Prosecution Insights
Last updated: April 19, 2026
Application No. 18/576,560

VOICE CONTROL METHOD, TERMINAL DEVICE, SERVER, AND STORAGE MEDIUM

Non-Final OA §103
Filed
Jan 04, 2024
Examiner
RILEY, MARCUS T
Art Unit
2654
Tech Center
2600 — Communications
Assignee
ZTE CORPORATION
OA Round
1 (Non-Final)
76%
Grant Probability
Favorable
1-2
OA Rounds
2y 10m
To Grant
92%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 76% — above average
76%
Career Allow Rate
514 granted / 675 resolved
+14.1% vs TC avg
Strong +16% interview lift
Without
With
+15.7%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
2y 10m
Avg Prosecution
14 currently pending
Career history
689
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
14.7%
-25.3% vs TC avg
§103
60.2%
+20.2% vs TC avg
§102
17.1%
-22.9% vs TC avg
§112
6.6%
-33.4% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 675 resolved cases

Office Action

§103
DETAILED ACTION 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 . Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103 1. 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. 2. 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. 3. Claims 1-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ma et al (US 20210210089 A1 hereinafter, Ma ‘089) in view of Ray et al. (US 20200410989 A1 hereinafter, Ray ‘989). Regarding claim 1; Ma ‘089 discloses a voice control method, applied to a terminal device (Fig. 7, Terminal 700), the method comprising: acquiring function information of an application on the terminal device (Fig. 5, Steps 501-502 i.e. In Operation 501, voice information is received from a terminal. In Operation 502, a target application program required to be started in the voice information is determined based on the voice information. Paragraphs 0085-0086) wherein the function information comprises a calling mode and an application description typical statement corresponding to a preset function of the application, and the application description typical statement is a sentence describing the preset function (i.e. The terminal or the server, when determining whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not, may make a judgment through a Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm, namely recognizing a character string in the voice information. The terminal may then extract target information in the character string, and perform a matching processing on the target information through a matching algorithm to determine an intent of the voice information. Further, the terminal can perform matching processing on a keyword about the name of the application program according to the intent to determine whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not. Paragraph 0035); and calling the application according to the calling mode to implement the preset function, in response to an acquired voice control instruction matching the application description typical statement (i.e. The terminal can perform matching processing on a keyword about the name of the application program according to the intent to determine whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not. Paragraph 0035). Examiner reasonably believes that Ma ‘089 teaches each and every limitation as expressed above except for specifically teaching a typical statement. Ma ‘089 teaches character string as opposed to a typical statement. For example, Ma ‘089 at Paragraph 0035 recognizing a character string in the voice information wherein the terminal may extract target information in the character string. One of ordinary skill in the art would understand that a typical statement is synonymous with a character string. However, Examiner cites Ray ‘989 to cure any deficiencies of Ma ‘089. Ray ‘989 discloses a typical statement (i.e. A hybrid NLU model that receives a query and creates delexicalized candidates from the query by partially delexicalizing the query, such as by matching words or phrases in the query with words or phrases in a slot vocabulary knowledge base and replacing the matched words or phrases in the query with special tokens associated with the words or phrases in the slot vocabulary knowledge base. Paragraph 0037) Ma ‘089 and Ray ‘989 are combinable because they are from same field of endeavor of speech systems (Ray ‘989 at “Technical Field”). Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to modify the speech system as taught by Ma ‘089 by adding a voice input as taught by Ray ‘989. The motivation for doing so would have been advantageous to better enable modern digital personal assistants (PA) to convert a user's natural language (NL) commands to actions. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Ma ‘089 with Ray ‘989 to obtain the invention as specified. Regarding claim 2; Ma ‘089 discloses wherein an acquired voice control instruction matching the application description typical statement comprises: acquiring the voice control instruction (i.e. The terminal may then extract target information in the character string, and perform a matching processing on the target information through a matching algorithm to determine an intent of the voice information. Further, the terminal can perform matching processing on a keyword about the name of the application program according to the intent to determine whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not. Paragraph 0035 determining text information corresponding to the voice control instruction; and determining that the acquired voice control instruction matches the application description typical statement, in response to the text information comprising a keyword corresponding to the application description typical statement (i.e. A keyword involved more in operations