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 .
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
Status of Claims
Claims 1, 3-10, 12-19, and 21-23 remain pending, and are rejected.
Claims 2, 11, and 20 have been cancelled.
Examiner’s Note
In response to the Pre-Appeal Brief filed on 1/27/2026, and the rejection mailed on 10/29/2025 is hereby withdrawn, and prosecution has been reopened.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed on 1/27/2026 with respect to the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been fully considered, but are not persuasive. Notably, argument A on pages 2-3 of the Applicant’s arguments are moot in light of new grounds of rejection. Prosecution has been reopened in response to the Pre-Appeal Brief filed on 1/27/2026, and new prior art has been applied.
Argument B, on pages 4-5 of the Applicant’s arguments, argues that Belli does not teach the specific security gatekeeper step of the pending claims, where the viewer’s profile must match the account data embedded in the visual code to reveal specific hidden information.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. The cited portion of Belli ([0068] and [0052]) discloses the comparing of account information to display content of their content of their social media account on a second device responsive to scanning a visual code (as disclosed below). The accountholder of the scanning the code is compared to their account information to log them in and associated the second device with their account. The Korokithakis reference was brought in to teach the generating of the resource location based on encrypted data extracted from the user account. As such, the combination of references discloses the conditional logic step of the comparing of account data and providing for display the data associated with the visual code.
In view of the above, the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 has been maintained 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, 3-7, 9-10, 12-16, 18-19, and 21-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable by Belli (US 20220150255 A1) in view of Trifa (US 20140181256 A1), and in further view of Korokithakis (US 20160149886 A1).
Regarding Claim 1: Regarding Claim 1: Belli discloses a method comprising:
providing for display, by the one or more processors, on a second device, the visual code and the digital component; (Belli: [0052] – “The content redirection system 208 may facilitate the display of content accessible by a first user logged in via a first device to an external display device that is different from the first device. For example, as discussed above, the disclosed embodiments may link a display device with a barcode. A user, logged into the social network via the first device, may capture an image of the barcode displayed on the display device”).
receiving, by the one or more processors form a first device, a request for data associated with the visual code, wherein the request comprises profile data associated with a second device; (Belli: [0052] – “A user, logged into the social network via the first device, may capture an image of the barcode displayed on the display device. The social network system 116, including the content redirection system 208, may then establish an association between the user and the display device. This may allow the user to display their content, accessible via their social network login, to the display device”; Belli: [0135] – “The user device service 1804 may receive a pair request 1832 from the client device 102 and manage the pairing with an available casting session”).
comparing, by the one or more processors, the account data and the profile data to determine whether the account data corresponds to the profile data; (Belli: [0068] - “The exemplary user account database 450 stores information for authenticating a user. The user account database 450 includes a user id column 352, user name column 454, password column 456, email address column 458, and phone number column 460. When a user attempts to login to the social messaging system 100, their login credentials, such as one or more of a user name, password, and email address, may be compared to values stored in the user account database 450. If a match is confirmed, the user may be considered logged in. Upon login, a row may be added to the user database 370, recording the user id, and a device identifier for the device performing the login”).
providing for display on the second device, by the one or more processors, the data associated with the visual code after determining the account data corresponds to the profile data. (Belli: [0052] – “This may allow the user to display their content, accessible via their social network login, to the display device”).
Belli does not explicitly teach a method comprising:
generating, by one or more processors, a visual code being associated with a digital component and account data associated with a user account, the generating comprising:
generating, by the one or more processors, based on the first resource location, a second resource location, wherein the second resource location is smaller than the first resource location;
generating, by the one or more processors, based on the second resource location, the visual code;
Notably, however, Belli does disclose the barcode being displayed on the external display device and displaying the digital content on the external display device (Belli: [0044-0045]).
