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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 01/06/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 01/06/2026 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.
The indicated allowability of claims 3 and 16 are withdrawn in view of the newly discovered reference(s) to Aljaroodi et al. (NPL, “Understanding the Importance of Cultural Appropriateness for User Interface Design: An Avatar Study”, 2022). Rejections based on the newly cited reference(s) follow.
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, 8-10, 12, 14-17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhogal et al. (US Publication Number 2010/0081508 A1, hereinafter “Bhogal”) in view of Aljaroodi et al. (NPL, “Understanding the Importance of Cultural Appropriateness for User Interface Design: An Avatar Study”, 2022).
(1) regarding claim 1:
As explained in fig. 1, Bhogal disclosed a computer-implemented method for optimizing a virtual avatar (para. [0026], note that referring now to FIG. 1, a method and process for protecting a first avatar from actions of another avatar within a virtual universe), the method comprising:
analyzing, by a computing device, a virtual environment in order to ascertain one or more skill gaps associated with the virtual avatar (para. [0026], note that at 102 a protection protocol is provided or defined for the first avatar with respect to a second avatar or a person, entity or user represented by the second avatar. At 104 the protection protocol is implemented within the context and framework of the virtual universe domain, the implementing comprising defining at least one rule or proscribed activity with respect to activity of another avatar within the virtual universe domain and a protective action executable with respect to one or both avatars within the virtual universe domain); and
redefining, by the computing device, the virtual avatar by filling the one or more skill gaps based on the analysis and the plurality of avatar data (para. [0049], note that an activity monitoring component 204 is configured to observe the activity of one or more avatars identified by or otherwise relevant to the protocol as implemented to detect any activity by the other avatars that may trigger a protective action for the benefit of the protected first avatar).
Bhogal disclosed most of the subject matter as described as above except for specifically teaching receiving, by the computing device, a plurality of avatar data derived from at least one avatar template based on contextual data associated with the analysis; and wherein a confidence score is assigned to the virtual avatar based on a trust index and a knowledge index.
However, Aljaroodi teaches receiving, by the computing device, a plurality of avatar data derived from at least one avatar template based on contextual data associated with the analysis (as shown in Table 1, page 8, 4. Method, To evaluate our research model, we conducted a scenario-based online experiment with 313 Saudi participants. Each participant faced one of 12 different avatars (randomly assigned) within a health advice scenario. Note that avatar data is derived from multiple avatars based on the cultural background analysis, see Table 1, Note: The table summarizes the 12 different avatars shown in the study along the treatment dimensions of appearance (Arab, non-Arab), gender (male, female), and clothing style (athletic, everyday, medical clothing). Each participant was only shown one of the 12 different avatars (between-subjects design)); and wherein a confidence score is assigned to the virtual avatar based on a trust index and a knowledge index (see fig. 2, page 11, Manipulation check; average perceptions of avatars as “Arab” (left) and “Female” (right). The 12 avatars are spaced out on the x-axis. Note: Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. Also note that, the confident interval is assigned based on the cultural appropriateness appearance, gender and clothing i.e. trust and knowledge index. See Table 6).
At the time of filing for the invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skilled in the art to teach receiving, by the computing device, a plurality of avatar data derived from at least one avatar template based on contextual data associated with the analysis; and wherein a confidence score is assigned to the virtual avatar based on a trust index and a knowledge index. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been in order to provides important insights for how UI design can become more inclusive, catering to a wider range of cultural backgrounds and contribute to the existing literature on SRT by theorizing on how user perceptions of anthropomorphism, similarity, social presence, and trust are linked to cultural appropriateness (page 4, Introduction, para. [0004]). Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Bhogal with Aljaroodi to obtain the invention as specified in claim 1.
(2) regarding claim 2:
Bhogal further disclosed the computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: based on the redefining, extracting, by the computing device, a plurality of redefined avatar data and transmitting the plurality of redefined avatar data based on one or more of a geographic location and a skill level associated with the virtual environment (para. [0024], note that users whose avatars are subject to objectionable behavior and seek to avoid it are also generally required to possess a virtual universe skill set to take protective actions on their own behalf, for example an ability to quickly teleport to a safe location, or block the receipt of text messages from offending avatars).
(3) regarding claim 3:
Bhogal disclosed most of the subject matter as described as above except for specifically teaching wherein the plurality of avatar data is derived from a corpus comprising one or more of a skill level, a cultural metric, a metaverse context, and a plurality of avatar templates.
