DETAILED ACTION
I. Introduction
This Office action addresses U.S. reissue application number 18/386,624 (“624 reissue application” or “instant application”), having a filing date of 3 November 2023. Because the instant application was filed on or after September 16, 2012, the statutory provisions of the America Invents Act (“AIA ”) will govern this proceeding.
The instant application is a continuation reissue of application 17/487,437, filed 28 September 2021, now reissue patent RE049762, which is a reissue of U.S. Patent 10,964,310 (“’310 patent”) titled “METHOD AND DEVICE FOR PERFORMING VOICE RECOGNITION USING GRAMMAR MODEL”, which issued to Chi-youn Park et al. on 30 March 2021 with claims 1-16 (“issued claims”). The application resulting in the ‘310 patent was filed on 16 March 2020 and assigned U.S. patent application number 16/820,353 (“’353 application”).
II. Other Proceedings
After review of Applicant’s statements as set forth in the instant application, and the examiner's independent review of the ‘310 patent itself and its prosecution history, the examiner has failed to locate any current ongoing litigation. The examiner has likewise failed to locate any previous reexaminations (ex parte or inter partes), supplemental examinations, or other post issuance proceedings.
III. Priority
The ‘353 application is a continuation of U.S. Application 16/523,263, filed 26 July 2019, now U.S. Patent 10,706,838, which is a continuation of U.S. Application 15/544,198, filed 17 July 2017, now U.S. Patent 10,403,267, which is a national stage application under 35 U.S.C. § 371 of PCT application PCT/KR2015/000486, filed 16 January 2015.
As a reissue application, the instant application is entitled to the priority date of the ‘310 patent, the patent being reissued. Thus, the instant reissue application has a priority date of 16 January 2015, the filing date of the PCT application.
Because the effective filing date of the instant application is after March 16, 2013, the pre-AIA ‘First to Invent’ provisions do not apply. Instead, the AIA First Inventor to File (“AIA -FITF”) provisions will apply.
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 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.
IV. Claim Construction
During examination, claims are given the broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification and limitations in the specification are not read into the claims. See MPEP § 2111 et seq.
Upon review of the original specification and prosecution history, the examiner has found no instances of lexicographic definitions, either express or implied, that are inconsistent with the ordinary and customary meaning of the respective terms. Therefore, for the purposes of claim interpretation, the examiner concludes that there are no claim terms for which applicant is acting as their own lexicographer. See MPEP § 2111.01(IV).
Additionally, upon review of the pending claims, the examiner finds no instances where the claim terms explicitly include functional language which invokes the provisions of 35 U.S.C. § 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 112, sixth paragraph.
Identification Information
Claims 20, 25, 27, and 28 include a limitation in the form of “identification information of a device.” The Office interprets this term as information that can be used to identify a device. As such, Mengibar’s disclosure of information related to actions would anticipate the claimed identification information of a device, because at col. 9, lines 60-62, Mengibar explicitly discloses that “the actions in the list reflect actions that are associated with computing devices that employ a speech recognition service” (emphasis added). Since an action is associated with a device, Mengibar’s information related to an action can be used to map to the specific device that can perform said action.
V. Information Disclosure Statements
Applicant’s Information Disclosure Statement (IDS), filed 29 August 2025, has been received and entered into the record. To the extent that the Information Disclosure Statement complies with the provisions of MPEP § 609, the references cited therein have been considered by the examiner.
See attached form PTO-1449.
VI. Applicant’s Response
Applicant’s response (“Response”), filed 18 November 2025, has been received and entered into the record. The Response includes remarks and amendments to the claims and specification. Specifically, claims 18-21 and 25 have been amended, and new claims 27-29 have been added. Claims 1-16 had been previously canceled. Claims 17-29 are now pending in the application.
VII. Response to Arguments
The Response includes several arguments. These arguments are addressed in turn below.
Specification
Applicant’s amendment to the specification is acknowledged. However, the amendment fails to resolve the pending objection to the specification, for the following reasons.
The amendment fails to address all of the objections with respect to col. 38 of the specification. See objection below.
In addition, the amendment to col. 38 of the specification is objected to, because it includes improper change markings.