over the application program may include a keyword about an action and a keyword about a name of an application program. Herein, the keyword about the action may include “start”, “stop”, “search” or “calculate”, and the like. Matching processing may be matching processing implemented through a regular expression. Paragraph 0036) Regarding claim 3; Ray ‘989 discloses wherein the application description typical statement further comprises a slot value description for indicating slot value transfer (i.e. The at least one processor is also configured to replace a first portion of the utterance with a first token, where the first token represents a semantic role of the first portion of the utterance based on a slot vocabulary. The at least one processor is further configured to determine a slot value in the utterance based on the first token. In addition, the at least one processor is configured to perform a task corresponding to the utterance based on the determined slot value. See Abstract); that the voice control instruction matches the application description typical statement comprises: the voice control instruction comprises a keyword corresponding to the application description typical statement and comprises a slot value corresponding to the slot value description (i.e. The slot verification service verifies whether an output slot value is correct or not, and this verification is used to further train a hybrid NLU model. The NLU model 208 can refer to the slot vocabulary 210 to initially string match one or more words or phrases in an utterance with words or phrases in the slot vocabulary associated with a token and replace the word or phrase in the utterance with the matching token. Paragraphs 0038 & 0059); and calling the application according to the calling mode to implement the preset function comprises: transferring the slot value in the voice control instruction to the application according to the slot value description, such that the application implements the preset function according to the slot value in the voice control instruction (Fig. 6, Steps 618-620 i.e. At block 618, the processor post-processes the inferred or extracted slots from the candidate with the highest confidence score to recover the slots for the original query 602 by lexicalization, such as by replacing the special tokens in the candidate with the highest score with the original words or phrases from the query 602. At block 620, the processor outputs the intent and slot tags to be used in fulfilling one or more actions based on the query 602. Paragraph 0081) Regarding claim 4; Ray ‘989 discloses wherein acquiring the function information of the application comprises: acquiring meta-data from a configuration file of the application through a preset function information acquisition interface (i.e. A hybrid NLU model that receives a query and creates delexicalized candidates from the query by partially delexicalizing the query, such as by matching words or phrases in the query with words or phrases in a slot vocabulary knowledge base and replacing the matched words or phrases in the query with special tokens associated with the words or phrases in the slot vocabulary knowledge base. Multiple candidates can be created, where some candidates are the query with one or more words or phrases replaced with special tokens and other candidates are the original query. Paragraph 0037) and parsing the meta-data to obtain the function information of the application (i.e. The candidates are parsed by a trained hybrid NLU model, which provides parse results including determined slot tags and/or intent and an entropy score for each word or phrase in the query. The entropy scores can be used to determine an overall confidence score for a specific candidate. After all candidates are parsed, the candidate with the highest overall confidence score can be used to provide the slot tags for the query. Paragraph 0037) Regarding claim 5; Ma ‘089 discloses wherein acquiring the function information of the application comprises: uploading the application description typical statement of the application to a server, such that the server extends the application description typical statement (Fig. 5, Steps 501-502 i.e. In Operation 501, voice information is received from a terminal. In Operation 502, a target application program required to be started in the voice information is determined based on the voice information. Paragraphs 0085-0086) and calling the application according to the calling mode to implement the preset function in response to an acquired voice control instruction matching the application description typical statement comprises: acquiring a calling mode corresponding to the extended application description typical statement in response to the acquired voice control instruction matching the extended application description typical statement, and calling the application according to the calling mode to implement the preset function (i.e. The terminal or the server, when determining whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not, may make a judgment through a Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm, namely recognizing a character string in the voice information. The terminal may then extract target information in the character string, and perform a matching processing on the target information through a matching algorithm to determine an intent of the voice information. Further, the terminal can perform matching processing on a keyword about the name of the application program according to the intent to determine whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not. Paragraph 0035). Regarding claim 6; Ma ‘089 discloses a voice control method, applied