DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1, 3-9, 11, 13-19, 51-54 are pending.
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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 6/4/2026 has been entered.
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) 1-3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17-19, 51-52 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhattacharjee et al. (US 2018/0302687) in view of Vaughn et al. (US 2020/0135225), and further in view of Mahyar et al. (US 11216684), and further in view of Guzman Estrada et al. (US 2023/0179809).
Claim 1, Bhattacharjee teaches a method comprising:
analyzing, using control circuitry, media content to determine one or more parameters (i.e. scenes where captions can be displayed) associated with the media content, and wherein the one or more parameters indicate at least one of the location (i.e. ‘scenes’ is the location within the video file) , appearance, or language of the first captions (p. 0020);
generating, using control circuitry, metadata (i.e. tagging content) storing the one or more parameters (i.e. stored on server) (p. 0020);
receiving, using control circuitry, a request (i.e. request for close captioning) to display the media content captioning enabled (p. 0025-0032).
Bhattacharjee is silent regarding the specific features of:
“wherein the media content includes first captions”, and
“wherein the first captions are burned into pixels of one or more frames of the media content”;
determining, using control circuitry, based at least in part on the metadata associated with the media content, whether the first captions meet one or more user preferences;
based, at least in part on determining the first captions do not meet the one or more user preferences;
inpainting, using control circuitry, the pixels of the one or more frames of the media content in which the first captions are burned, wherein the inpainting comprises changing a color of the pixels of the one or more frames;
based on the inpainting, generating, using control circuitry, for display on the media content second captions based at least in part on the metadata and the user preferences.
Vaugn teaches the specific features of:
“wherein the media content includes first captions” (i.e. media content and associated subtitle data) (p. 0003), and
determining, using control circuitry, based at least in part on the metadata (i.e. raw subtitle data) associated with the media content, whether the first captions meet one or more user preferences (i.e. captions in desired language) (p. 0070-0072);
based, at least in part on determining the first captions do not meet the one or more user preferences (i.e. captions not in desired language calls for augmented subtitle data) (p. 0070-0072).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided augmented subtitle data as taught by Vaugn to the system of Bhattacharjee to provide a group preferred language within the subtitles (p. 0072).
Mahyar teaches the specific features of:
“wherein the first captions are burned into pixels of one or more frames of the media content” (i.e. burned-in subtitles) (col. 1-2, lines 43-13);
inpainting, using control circuitry, the pixels of the one or more frames of the media content in which the first captions are burned (i.e. burned-in subtitles), wherein the inpainting comprises changing a color of the pixels of the one or more frames (i.e. color and brightness correction) (col. 1-2, lines 43-13).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided subtitle correction as taught by Mahyar to the system of Bhattacharjee to remove burned in subtitles (col. 1-2, lines 43-13).
Guzman Estrada teaches the specific feature of:
based on the inpainting, generating, using control circuitry, for display on the media content second captions (i.e. English subtitles) based at least in part on the metadata and the user preferences (i.e. selected language) (fig. 6A-C; p. 0100-0104).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided second captions with burned captions as taught by Guzman Estrada to the system of Bhattacharjee to provide different languages to burned in subtitles (p. 0104).
Claim 3, Bhattacharjee teaches the method of claim 1, the method comprising:
receiving a request to display the second captions in a language (i.e. common language for group) (p. 0025-0032);
accessing the metadata in response to the request (i.e. determining group preferences) (p. 0025-0032);
determining, based on the metadata, whether the language of the requested second captions matches a language of the first captions (i.e. matching occurs during the process selecting captioning data for a group or single profile vs another) (p. 0025-0033); and
in response to the language of the requested second captions matching the language of the first captions, disregarding the request to display the second captions (i.e. matching occurs during the process selecting captioning data for a group or single profile vs another, in this case the language matches the group profile no need for adjustment) (p. 0025-0033).
Claim 5 and 7, Bhattacharjee teaches the method of claim 1, the method comprising:
generating modified media (i.e. adjusting caption data) content by removing the first captions (i.e. changing content length) (p. 0032);
determining a user preference (p. 0010);
comparing the user preference with the metadata (i.e. user profile compared to caption data stored in database) (p. 0014-0015).
Bhattacharjee is silent regarding the method of claim 1, the method comprising:
generating a stream for transmitting the media content, the stream having a version of the modified media content and a version of unmodified media content encoded therein;
decoding, for display, the unmodified media content when the user preference matches a parameter stored in the metadata; or
decoding, for display, the modified media content when the user preference does not match a parameter stored in the metadata.
Kahn teaches the method of claim 1, the method comprising:
generating a stream for transmitting the media content (i.e. packaging component), the stream having a version of the modified media content and a version of unmodified media content encoded therein (i.e. creating packages of close caption data or modified close caption data) (p. 0045-0046, 0050);
decoding, for display, the unmodified media content when the user preference matches a parameter stored in the metadata (i.e. no modified close caption data) (p. 0045-0046, 0050); or
decoding, for display, the modified media content when the user preference does not match a parameter stored in the metadata (i.e. modified close caption data to be included in the package) (p. 0045-0046, 0050).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided modified caption data packaging as taught by Kahn to the system of Bhattacharjee to efficiently provide caption data through communication channels (p. 0050).
Claim 8, Bhattacharjee teaches the method of claim 1, the method comprising:
determining whether a quality of the first captions is less than a quality value (i.e. size not large enough for visually impaired) (p. 0031) ; and
receiving a request to display the media content with second captions in response to determining that the quality of the first captions is less than the quality value (i.e. increasing font size) (p. 0031).
Claim 9, Bhattacharjee is silent The method of claim 1, the method comprising at least one of:
displaying the second captions at a position on the media content to not obscure the first captions;
displaying the second captions at a position on the media content to obscure the first captions.