Specifically, amendments in reissue applications are governed by the provisions of 37 C.F.R. § 1.173. Therein, § 1.173(d)(1) requires that subject matter to be omitted in the specification and/or claims of a reissue application be surrounded by brackets. The amended portion of the specification, however, includes subject matter to be omitted which is indicated by strikethrough, as would be proper in a utility application whose amendments are governed by the provisions of 37 C.F.R. § 1.121.
The objection to the specification is therefore maintained.
Claim Objections
In view of the amendment to claims 20 and 25, the pending claim objections are withdrawn.
Rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 112
In view of applicant’s discussion with respect to claims 20 and 25, the pending claim rejections are withdrawn.
Rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103
Applicant argues that the prior art of record fails to disclose the claimed feature of “obtaining a plurality of language models for a plurality of devices, wherein a language model of the plurality of language models corresponds to a device from among the plurality of devices.” Response, pages 9-12.
The Office respectfully disagrees.
Specifically, applicant argues that “Mengibar’s plural special language models do not respectively correspond to plural different devices, but instead correspond to types or categories of actions”, and “Mengibar’s models are device-agnostic and instead relate to actions performable by an application among plural applications on a device.” Applicant presents similar arguments with respect to secondary reference Weng.
Mengibar discloses a system that accepts voice commands issued by a user (see col. 3, lines 5-6, and col. 8, lines 28-31). The voice commands are analyzed by speech recognition utilizing language models in order to interpret the command (see col. 9, line 58 through col. 10, line 5). The voice command is then passed to the appropriate application or service for performance of the identified action (see col. 4, line 66 through col. 5, line 6, and col. 10, lines 5-9).
Importantly, Mengibar explicitly discloses that the actions in the list reflect actions that are associated with computing devices that employ a speech recognition service (see col. 9, lines 60-62). Thus, each language model is associated with specific actions that are associated with a specific device.
In order for Mengibar’s system to pass voice commands to an appropriate application or service, it must also have information regarding the device on which the corresponding application or service is resident. Without this information, the system would be unable to send the command to the appropriate application or service, because it would not know the device to which the command should be sent.
With respect to applicant’s arguments that Wenk fails to teach the claimed plurality of language models that correspond to specific devices, this argument is persuasive.
The rejections of record based solely upon Mengibar are maintained, while the rejections based upon the combination of Mengibar and Wenk as withdrawn.
With respect to applicant’s argument that the prior art of record fails to disclose the features of claim 20, the Office finds this argument persuasive in view of the aforementioned discussion of claim 20 in applicant’s response. The pending rejection is therefore withdrawn.
However, in view of said discussion of claim 20, new grounds of rejection are introduced herein. The instant Office action is therefore designated non-final.
VIII. Specification
The disclosure is objected to because of the following informalities:
At col. 38, lines 44-49, the specification states that module selecting and instructing unit 1922 may correspond to module selecting and instructing unit 1952 of Fig. 17. However, there is no module selecting and instructing unit 1952 in Fig. 17. Applicant may have intended to refer to module selecting and instructing unit 1852 of Fig. 18.
The specification also makes a correspondence between DVD player device 1921/home theater device 1923 and DVD player device 1860/home theater device 1870 of Fig. 17. These devices 1860 and 1870, however, appear in Fig. 18.
Appropriate correction is required.
