DETAILED ACTION
This Action is in response to the Amendment for Application Number 18396227 received on 7/10/2026.
Claims 1-6, 10-16, 18-24 are presented for examination.
Claims 20-24 are newly presented.
The effective filing date for this application is 3/26/2021.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 7/10/2026 has been entered.
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 1-6, 10-16, 18-24 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.
Claim 1 has been amended to recite the limitation, “responsive to the request to subscribe to the data stream, transmitting the content to the second client to be displayed in the second meeting simultaneously with transmitting the content to a third client in the first meeting”. The limitation, “to be displayed in the second meeting simultaneously with transmitting the content to a third client in the first meeting” amounts to an intended result and fails "to provide a clear-cut indication of the scope of the subject matter embraced by the claim". The scope of the claim is indefinite because it is not clear whether the claim requires displaying the content simultaneously with transmitting the content to a third client.
For examining purposes, the limitation, “to be displayed in the second meeting simultaneously with transmitting the content to a third client in the first meeting” will be interpreted as a limitation that simply expresses the intended result of “transmitting the content to the second client”, and therefore is not accorded patentable weight, especially considering that the previously recited functional limitation, “displaying the content in the first meeting and the second meeting simultaneously”, has been removed from the claims.
Claims 10 and 19 include substantially similar amendments/limitations and are therefore rejected for the same reasons above. Claims 2-6, 12-16, 18, and 20-24 are rejected for the same reasons above by virtue of their dependencies to claims 1, 10, and 19.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-5, 10-14, 16, and 19-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Nimri et al. (US 20140267550).
Regarding claim 1, Nimri disclosed a method comprising:
establishing a videoconferencing session (Nimri, [0026], Nimri’s teachings are with respect to videoconference) including a first meeting and a second meeting (Nimri, [0027], Fig. 2, Nimri disclosed establishing a main session 200 and generating breakout rooms 210a and 210b; See [0034] Nimri refers to the main session 200 as “main breakout room”);
receiving, from a first client, content to be displayed over a data stream in the first meeting (Nimri, Fig. 2, [0033]-[0034] “FIG. 5 illustrates the UI 500 as would be seen by a breakout room participant 213 or 218. A breakout room display 550 may also include Picture-In-Picture (PIP) video 520 of the main breakout room 200”; Nimri disclosed the presenter/chairperson may send content to all breakout room participants of multiple breakout rooms, including video/content of the main room 200; Additionally, Nimri disclosed in [0050] the ability for additional content to be displayed in multiple breakout rooms simultaneously, to which such would require a breakout room receiving from a first client, content to be displayed over a data stream in the breakout room);
joining a second client to the second meeting (Nimri, [0027]-[0028] and [0032], Nimri disclosed users/clients can join either the main room or a breakout room; For example, [0028], “All participants 213, 215, and 218 can join the main session 200 by use (e.g., dialing in) of the main meeting number 310”; Also, [0032] “FIG. 4 illustrates a video and User Interface (UI) display available to a user for selecting a breakout room. A set of breakout rooms 210 and 220 can be available to a video endpoint 180. Participating endpoints 180 can use a UI 410 or UI 420 to select a breakout room to enter”);
after joining the second client to the second meeting, receiving from the second client, a request to subscribe to the data stream over which the content is transmitted (Nimri, [0050], Nimri explicitly disclosed, “A videoconference chairperson may want to distribute supplementary materials "on the fly" during a breakout session. In one embodiment, the chairperson may designate content to be displayed in all breakout rooms simultaneously” and “Such content may be displayed directly on to the breakout room display 450, or may be made selectable as a UI button or web link. In situations where it is desired for breakout room participants to be in control of when they view the content, a UI can become available to the breakout room participant once the chairperson designates that content to be delivered to that breakout room. Such content may be made available for download by the participants or may be download protected.”; Nimri additionally disclosed various types of content including ”documents, pictures, video, audio, or other material”; The breakout room participants, who previously joined the breakout room, may therefore select as a UI button or web link, which is a request to subscribe to the data stream over which the content is transmitted, to which the selection results in obtaining/downloading the content from the data stream);
responsive to the request to subscribe to the data stream, transmitting the content to the second client to be displayed in the second meeting simultaneously with transmitting the content to a third client in the first meeting (Nimri, [0050], Nimri explicitly disclosed, “A videoconference chairperson may want to distribute supplementary materials "on the fly" during a breakout session. In one embodiment, the chairperson may designate content to be displayed in all breakout rooms simultaneously”; and “Such content may be displayed directly on to the breakout room display 450, or may be made selectable as a UI button or web link. In situations where it is desired for breakout room participants to be in control of when they view the content, a UI can become available to the breakout room participant once the chairperson designates that content to be delivered to that breakout room. Such content may be made available for download by the participants or may be download protected”; That is, once the participant requests to subscribe to the content by selecting the UI button or web link, the content is to be provided and displayed in the breakout room “simultaneously” with transmitting the content to the participants (i.e. third client) of other breakout rooms or main room; Nimri’s disclosed selection with UI control and receiving of the synchronous content reasonably applies to all content disclosed by Nimri such as the ”documents, pictures, video, audio, or other material”, and additionally reasonably includes the PIP video of [0034]).
