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 .
DETAILED ACTION
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 05/22/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 05/22/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Referring to Applicant’s argument on page 6 of Applicant’s Remarks alleging “The remaining references fail to cure the deficiencies of Grooters”, the Examiner respectfully disagrees. The Examiner has addressed the newly added claim limitation with the “SCTE” reference previously cited on record in the updated rejection herewith.
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 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
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 1-4, 9-13, and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Grooters et al (hereinafter Grooters) US 6549718 in view of in view of ANSI SCTE 35 (2013) (hereinafter SCTE).
Referring to claim 1, Grooters discloses a method comprising:
receiving, at a computing device, a request to record a content asset (see Col. 3, Lines 36-64 and Col. 4, Line 60 – Col. 5, Line 7 for disclosing determination that a content asset has been scheduled for recording, wherein if it has indeed been scheduled, then a request to record it was received);
receiving video content comprising the content asset and content information (see Col. 3, Line 65 – Col. 4, Line 23 for disclosing reception for video content comprising the video and information regarding the content);
determining, based at least on the content information, a content identifier relating to the content asset and a boundary point of the content asset (see Col. 3, Line 65 – Col. 4, Line 23 and Lines 32-38 for disclosing determining, based on markers, a content identifier relating to the content asset (identification information embedded within the marker identifying the given program of the channel signal associated with the marker) and a boundary point of the content asset ((e.g., specifically a start marker for the given program of the channel signal);
storing, based on the content identifier and the boundary point of the content asset, the content asset (see Col. 4, Lines 32-41 and 57-67 for disclosing storing/recording the content asset/given program that is scheduled to be recorded based on the marker indicating the identification of the given program and the start marker designation).
Grooters is unclear as to content information comprising a segmentation descriptor.
SCTE discloses content information comprising a segmentation descriptor (see pages 17 and 34 for disclosing the splice information table contains information relating to content and its boundary points and includes a segmentation descriptor).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, to incorporate the segmentation_descriptor implementation of SCTE with the system of Grooters in order to take advantage of a well-known published industry standard by providing an optional extension to the time_signal() and splice_insert() commands that allows for segmentation messages to be sent in a time/video accurate method (see SCTE, page 34).
Referring to claim 2, Grooters discloses the boundary is indicative of a start point for the content, an end point for the content, or an advertisement boundary (see Col. 4, Lines 32-48).
Referring to claim 3, Grooters discloses the content comprises linear content (see Col. 3, Lines 22-35 for disclosing the content is over-the-air broadcast signals, interpreted to be linear content).
Referring to claim 4, Grooters discloses storing the content asset comprises writing a copy of the content asset as seen in the rejection of claim 1, further noting the recorded given program is a copy of the content asset/given program that is being received.
Referring to claim 9, Grooters discloses the content comprises a time signal mechanism and the portion of the content information is associated with the time signal mechanism as seen in the rejection of claim 1, further noting the time signal mechanism are the markers.
Grooters does not specifically mention the use of SCTE 35.
SCTE discloses a time signal mechanism in accordance with SCTE 35 (see page 18 for disclosing a time signal mechanism in accordance with SCTE provides a time synchronize data delivery mechanism).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, to incorporate the time signal mechanism of SCTE with the system of Grooters in order to take advantage of a well-known published standard by allowing the device that will be inserting time into the cue message to have a defined location (see SCTE, page 18).
Claim 10 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 1, as Grooters discloses an apparatus comprising a processor and memory storing computer executable instructions that, when executed, perform the method as seen in the rejection of claim 1.
Claim 11 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 2.
Claim 12 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 3.
Claim 13 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 4.
Claim 18 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 9.
Claim 19 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 1, as Grooters discloses a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed, perform the method as seen in the rejection of claim 1.
Claim 20 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 2.
Claims 5 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Grooters et al (hereinafter Grooters) US 6549718 in view of in view of ANSI SCTE 35 (2013) (hereinafter SCTE), and further in view of Baumgartner et al (hereinafter Baumgartner) US 20020174433.
Referring to claim 5, Grooters in view of SCTE discloses the claim limitations as seen in the rejection of claim 1.
Grooters in view of SCTE is unclear as to receiving an indication the content asset is successfully stored.
Baumgartner discloses receiving an indication the content asset is successfully stored (see Paragraphs 0071-0072, Record Content Program output of Table 2).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the programming constructs of Baumgartner with the system of Grooters in view of SCTE in order to take advantage of PVR (personal video recorder) APIs (application programming interfaces), which may be a library of intelligent vendor-specific and vendor-independent APIs able to determine the type of PVR device being used, and may be configured to provide a seamless integration of functionality associated with the PVR-compliant device and the PVR device (see Baumgartner, Abstract).
Claim 14 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 5.
Claims 6-7 and 15-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Grooters et al (hereinafter Grooters) US 6549718 in view of in view of ANSI SCTE 35 (2013) (hereinafter SCTE), and further in view of Jung et al (hereinafter Jung) US 20070286569.
Referring to claim 6, Grooters in view of SCTE discloses the claim limitations as seen in the rejection of claim 1.
Grooters in view of SCTE is unclear as to receiving an indication the content asset is failed to be stored and causing, based on the content identifier and the boundary point of the content asset, the at least the stored portion of the content asset to be stored at a different location.
Jung discloses receiving an indication the content asset is failed to be stored and causing, based on the content identifier and the boundary point of the content asset, the at least the stored portion of the content asset to be stored at a different location (see Paragraph 0022 for disclosing receiving an error/indication that the moving picture/content asset is failed to be stored due to insufficiency of a storage space on a first storage device, and causing the moving picture/content asset, based on its identifier (i.e., being the same moving picture that is scheduled to be recorded) and boundary point (i.e., the reserved recording time), to be stored at a second storage device).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the multiple storage options of Jung with the system of Grooters in view of SCTE in order to fulfill the desire for an apparatus that stores a moving picture file in another storage device connected to a network when an error occurs due to a shortage of storage space (see Jung, Paragraph 0017).
Referring to claim 7, Jung discloses the indication comprises a disk error indication as seen in the rejection of claim 6.
Claim 15 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 6.
Claim 16 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 7.
Claims 8 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Grooters et al (hereinafter Grooters) US 6549718 in view of in view of ANSI SCTE 35 (2013) (hereinafter SCTE), and further in view of Applicant-admitted prior art (hereinafter APA).
Referring to claim 8, Grooters in view of SCTE discloses the content digital transport stream (see Col. 3, Line 65 – Col. 4, Line 12).
Grooters in view of SCTE does not specifically mention the use of MPEG.
APA discloses the use of MPEG with digital transport streams for video is well known in the art. Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify Grooters in view of SCTE to use MPEG in order to take advantage of a widely known and used compression standard of digital video.
Claim 17 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 8.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NICHOLAS T CORBO whose telephone number is (571)270-5675. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday - Friday 11am-7pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Benjamin Bruckart can be reached at 571-272-3982. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/NICHOLAS T CORBO/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2424
06/24/2026
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