IX. Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 17, 20, 22, 25, 27, and 28 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by U.S. Patent 9,286,892 issued to Pedro J. Moreno Mengibar et al. (“Mengibar”)
Claim 17
With respect to claim 17, Mengibar teaches a method of performing speech recognition of a voice spoken by a user (see Title “Language Modeling in Speech Recognition”) as claimed, the method comprising:
a) receiving a user voice command (see disclosure that at step 301, a user utterance is received, col. 15, lines 43-46 and Fig. 3);
b) obtaining a plurality of language models (see disclosure of language models 210a-e, 211, col. 17, lines 6-48) for a plurality of devices, wherein a language model of the plurality of language models corresponds to a device from among the plurality of devices (see disclosure that special language models 210a-e correspond to particular actions, col. 16, lines 58-62; see also disclosure that said actions correspond to specific applications, services, col. 17, lines 6-48 and col. 4, line 46 through col. 5, line 13; see also disclosure that the actions in the list reflect actions that are associated with computing devices that employ a speech recognition service, col. 9, lines 60-62);
c) determining a command and a target device to which the command is transmitted from among the plurality of devices by performing speech recognition for the user voice command based on the plurality of language models (see disclosure of the semantic parser containing a pre-defined list of actions or other classifications that are associated with various services or applications that are capable of performing one or more actions in response to voice commands, col, 9, line 58 through col. 10, line 5); and
d) transmitting the command to the target device so that the target device performs the command (see disclosure that upon determining that the spoken input is a voice command associated with one of the registered service or applications, an indication of the voice command can be passed to the appropriate application or service for performance of the identified action, col. 10, lines 5-9; see also disclosure that the actions in the list reflect actions that are associated with computing devices that employ a speech recognition service, col. 9, lines 60-62; the Office notes that in order to pass said voice command to the appropriate application or service, knowledge of the device on which said application or service executes would be required).
Claim 20
With respect to claim 20, Mengibar additionally teaches the method of claim 17 wherein determining the command and the target device comprises based on determining that the user voice command does not explicitly include identification information of any one of the plurality of devices, determining the target device based on the plurality of language models (see disclosure that utterances can be processed by multiple language models, either in parallel or serially, col. 16, lines 23-42; see also disclosure of a hotword detector that monitors user utterances for hotwords that correspond to specific actions, and when detected, the utterance is directed to the language model that corresponds to the associated action, col. 16, line 43 through col. 17, line 5; see also disclosure that the actions in the list reflect actions that are associated with computing devices that employ a speech recognition service, col. 9, lines 60-62; the Office notes that the hotword detector’s failure to detect a recognizable hotword would constitute a determination that the user voice command does not include said identification information).
Claim 22
With respect to claim 22, Mengibar teaches an electronic device for performing speech recognition of a voice spoken by a user (see Title “Language Modeling in Speech Recognition”) as claimed, the electronic device comprising:
a) a memory storing computer-readable instructions (see disclosure of memory storing computer-readable instructions, col. 21, lines 49-67 and col 23, lines 1-33); and
b) at least one processor when executing the computer-readable instructions (see disclosure of a processor, col. 22, lines 41-50) configured to:
i) receive a user voice command (see disclosure that at step 301, a user utterance is received, col. 15, lines 43-46 and Fig. 3);
ii) obtain a plurality of language models (see disclosure of language models 210a-e, 211, col. 17, lines 6-48) for a plurality of devices, wherein a language model of the plurality of language models corresponds to a device from among the plurality of devices (see disclosure that special language models 210a-e correspond to particular actions, col. 16, lines 58-62; see also disclosure that said actions correspond to specific applications, services, or devices, col. 17, lines 6-48 and col. 4, line 46 through col. 5, line 13; see also disclosure that the actions in the list reflect actions that are associated with computing devices that employ a speech recognition service, col. 9, lines 60-62);
iii) determine a command and a target device to which the command is transmitted from among the plurality of devices by performing speech recognition for the user voice command based on the plurality of language models (see disclosure of the semantic parser containing a pre-defined list of actions or other classifications that are associated with various services or applications that are capable of performing one or more actions in response to voice commands, col, 9, line 58 through col. 10, line 5); and
iv) transmit the command to the target device so that the target device performs the command (see disclosure that upon determining that the spoken input is a voice command associated with one of the registered service or applications, an indication of the voice command can be passed to the appropriate application or service for performance of the identified action, col. 10, lines 5-9; see also disclosure that the actions in the list reflect actions that are associated with computing devices that employ a speech recognition service, col. 9, lines 60-62; the Office notes that in order to pass said voice command to the appropriate application or service, knowledge of the device on which said application or service executes would be required).