Claim 10 recites a system comprising: a processor; and at least one memory device including instructions that are executable by the processor to cause the processor to perform substantially similar limitations as recited in claim 1.
Claim 19 recites a non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising processor-executable instructions configured to cause one or more processors to perform substantially similar limitations as recited in claim 1.
Nimri disclosed system comprising a processor and memory as well as a medium implementing such limitations (Nimri, [0023], Fig. 1, Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) 150; hardware or firmware may be added to the MCU 150 or software or hardware distributed among the MCU 150 and the videoconference terminals 180; See also page 6, claim 23, “processing unit coupled to the network interface configured”; In the embodiment that the MCU is hardware and contains a processing unit and configured with software to implement the teachings of the invention, Nimri disclosed such a system comprising processor and memory/medium for such execution).
Therefore claims 10 and 19 are rejected under the same rationale applied above.
Regarding claims 2, 11 and 20, Nimri disclosed the method of claim 1, system of claim 10 and medium of claim 19, wherein the first meeting comprises a sub-meeting and the second meeting comprises a main meeting (Nimri, Fig. 2, [0027], “The breakout room can be considered to be part of the main videoconference meeting or call”; Fig. 2, “Main Session”, and “Breakout Room”; Nimri disclosed establishing a main session 200 and generating breakout rooms 210a and 210b; See [0034] Nimri refers to the main session 200 as “main breakout room” and therefore allows all such functionality across all rooms disclosed).
Regarding claims 3, 12, and 21, Nimri disclosed the method of claim 1, system of claim 10 and medium of claim 19, further comprising notifying the second client that the content is available (Nimri, Fig. 2, participant 215 receives the content of the Main Session while actively part of the Main session; The receiving and displaying of such content amounts to notifying the participant, with whichever breakout room the participant is in, i.e. the main breakout room or any of the other breakout rooms; Additionally, within a breakout room, a user is provided the content via the PIP 520, which amounts to a notification that the content is available; Additionally, [0050], Nimri explicitly disclosed “a UI can become available to the breakout room participant once the chairperson designates that content to be delivered to that breakout room. Such content may be made available for download by the participants or may be download protected.” The designation of such content by the chairperson causing a UI to become available amounts to a notification that the content is available).
Regarding claims 4, 13, and 22, Nimri disclosed the method of claim 1, system of claim 10 and medium of claim 19, further comprising: establishing a third meeting in the video conferencing session (Nimri, [0026], Nimri’s teachings are with respect to videoconference; Nimri, [0027], Fig. 2, Nimri disclosed establishing a main session 200 and generating breakout rooms 210a and 210b; See [0034] Nimri refers to the main session 200 as “main breakout room; Nimri does not limit the number of breakout rooms that can be established or participants that can join);
transmitting the content to a fourth client in the third meeting simultaneously with transmitting the content to the second and third clients (Nimri, [0050], Nimri explicitly disclosed, “A videoconference chairperson may want to distribute supplementary materials "on the fly" during a breakout session. In one embodiment, the chairperson may designate content to be displayed in all breakout rooms simultaneously”; and “Such content may be displayed directly on to the breakout room display 450, or may be made selectable as a UI button or web link. In situations where it is desired for breakout room participants to be in control of when they view the content, a UI can become available to the breakout room participant once the chairperson designates that content to be delivered to that breakout room. Such content may be made available for download by the participants or may be download protected”; That is, once the participant requests to subscribe to the content by selecting the UI button or web link, the content is to be provided and displayed in the breakout room “simultaneously” with transmitting the content to the participants (i.e. third client) of other breakout rooms or main room; Nimri’s disclosed selection with UI control and receiving of the synchronous content reasonably applies to all content disclosed by Nimri such as the ”documents, pictures, video, audio, or other material”, and additionally reasonably includes the PIP video of [0034]).