To that accord, Trifa does teach a method comprising:
generating, by one or more processors, a visual code being associated with a digital component and account data associated with a user account, the generating comprising: (Trifa: [0050] – “cookies stored on the client's web browser can be used (the user can create a user account on the redirector server 40 (for example http://tn.gg), so every time he/she makes the request any URL on the redirector--e.g. http://tn.gg/abc123 which is encoded into a QR code--the redirector server 40 can retrieve his/her personal identification data from the cookie when he/she is logged into the redirector). This model can be further extended for when the user signs in the redirector application using a third party identity provider such as facebook, twitter, etc. Assuming the user creates an account using facebook, the redirector becomes effectively a facebook application, and by authorizing the redirector application to access his facebook account, every time the user will access the redirector server 40 (e.g. http://tn.gg/abc123) the redirector application will be able to know your facebook user identity”).
generating, by the one or more processors, based on the first resource location, a second resource location, wherein the second resource location is smaller than the first resource location; (Trifa: [0067] – “The short-URL can be created using a request to a redirector service (the request can only be issued using a valid authentication credential) and by providing as parameter: (1) a default redirection URL (any URL in the Web) of an application, and (2) a desired short-ID that will be part of the short-URL”).
generating, by the one or more processors, based on the second resource location, the visual code; (Trifa: [0050] – “every time he/she makes the request any URL on the redirector--e.g. http://tn.gg/abc123 which is encoded into a QR code--the redirector server 40 can retrieve his/her personal identification data from the cookie when he/she is logged into the redirector). This model can be further extended for when the user signs in the redirector application using a third party identity provider such as facebook, twitter, etc. Assuming the user creates an account using facebook, the redirector becomes effectively a facebook application, and by authorizing the redirector application to access his facebook account, every time the user will access the redirector server 40 (e.g. http://tn.gg/abc123) the redirector application will be able to know your facebook user identity”; Trifa: [0086] - “the user application bootstrap 12 is a specific native application configured to be used on the user's device 10 that is configured to be connected to a scanning device 14 for retrieving the address of the context-aware server 40 (Short-URL) once the redirection identifier 18 associated with the object 16 has been scanned by the scanning device 14. Once the application has decoded the address (Short-URL) of the context-aware redirector server 40 encoded in the redirection identifier, it simply accesses the Short-URL and transmits as appropriate the context information to the context-aware redirector server 40 (as described above using the "where:" and "who:" HTTP headers). This application is configured to carry out the redirection according to the HTTP standards and handle and display correctly the application running at the target URL”; Trifa: [0088] – “the native application can use an open-source library that allows reading QR codes using a camera of a mobile phone”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the invention of Belli disclosing a system for displaying digital content on an external display device with the generating of a second shorter resource location, and a visual code as taught by Trifa. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so in order to adapt content for a user with minimal user intervention (Trifa: [0007]).
Belli in view of Trifa does not explicitly teach generating, by the one or more processors based on encrypted data extracted from the user account, a first resource location; Notably, however, Belli does disclose scanning a code and matching account information (Belli: [0052]; [0068]).
To that accord, Korokithakis does teach generating, by the one or more processors based on encrypted data extracted from the user account, a first resource location; (Korokithakis: [0031] – “In the case the optical code 71 includes data on an URL to account recovery web page W2 for example as a QR code that has the URL encoded therein, it is possible that a QR code reader that is operable on terminals 40, 42, 44, 46 of user U is used to perform step S50, and that the QR code reader, upon reading optical code 71, directly prompts the user to access the web page W2 identified by code 71 to perform step S60. The electronic image E2 would thereby be processed by terminal 40, 42, 44, 46 with QR code reader to extract account recovery item 34, and not by server 20. Also, it is possible that the QR code has been generated by a non-standard encoding that is customary to operator O, and that the QR code reader installed on the user's terminal 40, 42, 44, 46 is configured to decode the QR code by using the non-standard encoding scheme. Also, the optical code 71 includes identify information of the account of user U that can be matched with identify information of database entries in database 22 to find the account, it is possible that the identity information was encoded and encrypted for security purposes, and has been embedded as a code into the URL”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the invention of Belli in view of Trifa disclosing a system for displaying digital content on an external display device with the resource location based on encrypted data extracted from the user account as taught by Korokithakis. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so in order to remove the use of a third-party service and increase the security of account information (Korokithakis: [0004]).