Claim 25
With respect to claim 25, Mengibar additionally teaches the electronic device of claim 22 wherein determining the command and the target device comprises based on determining that the user voice command does not explicitly include identification information of any one of the plurality of devices, determining the target device based on the plurality of language models (see disclosure that utterances can be processed by multiple language models, either in parallel or serially, col. 16, lines 23-42; see also disclosure of a hotword detector that monitors user utterances for hotwords that correspond to specific actions, and when detected, the utterance is directed to the language model that corresponds to the associated action, col. 16, line 43 through col. 17, line 5; see also disclosure that the actions in the list reflect actions that are associated with computing devices that employ a speech recognition service, col. 9, lines 60-62; the Office notes that the hotword detector’s failure to detect a recognizable hotword would constitute a determination that the user voice command does not include said identification information).
Claim 27
With respect to claim 27, Mengibar additionally teaches the method of claim 20 wherein for another voice command, the plurality of language models is not used to determine the target device based on determining that the other voice command explicitly includes identification information of the target device (see disclosure of a hotword detector that monitors user utterances for hotwords that correspond to specific actions, and when detected, the utterance is directed to the language model that corresponds to the associated action, col. 16, line 43 through col. 17, line 5; see also disclosure that the actions in the list reflect actions that are associated with computing devices that employ a speech recognition service, col. 9, lines 60-62).
Claim 28
With respect to claim 28, Mengibar additionally teaches the method of claim 27 wherein a language model corresponding to the target device is selected, based on determining that the other user voice command explicitly includes identification information of the target device, to be used to determine the command (see disclosure of a hotword detector that monitors user utterances for hotwords that correspond to specific actions, and when detected, the utterance is directed to the language model that corresponds to the associated action, col. 16, line 43 through col. 17, line 5; see also disclosure that the actions in the list reflect actions that are associated with computing devices that employ a speech recognition service, col. 9, lines 60-62).
X. Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 26, and 29 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Regarding claims 18 and 23, the prior art of record fails to teach or reasonably suggest the claimed method and electronic device for performing speech recognition of a voice spoken by a user, wherein a first language model includes identification information of a content capable of playing back at a first device.
Regarding claims 19 and 24, the prior art of record fails to teach or reasonably suggest the claimed method and electronic device for performing speech recognition of a voice spoken by a user, wherein a second language model includes identification information of selectable options for a function of a second device.
Claims 21, 26, and 29 depend from claims 18 and 23, and would likewise be allowable.
XII. Conclusion
In accordance with MPEP § 1406, the examiner has reviewed and considered the prior art cited or ‘of record’ in the original prosecution of the ‘310 patent. Applicants are reminded that a listing of the information cited or ‘of record’ in the original prosecution of the ‘310 patent need not be resubmitted in this reissue application unless Applicant(s) desire the information to be printed on a patent issuing from this reissue application.
Applicant(s) are reminded of the continuing obligation under 37 CFR § 1.178(b), to timely apprise the Office of any prior or concurrent proceeding in which ‘310 patent is or was involved. These proceedings would include interferences, reissues, reexaminations, other post-grant proceedings in the Office, and litigation.
Applicant(s) are further reminded of the continuing obligation under 37 C.F.R. § 1.56, to timely apprise the Office of any information which is material to patentability of the claims under consideration in this reissue application.
These obligations rest with each individual associated with the filing and prosecution of this application for reissue. See also MPEP §§ 1404, 1442.01 and 1442.04.
Applicant(s) are also reminded that any amendments to the claims must comply with the provisions of 35 U.S.C. § 112 first paragraph, having clear support and antecedent basis in the specification. See 37 C.F.R. § 1.75(d)(1) and MPEP § 608.01(o).
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Luke S. Wassum whose telephone number is (571) 272-4119. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday - Friday 8 AM-5 PM, alternate Fridays off.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Michael Fuelling can be reached on 571-270-1367. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-9900.
In addition, INFORMAL or DRAFT communications may be faxed directly to the examiner at 571-273-4119. Such communications must be clearly marked as INFORMAL, DRAFT or UNOFFICIAL.
Patent Center
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/LUKE S WASSUM/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3992
Conferees:
/ANGELA M LIE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3992 /MF/ Michael Fuelling
Supervisory Patent Examiner
Art Unit 3992
lsw
8 January 2026