Regarding claims 5, 14, and 23, Nimri disclosed the method of claim 4, system of claim 13, and medium of claim 22, further comprising notifying the fourth participant in the third meeting that the content is available (Nimri, Fig. 2, participant 215 receives the content of the Main Session while actively part of the Main session; The receiving and displaying of such content amounts to notifying the participant, with whichever breakout room the participant is in, i.e. the main breakout room or any of the other breakout rooms; Additionally, within a breakout room, a user is provided the content via the PIP 520, which amounts to a notification that the content is available; Additionally, [0050], Nimri explicitly disclosed “a UI can become available to the breakout room participant once the chairperson designates that content to be delivered to that breakout room. Such content may be made available for download by the participants or may be download protected.” The designation of such content by the chairperson causing a UI to become available amounts to a notification that the content is available; Such embodiments apply for every breakout room and therefore every participant in each breakout room to which the content is made available).
Regarding claim 16, Nimri disclosed the system of claim 10, wherein the instructions are executable by the processor to further cause the processor to transmit an indication to the second client that the content is available (Nimri, Fig. 2, participant 215 receives the content of the Main Session while actively part of the Main session; The receiving and displaying of such content amounts to notifying the participant, with whichever breakout room the participant is in, i.e. the main breakout room or any of the other breakout rooms; Additionally, within a breakout room, a user is provided the content via the PIP 520, which amounts to a notification that the content is available; Additionally, [0050], Nimri explicitly disclosed “a UI can become available to the breakout room participant once the chairperson designates that content to be delivered to that breakout room. Such content may be made available for download by the participants or may be download protected.” The designation of such content by the chairperson causing a UI to become available amounts to a notification that the content is available; Such embodiments apply for every breakout room and therefore every participant in each breakout room to which the content is made available).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
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) 6, 15, and 24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nimri et al. (US 20140267550) in view of Williams et al. (US 20200302817).
Regarding claims 6, 15, and 24 Nimri disclosed the method of claim 1, system of claim 10 and medium of claim 19, but did not explicitly disclose receiving an annotation of the content from the second client; and transmitting the annotation to be displayed on the content in the first meeting.
In an analogous art, Williams disclosed receiving an annotation of the content from the second client; and transmitting the annotation to be displayed on the content in the first meeting (Williams, [0014], video conferencing environment; [0233]-[0235], Williams disclosed “platform 100 enables BOG shared whiteboards to be shared with the entire class, as will be discussed with reference to FIG. 28 and FIG. 29 which shows one embodiment of a screenshot 2900 of a document from a breakout session; and FIG. 30 which shows one embodiment of a screenshot 3000 of a document from a breakout session imported into the Everyone In Class (Students View) Student View State.”; See [0287]-[0292] defining the breakout room and BOG Activity involving collaborative use to produce a work product; A collaborative whiteboard worked on by the users of the breakout session amounts to an annotated document that they worked on, which is then shared; See entirety of [0051] describing the whiteboard/documents that are edited in collaboration by the participants of the breakout groups).
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Nimri and Williams as they both provide teachings involving breakout room implementation, and as such they are within similar environments.
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to incorporate the annotated content sharing of Williams within the teachings of Nimri in order to facilitate sharing of information of breakout rooms in the main room, thereby increasing customer desirability of use of the system as a whole.
Claim(s) 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nimri et al. (US 20140267550) in view of Drell (US 20030154410).
Regarding claim 18 Nimri disclosed the system of claim 16. While Nimri disclosed embodiments over a network between network elements (Nimri, [0026]), Nimri did not explicitly disclose wherein the indication is received over a command channel.
In an analogous art, Drell disclosed indications are received over a command channel (Drell, [0030] Drell disclosed, with respect to H.323, a video data channel used to transfer video signals across a multimedia firewall adapter, and the utilization of a media control channel used to transfer configuration, setup information, and call requests).
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to utilize Drell’s teachings of a media control channel to setup the providing of additional media, such as the additional media shared in Nimri’s PIP window, since the control channel of Drell is utilized for such configuration/setup. Furthermore the teachings of Nimri and Drell are within similar videoconferencing environments. That is, Nimri explicitly suggests videoconferencing over network, and Drell provides explicitly implementation for doing such, and therefore the motivation to combine is found within the references.