Kahn teaches The method of claim 1, the method comprising at least one of:
displaying the second captions at a position on the media content to not obscure the first captions (i.e. modified captions are displayed in a different location) (fig. 5; p. 0057);
displaying the second captions at a position on the media content to obscure the first captions (i.e. the ability to move or resize the captions allows the user the ability to obscure the original captions) (p. 0064).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided modified caption data packaging as taught by Kahn to the system of Bhattacharjee to efficiently provide caption data through communication channels (p. 0050).
Claim 11 is analyzed and interpreted as an apparatus of claim 1.
Claim 13 is analyzed and interpreted as an apparatus of claim 3.
Claim 15 is analyzed and interpreted as an apparatus of claim 5.
Claim 17 is analyzed and interpreted as an apparatus of claim 7.
Claim 18 is analyzed and interpreted as an apparatus of claim 8.
Claim 19 is analyzed and interpreted as an apparatus of claim 9.
Claim 51, Bhattacharjee teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the request is a first request, and wherein the one or more user preferences are one or more first user preferences, the method further comprising:
receiving, using control circuitry, a second request to display the media content (i.e. requests automatically made when viewing content, watching second video content is a second automatic request) (p. 0025).
Bhattacharjee is silent regarding the specific features of:
determining, using control circuitry, based at least in part on the metadata associated with the media content, whether the first captions meet one or more second user preferences; and
based, at least in part on determining the first captions do meet the one or more second user preferences, generating, using control circuitry, the media content with the first captions.
Vaughn teaches the specific features of:
determining, using control circuitry, based at least in part on the metadata associated with the media content (i.e. media content and associated subtitle data), whether the first captions meet one or more second user preferences (i.e. personal user preferences or group preferences) (p. 007-0072); and
based, at least in part on determining the first captions do meet the one or more second user preferences (i.e. current language is preferred), generating, using control circuitry, the media content with the first captions (i.e. raw subtitle data) (p. 0070-0072).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided augmented subtitle data as taught by Vaugn to the system of Bhattacharjee to provide a group preferred language within the subtitles (p. 0072).
Claim 52 is analyzed and interpreted as an apparatus of claim 51.
Claim(s) 4, 6, 14, 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhattacharjee et al. (US 2018/0302687) in view of Vaughn et al. (US 2020/0135225), and further in view of Mahyar et al. (US 11216684), and further in view of Guzman Estrada et al. (US 2023/0179809), and further in view of Chen et al. (US 2019/0306563).
Claim 4, Bhattacharjee teaches the method of claim 1, wherein analyzing the media content comprises at least one of:
analyzing the media content to determine one or more portions of the media content having the first captions (i.e. database holds captions for content) (p. 0014-0015);
analyzing the media content to determine a visual parameter of the first captions (e.g. font size) (p. 0023-0024);
accessing metadata of the media content (i.e. video captioning program can access the database 112) (p. 0014-0015).
Bhattacharjee is silent regarding the method of claim 1, wherein analyzing the media content comprises at least one of:
analyzing the media content to determine an audio parameter of the media content.
Chen teaches the method of claim 1, wherein analyzing the media content comprises at least one of:
analyzing the media content to determine an audio parameter of the media content (i.e. detect low volume) (p. 0030).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided audio detection as taught by Chen to the system of Bhattacharjee to provide automatically enabling of close captioning (p. 0030).
Claim 6, Bhattacharjee is silent regarding the method of claim 5, the method comprising:
determining a requested volume level of the media content; and
displaying, by default, the unmodified version of the media content when the requested volume level is below a predetermined volume level.
Chen teaches the method of claim 5, the method comprising:
determining a requested volume level of the media content (i.e. detecting volume) (p. 0030); and
displaying, by default, the unmodified version of the media content when the requested volume level is below a predetermined volume level (i.e. stream without captions when volume not low enough) (p. 0030).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided audio detection as taught by Chen to the system of Bhattacharjee to provide automatically enabling of close captioning (p. 0030).
Claim 14 is analyzed and interpreted as an apparatus of claim 4.
Claim 16 is analyzed and interpreted as an apparatus of claim 6.
Claim(s) 53-54 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhattacharjee et al. (US 2018/0302687) in view of Vaughn et al. (US 2020/0135225), and further in view of Mahyar et al. (US 11216684), and further in view of Guzman Estrada et al. (US 2023/0179809), and further in view of Karia et al. (US 2024/0404525).
Claim 53, Bhattacharjee is silent regarding the method of claim 1, wherein the inpainting the pixels of the one or more frames of the media content in which the first captions are burned further comprises implementing at least one inpainting algorithm comprising at least one of a texture synthesis based image inpainting algorithm or an isophote driven inpainting algorithm.
Karia teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the inpainting the pixels of the one or more frames of the media content in which the first captions are burned (i.e. inpainting an overlay) further comprises implementing at least one inpainting algorithm comprising at least one of a texture synthesis based image inpainting algorithm or an isophote driven inpainting algorithm (i.e. any inpainting technique) (p. 0098).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have provided inpainting techniques as taught by Karia to the system of Bhattacharjee to provide an overlay for new captions (p. 0098).
Claim 54 is analyzed and interpreted as an apparatus of claim 53.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1, 3-9, 11, 13-19, 51-54 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
Claims 1, 3-9, 11, 13-19, 51-54 are rejected.
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Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MUSHFIKH I ALAM whose telephone number is (571)270-1710. The examiner can normally be reached 1:00PM-9:00PM.
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MUSHFIKH I. ALAM
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2426
/MUSHFIKH I ALAM/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2426 6/30/2026
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