However, Aljaroodi disclosed wherein the plurality of avatar data is derived from a corpus comprising one or more of a skill level, a cultural metric, a metaverse context, and a plurality of avatar templates (page 8, 4.2, para. [0001], note that the avatars were based on all possible combinations of a 2 × 2 × 3 full-factorial treatment design, based on the dimensions of appearance (Arab, non-Arab), gender (male, female), and clothing style (athletic, medical, everyday clothing). The athletic and medical clothing were chosen to reflect the health advice context provided by the website).
At the time of filing for the invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skilled in the art to teach wherein the plurality of avatar data is derived from a corpus comprising one or more of a skill level, a cultural metric, a metaverse context, and a plurality of avatar templates. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been in order to provides important insights for how UI design can become more inclusive, catering to a wider range of cultural backgrounds and contribute to the existing literature on SRT by theorizing on how user perceptions of anthropomorphism, similarity, social presence, and trust are linked to cultural appropriateness (page 4, Introduction, para. [0004]). Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Bhogal with Aljaroodi to obtain the invention as specified in claim 3.
(4) regarding claim 12:
Bhogal further disclosed the computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of avatar data is derived from a corpus comprising one or more of a skill level, a cultural metric, a metaverse context, and a plurality of avatar templates (para. [0024], note that users whose avatars are subject to objectionable behavior and seek to avoid it are also generally required to possess a virtual universe skill set to take protective actions on their own behalf, for example an ability to quickly teleport to a safe location, or block the receipt of text messages from offending avatars).
The proposed rejection of claims 1-3, 12 renders obvious the computer product claims (316, fig. 5) of claims 8-10 and the computer system (fig. 5) claims 14-17 because these steps occur in the operation of the proposed rejection as discussed above. Thus, the arguments similar to that presented above for claims 1-3 are equally applicable to claims 8-10 and 14-17.
Claim(s) 4-7, 11, 13, 18-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bhogal and Aljaroodi, further in view of Khorshid (US Publication Number 2024/0045704 A1, hereinafter “Khorshid”).
(1) regarding claim 4:
Bhogal disclosed most of the subject matter as described as above except for specifically teaching wherein receiving the plurality of avatar data comprises: utilizing, by the computing device, one or more machine learning models designed to process one or more of a plurality contextual data, a plurality of cultural-based data, a plurality of sensor data, and a plurality of linguistic inputs associated with the virtual environment.
However, Khorshid disclosed utilizing, by the computing device, one or more machine learning models designed to process one or more of a plurality contextual data, a plurality of cultural-based data, a plurality of sensor data, and a plurality of linguistic inputs associated with the virtual environment (para. [0052], note that the client system 130 and the server associated with assistant system 140 may both perform automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural-language understanding (NLU) processes, but the client system 130 may delegate dialog, agent, and natural-language generation (NLG) processes to be performed by the server associated with assistant system 140).
At the time of filing for the invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skilled in the art to teach wherein receiving the plurality of avatar data comprises: utilizing, by the computing device, one or more machine learning models designed to process one or more of a plurality contextual data, a plurality of cultural-based data, a plurality of sensor data, and a plurality of linguistic inputs associated with the virtual environment. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been in order to enable the user to interact with the assistant system via user inputs of various modalities (e.g., audio, voice, text, image, video, gesture, motion, location, orientation) in stateful and multi-turn conversations to receive assistance from the assistant system (para. [0005]). Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Bhogal, Aljaroodi with Khorshid to obtain the invention as specified in claim 4.
(2) regarding claim 5:
Bhogal disclosed most of the subject matter as described as above except for specifically teaching wherein analyzing the virtual environment comprises: classifying, by the computing device, a type of the virtual environment based on a plurality of linguistic inputs associated with a plurality of users operating within the virtual environment.
However, Khorshid disclosed wherein analyzing the virtual environment comprises: classifying, by the computing device, a type of the virtual environment based on a plurality of linguistic inputs associated with a plurality of users operating within the virtual environment (para. [0087], note that the natural-language understanding (NLU) module 210 may additionally extract information from one or more of a social graph, a knowledge graph, or a concept graph, and may retrieve a user's profile stored locally on the client system 130. The NLU module 210 may additionally consider contextual information when analyzing the user input. The NLU module 210 may further process information from these different sources by identifying and aggregating information, annotating n-grams of the user input, ranking the n-grams with confidence scores based on the aggregated information, and formulating the ranked n-grams into features that may be used by the NLU module).
