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
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 12/8/2025 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1, 3-8, 10-11, 13-16 and 18-20 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument. Arguments towards existing use of Mathur is addressed in the rejection below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claims 1, 6, 8, 10-11 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mathur et al. (US 2019/0265986) in view of Willard et al. (US 2010/0180224) further in view of Sideman (US 2002/0116716) and further in view of Dideriksen et al. (US 7,411,020).
Regarding claims 1, 11 and 16, Mathur teaches an electronic device (Figs. 2A-3B), comprising:
one or more processors (paragraphs 29-30); and
a storage apparatus, which is used for storing one or more programs (paragraphs 29-30 teaches storage medium),
when the one or more programs are executed by the one or more processors (paragraphs 29-30 teaches program to be executed by the processor/system), the one or more processors being caused to implement the following operations:
when it is detected that audio and video data to be edited is triggered to be played, acquiring each audio and video editing plug-in to be used (paragraphs 17-18 teaches acquiring audio and video data to be edited/processed. Paragraphs 22 and 24-25 teaches that the audio and video content is part of streamed data stream, which equates to playback. Abstract and paragraph 24 is more specific in that the video and audio portions are processed and not stored but used in streaming/live purposes, which includes playback and displaying purposes);
determining target audio and video editing plug-ins according to pre-received audio and video state management data and each audio and video editing plug-in to be used (paragraphs 14-15 teaches determining what plugins are needed to be implemented on the received audio and video data - “get and set parameters required for a plug-in’s execution”. The parameters required for a plugin is therefore the state management data that is received along with the audio video data itself. Paragraph 24 and Figs. 3A-3B teaches wherein a plugin video effect instance 314 and plugin audio effect instance 322. It should be noted here that applicant’s remarks towards this limitation is addressed by the fact that the plug-ins themselves are initially determined to be able to perform the type of editing onto the video or audio. As in the case of a blur effect, it is determined that a blur editing plugin is used and further defines the level of blur to apply. Therefore, it is the opinion of the examiner that this limitation is already taught by Mathur);
based on functional modules that are integrated in the target audio and video editing plug-ins, editing the audio and video data to be edited, so as to obtain target audio and video data (paragraph 24 teaches wherein the video and the audio data are edited/processed in accordance with the desired plugin to generate the desired output stream); and
playing the target audio and video data based on a target audio routing (Paragraphs 22 and 24-25 teaches that the audio and video content is part of streamed data stream, which equates to playback. Abstract and Paragraphs 21-22 and 24 is more specific in that the video and audio portions are processed and not stored but used in streaming/live purposes, a live stream which includes playback and displaying purposes).
While Mathur teaches the ability to acquire a particular editing plug-in to be used for particular audio/video effects based on the plug-in description, fails to explicitly teach, but Willard teaches in paragraphs 75, 147 and 152 teaches wherein effect plug-ins for a song are loaded from a plug-in library associated with a particular song/track.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the current application to incorporate the teachings of Willard into the system of Mathur such that the plug-ins of Mathur may be acquired from a plug-in library because such an incorporation allows for the benefit of having the plug-ins loaded and readily available for use (paragraph 247).
However, while Mathur and Willard teaches the plugin determination system above, fails to teach the web browser based user display interface, however, Sideman teaches the claimed: wherein the audio and video data to be edited is displayed on a browser-based display interface (Sideman in paragraphs 17-25 teaches the claimed);
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the current application to incorporate the teachings of Sideman into the proposed combination of Mathur and Willard because said incorporation allows for the benefit of improving the system by allowing a user to benefit from lower resource and hardware requirements along with improved rendering (server based).
However, the proposed combination teaches the determining of the target audio and video plugins and editing the audio and video using said plugins (as discussed above) fails to teach, but Dideriksen teaches the claimed:
creating a recording module to connect to the target audio routing, and the recording module is a module that processes audio and video data and implements playing of the processed audio and video data (Col. 1, lines 31 through col. 2, line 9 at least teaches wherein sets of audio plugin/filters are chained together into a filter/plugin graph, which is then used in processing the multimedia (audio and video content through their plugins) to allow for rendering and display of the content data ).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the current application to incorporate the teachings of Dideriksen into the proposed combination of Mathur, Willard and Didericksen because said incorporation allows for the benefit of efficiently processing the multimedia data.
Claim 1’s methodology is taught by the system implementing its functions as discussed above. Similarly, the medium claim 16 is met by the structure of claim 11 including the medium for storing the program to be executed by the processor.
Regarding claim 6, Mathur teaches the claimed further comprising:
when a change in the audio and video state management data is detected (paragraph 23 teaches wherein portions of the audio and video have different segments requiring different effect. The system would detect the change when received and processing the associated effect plugins.), traversing the audio and video data to be edited based on an audio management module, so that the audio and video data to be edited is edited based on the updated audio and video state management data (paragraph 24 teaches wherein the video and the audio data are edited/processed in accordance with the desired plugin to generate the desired output stream).
