the call includes an urgency of the call ([0601] “your driver is arriving with your pizza now” the matter requires immediate attention).
Regarding claim 3, Kats et al. discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the reason for the call is selected from a group consisting of: potentially fraudulent transactions; a change in privacy rules; a special offer; a requested callback; a customer survey; and a response to an inquiry ([0605] [0608] content includes offering extended warranties, upgraded, exchanges, or the like as a change in privacy rules; feedback or survey as a customer survey; call return from a worker upon customer request as a request callback; providing help to customer upon customer’s request as a response to an inquiry).
Regarding claim 7, 13 and 19, Kats et al. discloses the method of claim 1, wherein identifying the user and the reason for call is either performed manually by an agent or automatically based on a pre-programmed algorithm (manually, [0270] a user (e.g., the sender) may operate the unified messaging user interface 3604 to select one more content item manually).
Regarding claims 9 and 15, Kats et al. discloses the method of claim 1. wherein the call is either a voice call or a text message ([0174] incoming voice calls and incoming text messages).
Regarding claims 10 and 16, Kats et al. discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the application communicates a response to the call to either call again later or to reschedule the call ([0622] the architecture 100 may, upon receipt of a registration by the caller for a call to occur in a future time frame (e.g., “tomorrow”, “next week”, “after a scheduled event”, and the like) update the target recipient device so that a call from the caller before a start of the future time frame will be handled by, for example, as an unexpected call or by an unknown caller and the like.).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
Claim 4 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US Publication No. 2021/0344792 (“Kats et al.”) in view of US Publication No. 2021/0218725 (“Fang et al.”).
Regarding claim 4, Kats et al. discloses all subject matters as claimed above, except for the feature of establishing a connection utilizing an encrypted security token.
However, Fang et al. (hereinafter “Fang”) discloses such feature in paragraph [0230] for improving security of token transmission. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the feature of establishing a connection utilizing an encrypted security token, as taught by Fang, into view of Kats in order to establish a security connection between the intermediate service device and the recipient device.
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US Publication No. 2021/0344792 (“Kats et al.”) in view of US Publication No. 2021/0218725 (“Fang et al.”) and further in view of US Publication No. 2017/0178217 (“Ahuja”).
Regarding claim 5, Kats et al. in view of Fang, in combination, discloses all subject matters as claimed above, except for the encrypted security token was initially shared between the recipient device and the intermediate service when an account with the organization was established on the recipient device.
However, Ahuja discloses such feature in paragraphs [0020] and [0035] for retrieval of purchased items and delivery. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the feature of sharing the encrypted security token between the recipient device and the intermediate service device, as taught by Ahuja, into view of Kats and Fang in order to securely transmit the information of the call to recipient device.
Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US Publication No. 2021/0344792 (“Kats et al.”) in view of US Publication No. 2021/0218725 (“Fang et al.”) and further in view of US Patent No. 8,831,191 (“Vendrow”).
Regarding claim 6, Kats discloses the feature of transmitting the reason and other identification information to the recipient device as discussed above. Kats fails to teach the feature of wherein the intermediate service is configured to coordinate with the application on the recipient device by utilizing a connection, secured by an encrypted security token, where the connection is established and maintained continuously.
However, Fang et al. (hereinafter “Fang”) discloses such feature in paragraph [0230] for improving security of token transmission. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the feature of establishing a connection utilizing an encrypted security token, as taught by Fang, into view of Kats in order to establish a security connection between the intermediate service device and the recipient device.
Additionally, Vendrow discloses that a connection is established and maintained continuously if the user associated with the device 102B (i.e., read on the recipient device) accepts the preview message of an incoming call. Otherwise, the connection is disconnected or sent to voicemail (col.4, lines 33-39).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the features of establishing a connection by utilizing an encrypted token and maintained continuously, as taught by Fang and Vendrow into view of Kats in order to securely terminate the incoming call to the recipient device.
Claims 8, 14 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US Publication No. 2021/0344792 (“Kats et al.”) in view of US Patent No. 9,338,289 (“Goyal et al.”).
Regarding claims 8, 14 and 20, Kats discloses all subject matters as claimed above, except for the feature of the initiating device selecting the outbound phone number from a plurality of outbound phone numbers based on available of the outbound phone number.
However, Goyal et al. (hereinafter “Goyal”) discloses an originating device110, as shown in figure 1A, selects an outbound number from a pool of available numbers for use as a caller ID of an outbound call when initiated (col.22, lines 30-38). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the feature of the initiating device selecting the outbound phone number from a plurality of outbound phone numbers based on available of the outbound phone number, as taught by Goyal, into view of Kats in order to provide selected outbound phone number as the caller ID of the incoming call to the recipient device.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: U.S. Patent No. 6,741,689 to Burg
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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/JIRAPON TULOP/Examiner, Art Unit 2693