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
Claims 1-20 are presented for examination.
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 1-16 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 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being incomplete for omitting essential structural cooperative relationships of elements, such omission amounting to a gap between the necessary structural connections. See MPEP § 2172.01. The omitted structural cooperative relationships are: the structural relationship between the client computer and the remote VM that are both part of a remote desktop computer system. The claim recites “a remote virtual machine (VM)” without specifically indicating what the VM is remote with respects to such that the VM can be a VM residing within the client computer but nonetheless remote to other components/entities within the remote desktop computer system. More specifically, the absence of the cooperative relationship and/or physical placement of the client with respect to the VM of a remote desktop computer system in a computing environment renders the claim unclear, such that the omission amount to a gap between the structural connections. For the purpose of examination, the examiner is interpreting the remote VM as a VM remotely located with respect to the client computer for the remainder of this office action.
As to claims 2-8, these claims depend on claim 1 and failed to obviate the deficiency of claim 1, therefore they are rejected for the same reasons as claim 1 above.
As to claims 9-16, these claims are rejected for the same reason as claims 1-8 above.
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(a) which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-3, 5, 7, 9-11, 13, 15 and 17-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over US PG Pub. 2018/0253447 to Li in view of “Setting the TWAIN Image Acquisition Mode” to Accusoft Corporation (hereafter Accusoft).
As claim 1, Li teaches the invention substantially as claimed including a scanner redirection method for a remote desktop computer system, wherein the remote desktop computer system includes a client computer and a remote virtual machine (VM), and wherein the client computer and the remote VM are each configured to execute remote desktop software [in a remote virtual desktop system, a server includes the application client and the TWAIN server, a terminal includes a TWAIN client and general-purpose data source, wherein the server is in communication with the terminal in acquiring image from an image input device, paragraph 66; Figs. 3-6 and corresponding text], the scanner redirection method comprising:
setting a virtual data source of the remote VM to use an image obtaining option/instruction as selected by a user of an application executing on the remote VM [user via application client selects image setting options such as image obtaining option in selecting a general-purpose data source that obtain image from image input device according to the image obtaining instructions, paragraphs 105-110; application client implemented in a server of a remote virtual desktop system where general-purpose data source in the terminal is mapped to the server using TWAIN server and the TWAIN client, “equivalent to a virtual general-purpose data source on the server in order to process an image in the remote virtual desktop system”, paragraph 66, lines 2-11];
transmitting a request to the client computer to acquire an image, wherein the client computer acquires the image from an image capturing device connected to the client computer and then transmits the image to the remote VM; and
upon receiving the image from the client computer, providing, by the virtual data source to the application, the image [Figs. 8A-10B and corresponding text; application client implemented in a server of a remote virtual desktop system where general-purpose data source in the terminal is mapped to the server using TWAIN server and the TWAIN client, “equivalent to a virtual general-purpose data source on the server in order to process an image in the remote virtual desktop system”, paragraph 66].
Li does not specifically teach setting the virtual data resource to use one of a plurality of transfer mode wherein each of the transfer modes specifies how images are to be provided to the application. However, Li disclosed a user via application client, selects image setting options such as image obtaining option in selecting a general-purpose data source that obtain image from image input device according to the image obtaining instruction to be sent to the application client via the TWAIN server [paragraphs 105-110 and 141-143] and use of TWAIN communication standard in a remote virtual desktop system, the system including a server that includes the application client and the TWAIN server, a terminal that includes a TWAIN client and general-purpose data source, wherein the server is in communication with the terminal in acquiring image from an image input device [paragraph 66; Figs. 3-6 and corresponding text]. Furthermore, setting TWAIN image acquisition mode as one of the three acquisition modes in TWAIN was disclosed in Accusoft. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to combine Li and Accusoft because they are both in the same field of endeavor of communicating in an image processing system using TWAIN communication standard.
As claim 2, Li and Accusoft teach the invention substantially as claimed including wherein the selected transfer mode is a native transfer mode, and wherein providing the image to the application involves providing the contents of the image to the application as a return value of a request by the application for the image [Figs. 8A-10B and corresponding text; Accusoft, setting transfer syntax to Native].
As claim 3, Li and Accusoft teach the invention substantially as claimed including wherein the selected transfer mode is a disk file transfer mode, and wherein providing the image to the application involves storing a file in a storage location of the remote VM that is accessible to the application, the stored file including the image [processing result received hence stored by TWAIN server, Figs. 8A-10B and corresponding text; Accusoft, setting transfer syntax to Disk File Transfer].
As claim 5, Li and Accusoft teach the invention substantially as claimed including wherein the selected transfer mode is a buffered memory transfer mode, and wherein providing the image to the application involves storing a plurality of portions of the image in memory locations of the remote VM that are accessible to the application [processing result received hence stored by TWAIN server, Figs. 8A-10B and corresponding text; Accusoft, setting transfer syntax to Buffer Memory Transfer with option of the data being compressed].
As to claim 7, Li and Accusoft teach the invention substantially as claimed including wherein the client computer and the remote VM use a common scanning protocol [terminal including TWAIN client and server including TWAIN server in the remote virtual desktop environment both uses the TWAIN protocol, paragraph 66], whereby the client computer uses a data source to acquire the image from the image capturing device [paragraphs 123-124].
As to claim 9, Li and Accusoft teach the scanner redirection method substantially as recited in claim 1, therefore Li and Accusoft teach substantially the non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions that are executable in a remote desktop computer system, wherein the instructions when executed cause the remote desktop computer system to carry out for carrying out the method.
As to claims 10-11, 13 and 15, these claims are rejected for the same reason as claims 2-3 and 5 above.
As to claim 17, Li and Accusoft teach substantially the scanner redirection method as recited in claim 1, therefore Li and Accusoft teach substantially the system for implementing the method.
As to claims 18-20, these claims are rejected for the same reason as claims 2-3 and 5 above.
Claims 8 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Li and Accusoft as applied to claims 1 and 9 above, further in view of US PG Pub. 2024/0205357 to Huo et al. (hereafter Huo).
Huo was cited in applicant’s IDS filed on 7/9/25.
As to claim 8, Li and Accusoft do not specifically teach wherein the client computer uses a different scanning protocol than that of the remote VM, whereby the client computer uses an image capture core to acquire the image from the image capturing device. However, Huo teaches an RD client application and application of a remote server utilize the same scanning protocol such as the TWAIN protocol as well as RD client application and the application of the remote server utilizing different scanning protocol in which the RD client application utilizes an image capture core to acquire images from ICDs [paragraphs 27-28].
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made to combine Li and Accusoft with Huo because they are in the same field of endeavor of communicating in an image processing system and combining Li and Accusoft with Huo would achieve the predictable result of realizing image acquisition by a remotely located application in acquiring image data from an image capture device.
As to claim 16, this claim is rejected for the same reason as claim 8 above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4, 6, 12 and 14 would be allowable by overcoming the 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph rejection above and 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:
The prior arts of record when taken individually or in combination do not expressly teach or render obvious the invention as a whole as recited in claims 4, 6, 12 and 14.
Neither a reference uncovered that would have provided a basis of evidence for asserting a motivation, nor one of ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, knowing the teaching of the prior arts of record would have combined them to arrive at the present invention as recited in claims 4, 6, 12 and 14 as a whole.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to QING YUAN WU whose telephone number is (571)272-3776. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9AM-6PM EST.
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/QING YUAN WU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2199