to a server (Fig. 8, Server 800) in communication connection with a terminal device (Fig. 7, Terminal 700 i.e. The disclosure provide a method and device for information processing, a terminal, a server and a storage medium. The method can include that voice information is collected, and, responsive the voice information instructing a target application program to be started. See Abstract), the method comprising: acquiring function information of an application on the terminal device (Fig. 5, Steps 501-502 i.e. In Operation 501, voice information is received from a terminal. In Operation 502, a target application program required to be started in the voice information is determined based on the voice information. Paragraphs 0085-0086) wherein the function information comprises a calling mode and an application description typical statement corresponding to a preset function of the application, and the application description typical statement is a sentence describing the preset function (i.e. The terminal or the server, when determining whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not, may make a judgment through a Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm, namely recognizing a character string in the voice information. The terminal may then extract target information in the character string, and perform a matching processing on the target information through a matching algorithm to determine an intent of the voice information. Further, the terminal can perform matching processing on a keyword about the name of the application program according to the intent to determine whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not. Paragraph 0035) acquiring a voice control instruction sent by the terminal device (i.e. The terminal may then extract target information in the character string, and perform a matching processing on the target information through a matching algorithm to determine an intent of the voice information. Further, the terminal can perform matching processing on a keyword about the name of the application program according to the intent to determine whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not. Paragraph 0035) and sending an application running instruction according to the calling mode to the terminal device in response to the voice control instruction matching the application description typical statement, wherein the application running instruction is used for instructing the terminal device to call the application to implement the preset function (i.e. The terminal can perform matching processing on a keyword about the name of the application program according to the intent to determine whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not. Paragraph 0035) Examiner reasonably believes that Ma ‘089 teaches each and every limitation as expressed above except for specifically teaching a typical statement. Ma ‘089 teaches character string as opposed to a typical statement. For example, Ma ‘089 at Paragraph 0035 recognizing a character string in the voice information wherein the terminal may extract target information in the character string. One of ordinary skill in the art would understand that a typical statement is synonymous with a character string. However, Examiner cites Ray ‘989 to cure any deficiencies of Ma ‘089. Ray ‘989 discloses a typical statement (i.e. A hybrid NLU model that receives a query and creates delexicalized candidates from the query by partially delexicalizing the query, such as by matching words or phrases in the query with words or phrases in a slot vocabulary knowledge base and replacing the matched words or phrases in the query with special tokens associated with the words or phrases in the slot vocabulary knowledge base. Paragraph 0037) Ma ‘089 and Ray ‘989 are combinable because they are from same field of endeavor of speech systems (Ray ‘989 at “Technical Field”). Before the effective filing date, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to modify the speech system as taught by Ma ‘089 by adding a voice input as taught by Ray ‘989. The motivation for doing so would have been advantageous to better enable modern digital personal assistants (PA) to convert a user's natural language (NL) commands to actions. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Ma ‘089 with Ray ‘989 to obtain the invention as specified. Regarding claim 7; Ma ‘089 discloses determining text information corresponding to the voice control instruction and determining that the voice control instruction matches the application description typical statement, in response to the text information comprising a keyword corresponding to the application description typical statement (i.e. A keyword involved more in operations over the application program may include a keyword about an action and a keyword about a name of an application program. Herein, the keyword about the action may include “start”, “stop”, “search” or “calculate”, and the like. Matching processing may be matching processing implemented through a regular expression. Paragraph 0036) Regarding claim 8; Ma ‘089 discloses extending the application description typical statement in the function information acquired from the terminal device, wherein the extending comprises synonym extending (i.e. The keyword about the action may include “start”, “stop”, “search” or “calculate”, and the like. Matching processing may be matching processing implemented through a regular expression. Paragraph 0036) Regarding claim 9; Ray ‘989 discloses wherein the function information further comprises a slot value description for indicating slot value transfer (i.e. The at least one processor is also configured to replace a first portion