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 .
General Remarks
This communication is considered fully responsive to Applicant’s response filed 01/02/2026.
Application filed: 08/14/2023
Applicant’s PgPUB: 2024/0073210
Claims:
Claims 1-5, 7-13, 15, 16 and 21 are pending.
Claims 1, 9 and 21 are independent.
Claims 6 and 14 are canceled.
Claim 21 is new.
Claim 21 is allowable.
Claims 7 and 15 are objected to.
Claims 17-20 are non-elected.
Continuity/Priority Data:
This Application claims priority to Chinese Application No. CN202211059169.5 filed 08/31/2022.
Prior Office Action:
In the Office Action filed on 10/14/2025, Examiner indicated that claims 6, 7, 14 and 15 would be allowable if they were rolled up into their independent claim along with any intervening claims. Applicant did roll up claim 6 and parts of claims 4 and 5, but not the entire claims. Further Applicant changed the scope of the claim 6 by including the phrase “At least one of” and changing the conjunction “and” to “or”. These changes broaden the scope and meaning of the claims. Therefore, the claims as presented are not in condition for allowance.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see Applicant’s response, filed 05/08/2026, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1-5, 8-13, 15, 16 under 35 U.S.C. 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive to overcome the prior rejection. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0048960 A1 to Yamauchi et al. (“Yamauchi”)..
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 7 and 15 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Claim 21 is allowable over the prior art.
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 may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-5 and 9-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0413344 A1 to Jin (“Jin”) in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0048960 A1 to Yamauchi et al. (“Yamauchi”).
As to claim 1, Jin discloses:
a control method applied to a first electronic device comprising:
in response to obtaining a trigger signal, determining a target component (Fig. 2, target functional component, 212) corresponding to the trigger signal (¶0004 – Jin teaches establishing a connection by a first electronic device with a second electronic device through a connection component in an activated state; and in response to the established connection (i.e., trigger signal)); and
sharing the target component to a second electronic device for use to expand performance of the second electronic device corresponding to the target component, the second electronic device being a device that establishes a target connection with the first electronic device (Fig. 2, electronic devices (22, 21); target functional component, 212, ¶0004 – Jin teaches switching, by the first electronic device, a target functional component called by the second electronic device from an inactivated state to an activated state to implement a target function corresponding to the target functional component of the first electronic device), wherein:
sharing the target component to the second electronic device including wherein:
establishing a first connection channel between the target component and the second electronic device for the second electronic device to send first data to the target component or receive second data sent by the target component through the first connection channel (Fig. 2, electronic devices (22, 21); target functional component, 212, ¶0004 – Jin teaches switching, by the first electronic device, a target functional component called by the second electronic device from an inactivated state to an activated state to implement a target function corresponding to the target functional component of the first electronic device), including at least one of:
Yamauchi discloses what Jin does not expressly disclose. However Jin does teach a device architecture between interfaces (i.e., Fig. 6, HDMI, Bluetooth) and components (i.e., Fig. 6, AMP, Speaker) and the potential paths between interfaces and components along with a table that shows the states of each interface and component based on the power state of the first electronic device (Fig. 6, Fig. 7, -¶0084-¶0090)
Yamauchi discloses:
in response to the first electronic device being in a first power mode, outputting current usage information of each related component to control state of each related component after receiving a selection instruction to complete a path needed for establishing the first connection channel (Fig. 5, Fig. 6, ¶0089-¶0091 – Yamauchi teaches parameters are taken into consideration when performing in a power saving mode fall into these items, the more the number of items increases, the more the reduction of the power consumption is effectively carried out. Further, Yamauchi teaches the device information such as whether or not battery-powered. (AC battery), remaining battery resource, and whether or not power saving operation in response to the instruction from the user is carried out; channel information such as the quality of communication data and delay spread; ¶0267 – Yamauchi teaches second information preferably includes channel information indicating a current state of a channel. With this, the control device can subject the communication device to a control for the low-power-consumption operation most appropriate to the channel information.); or
in response to the first electronic device being in a second power mode, outputting switching information of the target component, and controlling the path between the target interface and the target component to complete the path needed for establishing the first connection channel, the switching information being information that the target component is switched from being used by the first electronic device to being used by the second electronic device;
Jin and Yamauchi are analogous arts because they are from the same field of endeavor with respect to usage of power metrics within a networking framework.
Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate power metrics to determine networking parameters as discussed in Yamauchi with the system of resource access as discussed in Jin by adding the functionality of Yamauchi to the system/method of Jin in order to improve power management of devices (Yamauchi, ¶0004).
