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
Specification
The amendment filed 5/26/26 suffices to obviate the objection under 35 U.S.C. 132(a) because it removes the contested subject matter.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
Applicant’s claim amendments filed 5/26/26 suffice to obviate the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is considered to integrate any recited exception into a practical application and is considered directed to an improvement such as in the form of the recited two model arrangement of the independent claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The amendment filed 5/26/26 suffices to obviate the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, because it removes the contested subject matter.
The amendment filed 5/26/26 suffices to obviate the rejection under 335 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, because it removes the contested subject matter.
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 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 of this title, 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1, 4-10, 13-19 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Do: 20150269133 and further in view of Liu: “WAVJOURNEY: COMPOSITIONAL AUDIO CREATION WITH LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS ” (provided by Examiner; copyright 11/26/23 and hereinafter Liu).
Regarding claim 1
Do teaches:
An computing device, comprising: a memory; a display configured to display text; a sound-producing component; and at least one processor coupled to the memory, the display and the sound-producing component (Do: Abstract; ¶ 2, 14; Fig 1: a processor implemented method for generating audio to be played over a reading duration of the ebook operative such as on a computing device comprising a processor, memory, etc.; said device comprising a display for at least text and/or a user interface, and output interface for output of audio such that the ebook text is displayed on the screen and augmented with output music), and configured to:
generate instruction conditions based on intelligent mood analysis of context information, user profile information, and narrative elements of a section of an eBook (Do: ¶ 15, 16, 18-21; Fig 3-5: system generates a prompt in the form of tuple comprising context information based on intelligent mood analysis of subsections of an ebook corresponding to start and end pages and lines; said tuple comprising context in the form of genre, type; narrative elements in the form of objects involved and operative in concert with user profile information including user preferences operable to modify or add features to the output; the tuples operate to condition an instruction to the system to augment the reading with music for output based on a reading location);
generate model parameters using based on context information, and narrative elements of a section of an eBook (Do: 16; Fig 3-5: system develops a table of model parameters based on determined parameters);
apply the generated parameters to determine, by using a sound-generating model, context-appropriate sounds that match a narrative subsection of the eBook on which a reader is currently focused (Do: ¶ 15-20; figs 2-5: determination of context information corresponding to the portion of the book includes determining genre, type, and objects parameters associated therewith and using same to determine music to output coincident with the reading; said type parameters including narrative and non-narrative parameters such as for subsections comprising narrative elements such as pursuit, action, etc. and subsections comprising non-narrative elements such as atmosphere, happy, sad, such that the parameter may resolve an appropriate mood for the audio) and
output the determined context-appropriate sounds on the sound-producing component (id.: such as to augment the ebook with audio, music, etc. based on context, user profile, narrative, etc. parameters).
Do does not does not explicitly teach the system, method, etc. operative to generate a generative artificial intelligence model (LXM) prompt based on determined parameters relevant to a section of an eBook based on the Do taught context, user profile, and narrative element information; to thereby apply the generated LXM prompt to a local or remote LXM to receive an LXM response comprising one or more auditory cues; and determine based on the auditory cues of the LXM response and a sound generating AI mode sound for output.
In a related field of endeavor Liu teaches an LLM system for generation of audio to match a text such as by generation of a user prompt and comprising a two stage pipeline for generating the audio by prompting a generative model such as an LLM (Liu: Abstract; § 2, 4; Fig 1: system receives a prompt such as a text instruction and prompts an LLM such as ChatGPT, etc. based thereon to generate an audio script); apply the generated LLM prompt to an LLM to receive therefrom a response comprising one or more auditory cues (Liu: Abstract; § 1, 3.1; Fig 1: system first prompts an LLM to generate an audio script, structured semantic representation of audio elements, etc. which includes descriptions of speech, music and effect audio to be generated) and determine based on the auditory cues within the response of the LLM and by using a sound generating AI model, context appropriate sounds for a for narrative subsections of a story (Liu: Abstract; § 1, 3, 3.2, 5.1; Fig 1: system renders audio from the LLM generated script by invoking task specific audio generation model (such as AudioGen, a transformer model; AudioLDM; etc.) capable of synthesizing audio aligned with textually described semantic, spatial, and temporal conditions of a story).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the instant application to improve Do system and method such as by utilizing a two stage pipeline comprising a generative artificial intelligence model such as ChatGPT and an AI music generation model as taught or suggested by Liu for at least the purpose of automatically, algorithmically, etc. generating audio appropriate to and aligned upon portions of text, context, user profile and narrative data thereof, etc. of Do to thereby audibly confer a mood of a book subsection based on parameters thereof and upon a user reading the subsection; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 4
Do in view of Liu teaches or suggests:
The computing device of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is configured to determine context-appropriate sounds for the subsection of the eBook on which the reader is currently focused based on the received LXM response by determining the context-appropriate sounds based on character analysis information included in the received LXM response, wherein the character analysis information characterizes at least one of an age, gender, or personality of a character in the subsection of the eBook on which the reader is currently focused (Do: ¶ 15-20; figs 2-5: such as by determination of context information corresponding to the portion of the book includes determining genre, type, and objects parameters associated therewith and using same to determine music to output coincident with the reading; said type parameters including narrative and non-narrative parameters such as for subsections comprising narrative elements such as pursuit, action, etc. and subsections comprising non-narrative elements such as atmosphere, happy, sad, such that the parameter may resolve an appropriate mood for the audio); (Liu: Abstract; § 3, 3.1, 3.2; Fig 1; Table 5, 6: LLM of the system authors a script including speech, audio, effects, from analysis of text to generate context appropriate sounds for a story including character speech based on character information characterizing at least age, gender, personality, etc. of a character. The claim is considered obvious over Do as modified by Liu as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Do and/or Liu to the modified device of Do, and Liu; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 5
Do in view of Liu teaches or suggests:
The computing device of claim 1, further comprising an eye-tracking sensor or a gaze-tracking sensor, wherein the at least one processor is configured to determine the subsection of the eBook on which the reader is focused by using at least one or more of the eye-tracking sensor or the gaze-tracking sensor (Do: ¶ 24: system utilizes an image capture device as a gaze : a camera tracks reading location based on an eye-line of the user for determining the portion of the page being read). The claim is considered obvious over Do as modified by Liu as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Do and/or Liu to the modified device of Do, and Liu; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 6
Do in view of Liu teaches or suggests:
The computing device of claim 4, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to adjust the context-appropriate sounds in response to determining that the reader is focused on a dialogue-focused passage identified in the received LXM response. While Do in view of Liu determines text and context of passages in a text for the determination and generation of audio with respect thereto neither explicitly discuss the determination of a dialog portion of a text. Examiner has taken official notice which Applicant has failed to timely and explicitly traverse and it is thus accepted as Admitted Prior Art (APA: please see MPEP 2144.03) that determining textual metadata of portions of a text such as a dialog portion would have comprised an obvious inclusion for at least the purpose of generating audio with respect to the presence of dialog and appropriate to the dialog such as based on analysis of at least the text, context, narrative elements, etc. of the portion of the text. The claim is thus considered obvious over Do as modified by Liu as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Do and/or Liu to the modified device of Do, and Liu; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 7
Do in view of Liu teaches or suggests:
The computing device of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is configured to determine the subsection of the eBook on which the reader is currently focused by using historical data to determine a reading pace, time estimates for sound effects, and transition points in a soundscape based on the determined reading pace (Do: ¶ 21: speed of reading determined based on page turning behavior); (Liu: Abstract; Fig 1: such as to control a soundscape whose elements are based along controlled temporal placement in spatio-temporal relationships to a story including transitional points thereof). The claim is thus considered obvious over Do as modified by Liu as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Do and/or Liu to the modified device of Do, and Liu; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 8
Do in view of Liu teaches or suggests:
The computing device of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to determine music for one or more subsections in the section of the eBook based on the received LXM response (Do: ¶ 19: system maps music type to a scene type); (Liu: Abstract: lines of the script, program, etc. call task specific audio generation AI’s to render speech, music, effects along a narrative, story, etc.). The claim is thus considered obvious over Do as modified by Liu as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Do and/or Liu to the modified device of Do, and Liu; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 9
Do in view of Liu teaches or suggests:
The computing device of claim 8, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to reduce or halt the music during an intense dialogue or transition sounds to match narrative shifts identified in the received LXM response (please see claims 6, 7 supra; the claim is considered to recite substantially similar subject matter and is similarly rejected). The claim is thus considered obvious over Do as modified by Liu as addressed in the base claim as it would have been obvious to apply the further teaching of Do and/or Liu to the modified device of Do, and Liu; one of ordinary skill in the art would have expected only predictable results therefrom.
Regarding claim 10, 19—the claims are considered to recite substantially similar subject matter to that of claim 1 supra and are similarly rejected.
Regarding claim 13—the claim is considered to recite substantially similar subject matter to that of claim 4 supra and is similarly rejected.
Regarding claim 14—the claim is considered to recite substantially similar subject matter to that of claim 5 supra and is similarly rejected.
Regarding claim 15—the claim is considered to recite substantially similar subject matter to that of claim 6 supra and is similarly rejected.
Regarding claim 16—the claim is considered to recite substantially similar subject matter to that of claim 7 supra and is similarly rejected.
Regarding claim 17—the claim is considered to recite substantially similar subject matter to that of claim 8 supra and is similarly rejected.
Regarding claim 18—the claim is considered to recite substantially similar subject matter to that of claim 9 supra and is similarly rejected.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments in concert with claim amendments, see Remarks and Claims, filed 5/26/26, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1-20 under 35 USC 103 over Levy, Do and Xq have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Do and Liu. Applicant’s remaining arguments have been addressed under the relevant headings supra.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PAUL C MCCORD whose telephone number is (571)270-3701. The examiner can normally be reached 730-630 M-F.
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.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, CAROLYN EDWARDS can be reached at (571) 270-7136. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/PAUL C MCCORD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2692
Prosecution Insights