Regarding Claim 3: Belli in view of Trifa and Korokithakis discloses the limitations of claim 2 above.
Belli further discloses wherein:
the account data is associated with a user account; (Belli: [0068] – “The exemplary user account database 450 stores information for authenticating a user. The user account database 450 includes a user id column 352, user name column 454, password column 456, email address column 458, and phone number column 460. When a user attempts to login to the social messaging system 100, their login credentials, such as one or more of a user name, password, and email address, may be compared to values stored in the user account database”).
the user account is associated with a content provider providing the digital component for display on the second display. (Belli: [0052] – “The social network system 116, including the content redirection system 208, may then establish an association between the user and the display device. This may allow the user to display their content, accessible via their social network login, to the display device”).
Regarding Claim 4: Belli in view of Trifa and Korokithakis discloses the limitations of claim 1 above.
Belli further discloses wherein the data associated with the visual code is at least one of privacy data, advertiser disclosures, or digital component personalization data. Examiner notes that Applicant recites at least one of in the claim. (Belli: [0066] – “The exemplary group access table 390 defines which groups can access which content. For example, if the group access table 390 includes an association between a particular group identifier 392 and a particular content identifier”; Belli: [0072] – “The product identification component 404 may identify a product based on the barcode detected by the barcode detection component”; Belli: [0073] – “The catalog component 406 may identify product characteristics for the product identified by the product identification component. For example, the catalog component may search a product catalog that includes detailed information on products. For example, information such as size, color, and availability for a product may be determined by the catalog component”).
Regarding Claim 5: Belli in view of Trifa and Korokithakis discloses the limitations of claim 4 above.
Belli further discloses wherein the digital component personalization data includes an option to increase, decrease, or block a subject of the digital component. (Belli: [0069] – “The disclosed methods and systems may utilize the databases described above to determine which content of a social network is accessible by a particular user. For example, content indicated by the user access table, and/or the group access table, for groups of which the user is a member, may be accessible. This content may, in some aspects, be displayed on a display not associated with the user account, for example, a user may utilize a remote display device to display content accessible via their user account”).
Regarding Claim 6: Belli in view of Trifa and Korokithakis discloses the limitations of claim 5 above.
Belli further discloses wherein the subject of the digital component corresponds to a category or classification of at least one of products, goods, or services. (Belli: [0073] – “The catalog component 406 may identify product characteristics for the product identified by the product identification component. For example, the catalog component may search a product catalog that includes detailed information on products. For example, information such as size, color, and availability for a product may be determined by the catalog component”).
Regarding Claim 7: Belli in view of Trifa and Korokithakis discloses the limitations of claim 1 above.
Belli further discloses wherein:
the account data and the profile data each include an email address; (Belli: [0068] – “The user account database 450 includes a user id column 352, user name column 454, password column 456, email address column 458, and phone number column”).
when comparing the account data and the profile data the method further comprises comparing the email address associated with the account data and the email address associated with the profile data. (Belli: [0068] – “When a user attempts to login to the social messaging system 100, their login credentials, such as one or more of a user name, password, and email address, may be compared to values stored in the user account database 450. If a match is confirmed, the user may be considered logged in”).
Regarding Claim 9: Belli in view of Trifa and Korokithakis discloses the limitations of claim 1 above.
Belli further discloses wherein the visual code is a QR code. (Belli: [0133] – “optical reader components (e.g., an optical sensor to detect one-dimensional bar codes such as Universal Product Code (UPC) bar code, multi-dimensional bar codes such as Quick Response (QR) code, Aztec code, Data Matrix, Dataglyph, MaxiCode, PDF4111, Ultra Code, UCC RSS-2D bar code, and other optical codes)”).
Regarding Claims 10 and 19: Claims 10 and 19 recite substantially similar limitations as claim 1. Therefore, claims 10 and 19 are rejected under the same rationale as claim 1 above.