At the time of filing for the invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skilled in the art to teach wherein analyzing the virtual environment comprises: classifying, by the computing device, a type of the virtual environment based on a plurality of linguistic inputs associated with a plurality of users operating within the virtual environment. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been in order to enable the user to interact with the assistant system via user inputs of various modalities (e.g., audio, voice, text, image, video, gesture, motion, location, orientation) in stateful and multi-turn conversations to receive assistance from the assistant system (para. [0005]). Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Bhogal, Aljaroodi with Khorshid to obtain the invention as specified in claim 5.
(3) regarding claim 6:
Bhogal disclosed most of the subject matter as described as above except for specifically teaching wherein analyzing the virtual environment comprises: determining, by the computing device, a plurality of key performance indicators associated with the virtual avatar based on one or more of a user associated with the virtual avatar and the plurality of avatar templates; and generating, by the computing device, the confidence score associated with the virtual avatar based on weighing the plurality of key performance indicators.
However, Khorshid disclosed determining, by the computing device, a plurality of key performance indicators associated with the virtual avatar based on one or more of a user associated with the virtual avatar and the plurality of avatar templates (para. [0072], note that agents 228a/b may provide several functionalities for the assistant system 140 including, for example, native template generation, task specific business logic, and querying external APIs. When executing actions for a task, agents 228a/b may use context from the dialog state tracker 218a/b, and may also update the dialog state tracker 218a/b); and generating, by the computing device, the confidence score associated with the virtual avatar based on weighing the plurality of key performance indicators (para. [0087], note that the NLU module 210 may further process information from these different sources by identifying and aggregating information, annotating n-grams of the user input, ranking the n-grams with confidence scores based on the aggregated information, and formulating the ranked n-grams into features that may be used by the NLU module 210 for understanding the user input).
At the time of filing for the invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skilled in the art to teach wherein analyzing the virtual environment comprises: determining, by the computing device, a plurality of key performance indicators associated with the virtual avatar based on one or more of a user associated with the virtual avatar and the plurality of avatar templates; and generating, by the computing device, the confidence score associated with the virtual avatar based on weighing the plurality of key performance indicators. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been in order to enable the user to interact with the assistant system via user inputs of various modalities (e.g., audio, voice, text, image, video, gesture, motion, location, orientation) in stateful and multi-turn conversations to receive assistance from the assistant system (para. [0005]). Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Bhogal, Aljaroodi with Khorshid to obtain the invention as specified in claim 6.
(4) regarding claim 7:
Bhogal disclosed most of the subject matter as described as above except for specifically teaching wherein the corpus is generated based on a plurality of crowdsourced data derived from a plurality of metaverses configured to be iteratively analyzed over a period of time.
However, Khorshid disclosed wherein the corpus is generated based on a plurality of crowdsourced data derived from a plurality of metaverses configured to be iteratively analyzed over a period of time (para. [0081], note that crowdsourcing may be used to get users to tag objects and help the assistant system 140 recognize more objects over time. As another example, users may register their personal objects as part of an initial setup when using the assistant system 140. The assistant system 140 may further allow users to provide positive/negative signals for objects they interact with to train and improve personalized models for them).
At the time of filing for the invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skilled in the art to teach wherein the corpus is generated based on a plurality of crowdsourced data derived from a plurality of metaverses configured to be iteratively analyzed over a period of time. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been in order to enable the user to interact with the assistant system via user inputs of various modalities (e.g., audio, voice, text, image, video, gesture, motion, location, orientation) in stateful and multi-turn conversations to receive assistance from the assistant system (para. [0005]). Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Bhogal, Aljaroodi with Khorshid to obtain the invention as specified in claim 7.
The proposed rejection of claims 4-7, renders obvious the computer product (316, fig. 5) of claims 11, 13 and the computer system (fig. 5) claims 18-20 because these steps occur in the operation of the proposed rejection as discussed above. Thus, the arguments similar to that presented above for claims 4-7 are equally applicable to claims 11, 13, 18-20.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Todasco et al. (US Patent Number 12,032,732 B2) disclosed systems and methods for automated configuration of augmented and virtual reality avatars for user specific behaviors. Using available avatar customizations and configurations, the service provider may automatically configure avatars for presentation in such digital environments. These customizations may be used to automate avatar configurations and presentations without requiring user inputs and based on real-time data, which may be specifically coded and configured dependent on a digital environment.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communication from the examiner should be directed to Hilina K Demeter whose telephone number is (571) 270-1676.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, King Y. Poon could be reached at (571) 270- 0728. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/HILINA K DEMETER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2617