of the utterance with a first token, where the first token represents a semantic role of the first portion of the utterance based on a slot vocabulary. The at least one processor is further configured to determine a slot value in the utterance based on the first token. In addition, the at least one processor is configured to perform a task corresponding to the utterance based on the determined slot value. See Abstract) that the voice control instruction matches the application description typical statement comprises: the voice control instruction comprises a keyword corresponding to the application description typical statement and comprises a slot value corresponding to the slot value description (i.e. The slot verification service verifies whether an output slot value is correct or not, and this verification is used to further train a hybrid NLU model. The NLU model 208 can refer to the slot vocabulary 210 to initially string match one or more words or phrases in an utterance with words or phrases in the slot vocabulary associated with a token and replace the word or phrase in the utterance with the matching token. Paragraphs 0038 & 0059) and sending the application running instruction comprising the calling mode to the terminal device comprises: sending the application running instruction to the terminal device according to the calling mode and the slot value description, such that the terminal device calls the application and implements the preset function according to the slot value in the voice control instruction (Fig. 6, Steps 618-620 i.e. At block 618, the processor post-processes the inferred or extracted slots from the candidate with the highest confidence score to recover the slots for the original query 602 by lexicalization, such as by replacing the special tokens in the candidate with the highest score with the original words or phrases from the query 602. At block 620, the processor outputs the intent and slot tags to be used in fulfilling one or more actions based on the query 602. Paragraph 0081) Regarding claim 10; Ma ‘089 discloses a terminal device (Fig. 7, Terminal 700 & Fig. 9, Device 1800); comprising a processor (Fig. 9, Processor 1820); a memory (Fig. 9, Memory 1804); a computer program stored in the memory and executable by the processor, and a communication bus configured for implementing connection and communication between the processor and the memory, wherein the computer program, when executed by the processor, causes the processor to carry out the voice control method of claim 1 (i.e. There is also provided a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium including an instruction, such as the memory 1804 including an instruction, and the instruction may be executed by the processor 1820 of the device 1800 to implement the abovementioned method. According to a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, instructions in the storage medium may be executed by a processor to execute the methods for information processing. Paragraphs 0141-0142) Regarding claim 11; Ma ‘089 discloses a server (Fig. 7, Terminal 700 & Fig. 10, Server 1900) comprising a processor (Fig. 10, Processing Component 1922), a memory (Fig. 10, Memory 1932), a computer program stored in the memory and executable by the processor, and a communication bus configured for implementing connection and communication between the processor and the memory, wherein the computer program, when executed by the processor, causes the processor to carry out the voice control method of claim 6 (i.e. The device 1900 may be provided as a server. Referring to FIG. 10, the device 1900 includes a processing component 1922 which further includes one or more processors, and a memory resource represented by a memory 1932 configured to store instructions executable by the processing component 1922, for example, an application program. The application program stored in the memory 1932 may include one or more than one module of which each corresponds to a set of instructions. In addition, the processing component 1922 is configured to execute the instruction to execute the above-mentioned method. Paragraph 0143). Regarding claim 12; Ma ‘089 discloses a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium for computer-readable storage, the storage medium storing one or more programs which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to carry out the voice control method applied to a terminal device of claim 1 (i.e. There is also provided a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium including an instruction, such as the memory 1804 including an instruction, and the instruction may be executed by the processor 1820 of the device 1800 to implement the abovementioned method. According to a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, instructions in the storage medium may be executed by a processor to execute the methods for information processing. Paragraphs 0141-0142) Regarding claim 13; Ma ‘089 discloses a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium for computer-readable storage, the storage medium storing one or more programs which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to carry out the voice control method applied to a server of claim 6 (i.e. According to a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, instructions in the storage medium may be executed by a processor to execute the methods for information processing. Paragraph 0142). Regarding claim 14; Ray ‘989 discloses wherein acquiring the function information of the application comprises: acquiring meta-data from a configuration file of the application through a preset function information acquisition interface (i.e. A hybrid NLU model