Regarding Claim 12: Claim 12 recites substantially similar limitations as claim 3. Therefore, claim 12 is rejected under the same rationale as claim 3 above.
Regarding Claim 13: Claim 13 recites substantially similar limitations as claim 4. Therefore, claim 13 is rejected under the same rationale as claim 4 above.
Regarding Claim 14: Claim 14 recites substantially similar limitations as claim 5. Therefore, claim 14 is rejected under the same rationale as claim 5 above.
Regarding Claim 15: Claim 15 recites substantially similar limitations as claim 6. Therefore, claim 15 is rejected under the same rationale as claim 6 above.
Regarding Claim 16: Claim 16 recites substantially similar limitations as claim 7. Therefore, claim 16 is rejected under the same rationale as claim 7 above.
Regarding Claim 18: Claim 18 recites substantially similar limitations as claim 9. Therefore, claim 18 is rejected under the same rationale as claim 9 above.
Regarding Claim 21: Belli in view of Trifa and Korokithakis discloses the limitations of claim 1 above.
Belli does not explicitly teach a method comprising:
a first resource location is a first uniform resource location (URL);
the second resource location is a second URL.
Notably, however, Belli does disclose generating a barcode that is accessible via a URL (Belli: [0138]).
To that accord, Trifa does teach a method comprising:
a first resource location is a first uniform resource location (URL); (Trifa: [0078] – “a "default" target URL must be given as parameter, which will be the target URL”).
the second resource location is a second URL. (Trifa: [0078] – “When creating any short URL, a "default" target URL must be given as parameter, which will be the target URL where the short URL will always redirect to”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the invention of the combination of Belli, Trifa, and Korokithakis disclosing a system for displaying digital content on an external display device with the resource locations being a URL as taught by Trifa. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so in order to adapt content for a user with minimal user intervention (Trifa: [0007]).
Regarding Claims 22 and 23: Claims 22 and 23 recite substantially similar limitations as claim 21. Therefore, claims 22 and 23 are rejected under the same rationale as claim 21 above.
Claims 8 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable by the combination of Belli (US 20220150255 A1), Trifa (US 20140181256 A1), and Korokithakis (US 20160149886 A1) in view of Kuznetsov (US 20130298216 A1).
Regarding Claim 8: The combination of Belli, Trifa, and Korokithakis discloses the limitations of claim 1 above.
The combination does not explicitly teach wherein when the account does not correspond to the profile data, the method further comprises providing for display on the first device, by the one or more processors, a prompt to log-in or switch to a user profile having profile data corresponding to the account data. Notably, however, Belli does disclose requiring login to authenticate access to content to display on the external display device (Belli: [0044]). Belli discloses the requirement to log in, but does not explicitly disclose a situation when the login is unsuccessful.
To that accord, Kuznetsov does teach wherein when the account does not correspond to the profile data, the method further comprises providing for display on the first device, by the one or more processors, a prompt to log-in or switch to a user profile having profile data corresponding to the account data. (Kuznetsov: [0050] – “In the event of an unsuccessful login, SSO component 314 can be configured to display a prompt on the display screen of network-enabled display device 300 for user input of individual login credentials for an online content/service account associated with the unsuccessful login. SSO component 314 can receive user input of individual login credentials entered at network-enabled display device 300 and initiate a subsequent (e.g., a second) or additional login procedure to the login server associated with the unsuccessful login result”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the invention of the combination of Belli, Trifa, and Korokithakis disclosing a system for displaying digital content on an external display device with the prompt to login when the account does not correspond to the profile data as taught by Kuznetsov. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to do so in order to limit content delivery only to users with access to the content with the provider (Kuznetsov: [0005]).
Regarding Claim 17: Claim 17 recites substantially similar limitations as claim 8. Therefore, claim 17 is rejected under the same rationale as claim 8 above.
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TIMOTHY J KANG whose telephone number is (571)272-8069. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday: 7:30 - 5:00.
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/T.J.K./ Examiner, Art Unit 3689
/MARISSA THEIN/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3689