Regarding claim 8, Mathur teaches the claimed wherein determining target audio and video editing plug-ins according to pre-received audio and video state management data and each audio and video editing plug-in to be used comprises: determining the number of tracks based on the audio and video state management data (paragraph 23 teaches wherein portions of the audio and video have different effects applicable to the audio video portions and are treated as separate “tracks” because of the multiple channels it uses to implement the desired number of effects), and calling corresponding track data in sequence (paragraph 23 teaches wherein portions of the audio and video have different effects applicable to the audio video portions and are treated as separate “tracks” because of the multiple channels it uses to implement the desired number of effects. Each channel when called upon for processing meets the claimed); being based on collections of data corresponding to at least one piece of audio and video editing feature data in the track data and the audio and video state management data (as discussed above, the total number of channels created for each of the video and audio effects to be applied to the video stream is the total collection of the output audio video stream); and for each audio and video editing plug-in to be used, if the audio and video editing plug-in currently to be used comprises the audio and video editing feature data in the collections of data, determining that the audio and video editing plug-in currently to be used is the target audio and video editing plug-in (paragraphs 23-24 teaches wherein the video and the audio data are edited/processed in accordance with the desired plugin. In implementing the microservice (plugins) the steps of receiving the desired plugins (as in paragraphs 14-15) and identifying and applying them to the audio video stream (as in paragraphs 23-24: Paragraph 24 and Figs. 3A-3B teaches wherein a plugin video effect instance 314 and plugin audio effect instance 322) meets the ability to determine that the current plugin in the received state management data is the appropriate one needed for the plugin effects process)”.
Regarding claim 10, Mathur teaches the claimed further comprising:
using the target audio routing corresponding to the last target audio and video editing plug-in as the target audio routing that is finally used to play the target audio and video data (paragraph 24 teaches wherein the video and the audio data are edited/processed in accordance with the desired plugin to generate the desired output stream. The last portion of the audio/video stream will use the last plugins, respectively).
Claims 3-5, 13-15 and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mathur et al. (US 2019/0265986) in view of Willard et al. (US 2010/0180224) further in view of Sideman (US 2002/0116716) and further in view of Dideriksen et al. (US 7,411,020) and further in view of Grossman et al. (US 2012/0272173).
Regarding claims 3, 13 and 18, Mather, Willard, Sideman and Dideriksen teaches the claimed as discussed in claim 1 above, however fails to, but Grossman teaches the claimed wherein acquiring audio and video state management data comprises:
acquiring at least one piece of audio and video editing feature data corresponding to a state object, and updating the audio and video state management data based on the at least one piece of audio and video editing feature data (paragraphs 4-5, 40 and 78 teaches storing of list of events/edits made to an audio video data and allows the user to make changes via one or more setting changes).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the current application to incorporate the teachings of Grossman into the system of Mather, Willard, Sideman and Dideriksen because said incorporation allows for the benefit of improving the user experience by giving the user explicit control over the output (paragraph 40).
Regarding claims 4, 14 and 19, Mather, Willard, Sideman and Dideriksen teaches the claimed as discussed in claim 1 above, however fails to, but Grossman teaches the claimed further comprising:
saving the audio and video state management data to a history management module (paragraphs 7-10 teaches storing events in a workflow history), so that when an undo or rollback editing instruction corresponding to the audio and video data to be edited is received, corresponding audio and video state management data is retrieved from the history management module to edit the audio and video data to be edited (paragraphs 4-5 and 40 teaches storing of list of events/edits made to an audio video data and allows the user to make changes via one or more setting changes. Paragraphs 4-5 and 78 further teaches undoing events or changes made in the past would implement the changes to the respective audio and video content stored in the workflow history).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the current application to incorporate the teachings of Grossman into the system of Mather, Willard, Sideman and Dideriksen because said incorporation allows for the benefit of improving the user experience by giving the user explicit control over the output (paragraph 40).
Regarding claims 5, 15 and 20, Mather, Willard, Sideman and Dideriksen teaches the claimed as discussed in claim 1 above, however fails to, but Grossman teaches the claimed further comprising:
when an undo or rollback control is detected, acquiring from the history management module the audio and video state management data with the minimum distance from the current time, and multiplexing the audio and video state management data (paragraphs 4-5 and 40 teaches storing of list of events/edits made to an audio video data and allows the user to make changes via one or more setting changes. Paragraphs 4-5 and 78 further teaches undoing events or changes made in the past would implement the changes to the respective audio and video content stored in the workflow history.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the current application to incorporate the teachings of Grossman into the system of Mather, Willard, Sideman and Dideriksen because said incorporation allows for the benefit of improving the user experience by giving the user explicit control over the output (paragraph 40).
Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mathur et al. (US 2019/0265986) in view of Willard et al. (US 2010/0180224) further in view of Sideman (US 2002/0116716) and further in view of Dideriksen et al. (US 7,411,020) and further in view of Ji et al. (CN110457049) (see attached translation).
Regarding claim 7, Mather, Willard, Sideman and Dideriksen teaches the claimed as discussed in claim 1 above wherein the plugins comprises function files for performing a specific effect/processing on the audio and video content, however fails to explicitly teach a specific “hook file” and therefore fails to teach, however, Ji teaches the claimed wherein the audio and video editing plug-in to be used comprise a plurality of hook files which comprise function files used to edit the audio and video data to be edited (abstract and page 4 “the hook file … is capable of detecting the content of submitted content to the server submitting operation, executing the preset, using the hook function invoking plug-in manager …”. Therefore, Ji clearly teaches that the preset plugins (as in the ones from Mathur) utilizes a plurality of hook files for performing the functions).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the current application to incorporate the teachings of Ji into the system of Mather, Willard, Sideman and Dideriksen because using hook files in commonplace in the prior art for storing function files and would allow for improved compatibility between components/systems and also for improving the quality of the script/code for a system (page 1-2).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to GELEK W TOPGYAL whose telephone number is (571)272-8891. The examiner can normally be reached M-F (9:30-6 PST).
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/GELEK W TOPGYAL/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2481