that receives a query and creates delexicalized candidates from the query by partially delexicalizing the query, such as by matching words or phrases in the query with words or phrases in a slot vocabulary knowledge base and replacing the matched words or phrases in the query with special tokens associated with the words or phrases in the slot vocabulary knowledge base. Multiple candidates can be created, where some candidates are the query with one or more words or phrases replaced with special tokens and other candidates are the original query. Paragraph 0037); and parsing the meta-data to obtain the function information of the application (i.e. The candidates are parsed by a trained hybrid NLU model, which provides parse results including determined slot tags and/or intent and an entropy score for each word or phrase in the query. The entropy scores can be used to determine an overall confidence score for a specific candidate. After all candidates are parsed, the candidate with the highest overall confidence score can be used to provide the slot tags for the query. Paragraph 0037). Regarding claim 15; Ray ‘989 discloses wherein acquiring the function information of the application comprises: acquiring meta-data from a configuration file of the application through a preset function information acquisition interface (i.e. A hybrid NLU model that receives a query and creates delexicalized candidates from the query by partially delexicalizing the query, such as by matching words or phrases in the query with words or phrases in a slot vocabulary knowledge base and replacing the matched words or phrases in the query with special tokens associated with the words or phrases in the slot vocabulary knowledge base. Multiple candidates can be created, where some candidates are the query with one or more words or phrases replaced with special tokens and other candidates are the original query. Paragraph 0037); and parsing the meta-data to obtain the function information of the application (i.e. The candidates are parsed by a trained hybrid NLU model, which provides parse results including determined slot tags and/or intent and an entropy score for each word or phrase in the query. The entropy scores can be used to determine an overall confidence score for a specific candidate. After all candidates are parsed, the candidate with the highest overall confidence score can be used to provide the slot tags for the query. Paragraph 0037). Regarding claim 16; Ma ‘089 discloses wherein acquiring the function information of the application comprises: uploading the application description typical statement of the application to a server, such that the server extends the application description typical statement (Fig. 5, Steps 501-502 i.e. In Operation 501, voice information is received from a terminal. In Operation 502, a target application program required to be started in the voice information is determined based on the voice information. Paragraphs 0085-0086); and calling the application according to the calling mode to implement the preset function in response to an acquired voice control instruction matching the application description typical statement comprises: acquiring a calling mode corresponding to the extended application description typical statement in response to the acquired voice control instruction matching the extended application description typical statement, and calling the application according to the calling mode to implement the preset function (i.e. The terminal or the server, when determining whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not, may make a judgment through a Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm, namely recognizing a character string in the voice information. The terminal may then extract target information in the character string, and perform a matching processing on the target information through a matching algorithm to determine an intent of the voice information. Further, the terminal can perform matching processing on a keyword about the name of the application program according to the intent to determine whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not. Paragraph 0035). Regarding claim 17; Ma ‘089 discloses wherein acquiring the function information of the application comprises: uploading the application description typical statement of the application to a server, such that the server extends the application description typical statement (Fig. 5, Steps 501-502 i.e. In Operation 501, voice information is received from a terminal. In Operation 502, a target application program required to be started in the voice information is determined based on the voice information. Paragraphs 0085-0086); and calling the application according to the calling mode to implement the preset function in response to an acquired voice control instruction matching the application description typical statement comprises: acquiring a calling mode corresponding to the extended application description typical statement in response to the acquired voice control instruction matching the extended application description typical statement, and calling the application according to the calling mode to implement the preset function (i.e. The terminal or the server, when determining whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not, may make a judgment through a Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithm, namely recognizing a character string in the voice information. The terminal may then extract target information in the character string, and perform a matching processing on the target information through a matching algorithm to determine an intent of the voice information. Further, the terminal