As to claim 2, Jin and Yamauchi discloses:
control method of claim 1, and
Jin discloses:
wherein the trigger signal is generated based on at least one of:
an input operation acting on the first electronic device;
an input operation acting on the second electronic device;
an establishment of the target connection between the second electronic device and the first electronic device (¶0004 – Jin teaches establishing a connection by a first electronic device with a second electronic device through a connection component in an activated state; and in response to the established connection (i.e., trigger signal));
a target application running on the second electronic device;
at least hardware configuration information of the second electronic device;
at least space environment where the second electronic device and/or the first electronic device are located; or
hardware usage of the second electronic device and/or the first electronic device.
As to claim 3, Jin and Yamauchi discloses:
control method of claim 1, and
Jin discloses:
wherein determining the target component corresponding to the trigger signal includes at least one of:
in response to the trigger signal carrying first identification information to point to the target component, determining the component that matches the first identification information among the components shared by the first electronic device as the target component (Fig. 2, electronic devices (22, 21); target functional component, 212, ¶0004 – Jin teaches switching, by the first electronic device, a target functional component called by the second electronic device from an inactivated state to an activated state to implement a target function corresponding to the target functional component of the first electronic device);
determining the power mode of the first electronic device, and determining the target component from components shared by the first electronic device based on the power mode;
determining the power mode of the target component and a component usage parameter of each component of the first electronic device in the power mode, and determining the target component based on the power mode and the component usage parameter;
obtaining second identification information of the second electronic device, and determining a component in the first electronic device that matches the second identification information as the target component; or
obtaining generation time of the trigger signal, and determining a component in the first electronic device that matches the generation time as the target component.
As to claim 4, Jin and Yamauchi discloses:
control method of claim 1, and
Jin discloses:
wherein sharing the target component to the second electronic device further includes:
establishing a second connection channel between the first electronic device and the second electronic device to receive a control instruction from the second electronic device for the target component, and performing a control action corresponding to the control instruction (Fig. 2, electronic devices (22, 21); target functional component, 212, ¶0004 – Jin teaches switching, by the first electronic device, a target functional component called by the second electronic device from an inactivated state to an activated state to implement a target function corresponding to the target functional component of the first electronic device).
As to claim 5, Jin and Yamauchi discloses:
control method of claim 1, and
Jin discloses:
wherein establishing the first connection channel between the target component and the second electronic device further includes:
determining the current power mode of the first electronic device (¶0005, ¶0085-¶0087 – Jin teaches the connection unit is configured to establish a connection with a second electronic device through a connection component in an activated state. The switching unit is configured to switch a target functional component called by the second electronic device from an inactivated state to the activated state, in response to the established connection. Examiner Note: this shows a determination that the first electronic device has different power modes as determined by its components (i.e., connection and functional components) and then switching from inactive to active shows a determination that that a state was inactive.), or in response to the first electronic device being in a third power mode, controlling the state of each related component between the target interface and the target component to complete the path needed for establishing the first connection channel.
As to claim 9, similar rejection as claim 1.
As to claim 10, similar rejection as claim 2.
As to claim 11, similar rejection as claim 3.
As to claim 12, similar rejection as claim 4.
As to claim 13, similar rejection as claim 5.
Claims 8 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0413344 A1 to Jin (“Jin”) in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0048960 A1 to Yamauchi et al. (“Yamauchi”) in further view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2017/0142583 A1 to Zhang (“Zhang”).
As to claim 8, Jin and Yamauchi discloses:
control method of claim 1,
Zhang discloses what Jin and Yamauchi do not expressly disclose.
Zhang discloses:
further comprising:
in response to obtaining a connection request from the second electronic device, outputting a prompt for target authentication (¶0063 - Zhang teaches presenting a prompt for a user to login to access another device); and
in response to the second electronic device passing the target authentication, establishing the target connection and/or configuring usage permission of the target component (¶0071 - Zhang teaches presenting a prompt for a user to login and if authorized, process the communication information); or,
in response to the second electronic device failing the target authentication, modifying access permission of the second electronic device and/or the usage permission of the target component.
Jin, Yamauchi and Zhang are analogous arts because they are from the same field of endeavor with respect to network resource access.
Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate network authorization as discussed in Zhang with power metrics to determine networking parameters as discussed in Sundstrom with the system of resource access as discussed in Jin by adding the functionality of Zhang to the system/method of Jin and Yamauchi in order to demonstrate authorizing a user to access network resources (Zhang, ¶0071).
As to claim 16, similar rejection as claim 8.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TAYLOR A ELFERVIG whose telephone number is (571)270-5687. The examiner can normally be reached Monday (10:00 AM CST) - Friday (4:00 PM CST).
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Oscar Louie can be reached at (571) 270-1684. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/TAYLOR A ELFERVIG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2445
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