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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 21 April 2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendments
Claims 1-7 and 9-21 were previously pending. Claims 1, 9, and 15 have been amended according to Applicant’s amendments filed 21 April 2026. New claim 22 has been added. No new claims have been cancelled. This is in contrast to Applicant’s remarks which appear to incorrectly indicate claim 10 as cancelled and claims 1-9 and 11-22 presented for examination. Accordingly, claims 1-7 and 9-22 are presently pending and under consideration.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see remarks pages 12-21, filed 21 April 2026, with respect to the rejection of claims 1-7 and 9-21 under 35 USC 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. In particular, Applicant’s argument the previously cited art does not teach the newly amended limitations, “transmitting, by the content system to the content provider associated with the first cache allocation entity, a request for predicted content, the request comprising data indicating the first cache resource allocation and a content download window during which the content provider is requested to transmit content to the terminal device for storage, wherein the predicted content comprises content predicted by the content provider to be likely requested by a user associated with the user account; receiving, at the terminal device from the content provider, the predicted content; storing, by the terminal device, the predicted content as first content associated with the first cache allocation entity at the first cache resource allocation,” further characterized as the (1) content system at the terminal device transmits a request to the (2) content provider, informing the content provider of cache allocation parameters (for a (3) cache allocation entity) and requesting that the content provider determine and transmit predicted content”, is persuasive.
Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground of rejection is made under 35 USC 112(b).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-7 and 9-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
The term “likely” in claims 1, 9, and 15 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term “likely” is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention. The term “likely” appears in the specification at exactly [0015] and [0017], without any elaboration as to what specific conditions, factors, values, or limits are used to determine what content is determined to be “likely” requested by users. Using a plain English definition of the term “likely” would reasonably lead to selection of content that would have a chance of greater than 50% of being selected. However, with a large number of different media content, for example, the entire streaming movie library of an online content provider, each movie could have an extremely fractional chance of being selected. The value of “likely” could be any percentage between 100 and some infinitesimally small number. Accordingly, one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
Dependent claims 2-7, 10-14, and 16-22 depend from and thus inherit the deficiencies of their respective independent claims and therefore are rejected for at least the same reasons.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-7 and 9-22 would be allowable if the rejection of the claims under 35 USC 112(b) were overcome and the scope of the claims remain the same.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: The closest prior art of record (1) Chockler discloses a system for cache performance evaluation of different cache allocations and hit rates for a plurality of tenants including cache usage statistics, (2) Danovitz discloses a storage system with storage space amounts storing media content associated with user accounts and content providers, (3) He discloses a system for adjusting resource allocations as a function of changing user numbers, (4) Fujii discloses cache allocation modification based on measured memory access frequency at different allocation sizes, (5) Maki discloses measuring storage volume performance and allocation based on a usage rate of the transfer data storage volume, (6) Chow discloses a cache disable/enable factor based on the average rate of access of a period of time versus a threshold, (7) Byers et al (US 10523595 B2) discloses a system determining a user will need access to data stored at a first location from a second location, identify a node which is capable of storing the data and accessible by a device from the second location, migrate the data from the first location to the node so the device has access to the data from the second location through the node, and (8) Stuntebeck et al (US 2020/0409761 A1) discloses a predictive usage model that predicts a location of a user and allocate computing resources to a host device that optimizes latency to the predicted location.
However, the prior art alone or in combination fails to teach or fairly suggest the combination of: determining, by a content system configured at the terminal device, a first cache resource allocation of cache resources of the terminal device for a first cache allocation entity; determining, by the content system, a second cache resource allocation of the cache resources of the terminal device for a second cache allocation entity, wherein at least one of the first cache allocation entity or the second cache allocation entity is associated with a combination of a content provider and a user account; transmittinq, by the content system to the content provider associated with the first cache allocation entity, a request for predicted content, the request comprisinq data indicating the first cache resource allocation and a content download window during which the content provider is requested to transmit content to the terminal device for storage, wherein the predicted content comprises content predicted by the content provider to be likely requested by a user associated with the user account; receiving, at the terminal device from the content provider, the predicted content; storing, by the terminal device, the predicted content as first content associated with the first cache allocation entity at the first cache resource allocation; storing, by the terminal device, second content associated with the second cache allocation entity at the second cache resource allocation; processing, by the terminal device, a plurality of requests for content received from a user device; determining, by the content system, a first cache access rate for the first cache resource allocation based at least in part on the plurality of requests for content and the first content and on determining that a cache allocation adjustment criterion has been met, wherein the cache allocation adjustment criterion comprises at least a detection of an addition of a third cache allocation entity and the first cache access rate indicates an accuracy of the prediction by the content provider; determining, by the content system, a second cache access rate for the second cache resource allocation based at least in part on the plurality of requests for content and the second content; modifying, by the content system, the first cache resource allocation based at least in part on the first cache access rate; and modifying, by the content system, the second cache resource allocation based at least in part on the second cache access rate, as in independent claim 1.
Nor does the prior art alone or in combination fails to teach or fairly suggest the combination of: a content system to perform operations comprising: allocating cache resources at the terminal device to a cache allocation entity based at least in part on one or more cache allocation parameters, wherein the cache allocation entity is associated with a combination of a content provider and a user account, and wherein the one or more cache allocation parameters comprise a content download window durinq which the content provider is requested to transmit predicted content to the terminal device; transmittinq, to the content provider, a request for the predicted content, the request comprisinq data representinq at least a subset of the one or more cache allocation parameters, wherein the predicted content comprises content predicted by the content provider to be likely requested by a user associated with the user account; receiving, from the content provider, the predicted content; storing the predicted content as content associated with the cache allocation entity at the cache resources; processing a plurality of requests for content received at the terminal device from a user device; determining cache performance data for the cache allocation entity based at least in part on the plurality of requests for content and the content, wherein the cache performance data comprises at least one of; a current download deadline; or a cache access rate, wherein the cache access rate indicates an accuracy of the prediction by the content provider; determining a cache allocation factor for the cache allocation entity based at least in part on the cache performance data; and modifying the cache resources allocated at the terminal device to the cache allocation entity based on the cache allocation factor, as in independent claim 9.
Nor does the prior art alone or in combination fails to teach or fairly suggest the combination of: allocating cache resources at a terminal device to a cache allocation entity based on one or more cache allocation parameters, wherein the cache allocation entity is associated with a combination of a content provider and a user account that is associated with cache allocation parameters, the cache allocation parameters include at least one of: a current preferred download window; a current download deadline; or a cache access rate; transmittinq, to the content provider, a request for predicted content, the request comprisinq data representinq at least a subset of the one or more cache allocation parameters, wherein the predicted content comprises content predicted by the content provider to be likely requested by a user associated with the user account; receiving, from the content provider, the predicted content; storing the predicted content as content associated with the cache allocation entity at the cache resources; processing requests for content received at the terminal device from a user device; determining cache performance data for the cache allocation entity based on the requests for content and the content, wherein the cache performance data comprises at least one of: a download deadline success rate for the cache allocation entity; or a download window usage rate for the cache allocation entity; determining a cache allocation factor for the cache allocation entity based at least in part on the cache performance data; and modifying the cache resources allocated at the terminal device to the cache allocation entity based on the cache allocation factor, as independent claim 15.
Because dependent claims 2-7, 10-14, and 16-22 depend from and thus incorporate the allowable subject matter of their respective independent claims, they would be allowable for at least the same reasons.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EDMUND H KWONG whose telephone number is (571)272-8691. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 10-6 PT.
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/E.H.K/Examiner, Art Unit 2137
/Arpan P. Savla/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2137
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