can perform matching processing on a keyword about the name of the application program according to the intent to determine whether the voice information is voice information configured to instruct the target application program to be started or not. Paragraph 0035). Regarding claim 18; Ma ‘089 discloses wherein the function information further comprises a slot value description for indicating slot value transfer (i.e. The at least one processor is also configured to replace a first portion of the utterance with a first token, where the first token represents a semantic role of the first portion of the utterance based on a slot vocabulary. The at least one processor is further configured to determine a slot value in the utterance based on the first token. In addition, the at least one processor is configured to perform a task corresponding to the utterance based on the determined slot value. See Abstract); that the voice control instruction matches the application description typical statement comprises: the voice control instruction comprises a keyword corresponding to the application description typical statement and comprises a slot value corresponding to the slot value description (i.e. The slot verification service verifies whether an output slot value is correct or not, and this verification is used to further train a hybrid NLU model. The NLU model 208 can refer to the slot vocabulary 210 to initially string match one or more words or phrases in an utterance with words or phrases in the slot vocabulary associated with a token and replace the word or phrase in the utterance with the matching token. Paragraphs 0038 & 0059) and sending the application running instruction comprising the calling mode to the terminal device comprises: sending the application running instruction to the terminal device according to the calling mode and the slot value description, such that the terminal device calls the application and implements the preset function according to the slot value in the voice control instruction (Fig. 6, Steps 618-620 i.e. At block 618, the processor post-processes the inferred or extracted slots from the candidate with the highest confidence score to recover the slots for the original query 602 by lexicalization, such as by replacing the special tokens in the candidate with the highest score with the original words or phrases from the query 602. At block 620, the processor outputs the intent and slot tags to be used in fulfilling one or more actions based on the query 602. Paragraph 0081) Regarding claim 19; Ray ‘989 discloses wherein the function information further comprises a slot value description for indicating slot value transfer (i.e. The at least one processor is also configured to replace a first portion of the utterance with a first token, where the first token represents a semantic role of the first portion of the utterance based on a slot vocabulary. The at least one processor is further configured to determine a slot value in the utterance based on the first token. In addition, the at least one processor is configured to perform a task corresponding to the utterance based on the determined slot value. See Abstract); that the voice control instruction matches the application description typical statement comprises: the voice control instruction comprises a keyword corresponding to the application description typical statement and comprises a slot value corresponding to the slot value description (i.e. The slot verification service verifies whether an output slot value is correct or not, and this verification is used to further train a hybrid NLU model. The NLU model 208 can refer to the slot vocabulary 210 to initially string match one or more words or phrases in an utterance with words or phrases in the slot vocabulary associated with a token and replace the word or phrase in the utterance with the matching token. Paragraphs 0038 & 0059); and sending the application running instruction comprising the calling mode to the terminal device comprises: sending the application running instruction to the terminal device according to the calling mode and the slot value description, such that the terminal device calls the application and implements the preset function according to the slot value in the voice control instruction (Fig. 6, Steps 618-620 i.e. At block 618, the processor post-processes the inferred or extracted slots from the candidate with the highest confidence score to recover the slots for the original query 602 by lexicalization, such as by replacing the special tokens in the candidate with the highest score with the original words or phrases from the query 602. At block 620, the processor outputs the intent and slot tags to be used in fulfilling one or more actions based on the query 602. Paragraph 0081). Conclusion Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MARCUS T. RILEY, ESQ. whose telephone number is (571)270-1581. The examiner can normally be reached 9-5 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, Hai Phan can be reached at 571-272-6338. 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. MARCUS T. RILEY, ESQ. Primary Examiner Art Unit 2654 /MARCUS T RILEY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2654
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Prosecution Timeline

Jan 04, 2024
Application Filed
Dec 10, 2025
Non-Final Rejection — §103 (current)

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Prosecution Projections

1-2
Expected OA Rounds
76%
Grant Probability
92%
With Interview (+15.7%)
2y 10m
Median Time to Grant
Low
PTA Risk
Based on 675 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allow rate.

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