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to incorporate the H.323 protocol teachings of Drell within Nimri, in order increase scalability of Nimri’s teachings across well-known systems using H.323 protocol for video conferencing, thereby increasing desirability of use by its customers.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed on 7/10/2026 have been carefully considered but they are not deemed fully persuasive.
Applicant asserts, “claim 1 recites that the joining of the second meeting and the request to subscribe are separate steps. Moreover, the request is to subscribe to a data stream for a different meeting, rather than the data stream for the meeting that the second client has joined, which contrasts with the Office Action's assertion that the client has selected the data stream of the meeting it is joining. In view of these points, Applicant respectfully asserts that claim 1 is allowable over Nimri.” [Response, 7].
Examiner respectfully disagrees.
The amendments made to the claims change the scope of the invention by separating the joining and subscribing steps. The rejection has been updated in accordance with such amendments and still relies on the Nimri reference.
As previously shown, the teachings of Nimri disclosed the establishment of multiple breakout rooms, and clients joining such breakout rooms (Nimri, [0027]-[0028] and [0032], Nimri disclosed users/clients can join either the main room or a breakout room; For example, [0028], “All participants 213, 215, and 218 can join the main session 200 by use (e.g., dialing in) of the main meeting number 310”; Also, [0032] “FIG. 4 illustrates a video and User Interface (UI) display available to a user for selecting a breakout room. A set of breakout rooms 210 and 220 can be available to a video endpoint 180. Participating endpoints 180 can use a UI 410 or UI 420 to select a breakout room to enter”).
After the participants join the breakout rooms, Nimri disclosed that the participants may provide a request to subscribe to the data stream over which the content is transmitted (Nimri, [0050], Nimri explicitly disclosed, “A videoconference chairperson may want to distribute supplementary materials "on the fly" during a breakout session. In one embodiment, the chairperson may designate content to be displayed in all breakout rooms simultaneously” and “Such content may be displayed directly on to the breakout room display 450, or may be made selectable as a UI button or web link. In situations where it is desired for breakout room participants to be in control of when they view the content, a UI can become available to the breakout room participant once the chairperson designates that content to be delivered to that breakout room. Such content may be made available for download by the participants or may be download protected.”; Nimri additionally disclosed various types of content including ”documents, pictures, video, audio, or other material”; The breakout room participants, who previously joined the breakout room, may therefore select as a UI button or web link, which is a request to subscribe to the data stream over which the content is transmitted, to which the selection results in obtaining/downloading the content from the data stream). That is, Nimri explicitly provides teachings allowing for multiple breakout rooms to be receiving the content simultaneously, upon the users of the breakout rooms submitting a request to subscribe to such content.
As noted in the previous office action, the environment of Nimri is with respect to videoconferencing over a network, involving multimedia connections between such endpoints to convey information between endpoints, such information including video/audio (Nimri, [0021]-[0023]) and controlled by an MCU which handles the call establishment/routing (Nimri, [0026]). The recited breakout rooms in the above rejection are made up of such multimedia connections to which video data is transferred in order for the video conferencing to take place. Nimri’s video conference breakout rooms comprise data streams, as claimed. Such is evident from paragraph [0026] in which Nimri disclosed the endpoints receiving audio, video, or other data, or any combination thereof.
It is the Examiner’s position that Applicant has not yet submitted claims drawn to limitations, which define the operation and apparatus of Applicant’s disclosed invention in manner, which distinguishes over the prior art.
Failure for Applicant to significantly narrow definition/scope of the claims and supply arguments commensurate in scope with the claims implies the Applicant intends broad interpretation be given to the claims. The Examiner has interpreted the claims with scope parallel to the Applicant in the response and reiterates the need for the Applicant to more clearly and distinctly define the claimed invention.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Faulkner et al. (US 20200382618) disclosed multi-stream content monitoring (Faulkner, [0107]-[0108], Figs. 3A-3D).
Wang et al. (US 20140132701) disclosed the concept of a meeting client being provided with the ability to request a private room for presentation of content of the main room with modifications (Wang, [0013]).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JERRY B DENNISON whose telephone number is (571)272-3910. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:30-5:50.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Hadi Armouche can be reached at 571-270-3618. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JERRY B DENNISON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2409
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