DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application is being examined under the pre-AIA first to invent provisions.
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities: In claim 1, line 22, “eh” should be changed to “the”. Appropriate correction is required.
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 pre-AIA 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, 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 negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-4, 9-12, 14-16, 19 is/are rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Steel, Jr. (US 7430283, “Steel”) in view of Bates et al. (US 8731163 B1, “Bates”).
As to claims 1, 9, 19, Steel discloses a method for maintaining a captioning service for an assisted user (AU) during a voice communication session between the AU and a hearing user (HU) wherein the HU uses an HU device to communicate via voice and the AU uses an AU device linked to a computer network to receive and present captions corresponding to an HU voice signal via a display screen, the AU device associated with a computer network address, and the HU device associated with an HU calling number, the method for use with a relay that transcribes voice signal to text (Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS) handles voice calls between a hearing impaired customer using an Internet terminal with a chat window and a hearing party using a telephone, Abstract), the method comprising the steps of, at the relay:
connecting to the AU device via the computer network address (a connection is established between the hearing-impaired customer with an Internet terminal and a TRS Server via its IP address; col. 3, lines 56-63);
receiving the HU calling number from the AU device (hearing impaired customer issues a request to the TRS Server to dial a number of a hearing party; col. 3, line 64).
Steel differs from claims 1, 19 in that it does not disclose:
upon recognizing the HU calling number as an emergency number:
(i) assign a temporary relay calling number to the AU device;
(ii) store the temporary relay calling number with the computer network address associated with the AU device;
(iii) use the emergency number to establish a first communication link with an emergency service provider and present the temporary relay calling number to the emergency service provider;
(iv) upon termination of the first communication link:
(a) monitoring for a call using the temporary relay calling number;
(b) upon receiving a call using the temporary relay calling number, use the temporary calling number to identify the network address of the AU device; and
(c) use the network address of eh AU device to re-establish communication with the AU device for transmitting captions of the HU voice signal to the AU device, and
differs from claim 9 in that it does not disclose:
assign a temporary relay calling number to the AU device;
store the temporary relay calling number with the computer network address associated with the AU device; and
use the HU calling number to establish a first communication link with an HU and present the temporary relay calling number to the HU device.
Bates teaches a telecommunications service provider which facilitates communications between a user communication device connected to a data network and one or more recipient devices 160 over data network 130 and telephone network 150 (col. 4, lines 7-34), receives a request to establish a communication session with an emergency services provider (col. 13, lines 56-61; col. 18, lines 38-49), assigns a temporary, geographically-correct telephone number to the user device (col. 13, line 61 – col. 14, line 8; col. 18, line 56 – col. 19, line 13), stores the temporary telephone number as being associated with the user communication device; col. 19, lines 14-30), relays the call to the enhanced emergency services provider including the temporary telephone number (col. 14, lines 8-12; col. 19, lines 31-53), and facilitates a return call from the PSAP to the temporary telephone number if the initial call becomes disconnected (col. 14, lines 13-16; col. 19, lines 53-55; col. 20, lines 8-41).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Steel with the above teaching of Bates in order to provide emergency services to a hearing-impaired user using an Internet device.
As to claims 2, 14, Steel in view of Bates teaches: wherein the step of monitoring for a call using the temporary relay calling number includes monitoring for a call for a time out period and, after the time out period, ceasing monitoring for the call (Bates: temporary telephone number is returned to the pool of available telephone numbers after a threshold amount of time after the communication session has ended; col. 12, lines 42-65).
As to claims 3, 15, Steel in view of Bates teaches: further including, at the relay, receiving HU voice signal originating at the HU device, captioning the HU voice signal to generate HU voice captions, and transmitting the HU voice signal captions to the AU device to be presented via the AU device display screen (Bates: TRS relay operator receives voice from the hearing user, converts the speech into text by typing, the text being displayed to the hearing-impaired user via a chat window; Abstract).
As to claims 4, 16, Steel in view of Bates teaches: wherein the step of captioning includes using a call assistant to perform at least some captioning steps (Bates: TRS relay operator mediates between the two parties by speaking to the hearing party and typing responses to the customer; col. 4, lines 1-5).
As to claim 10, Steel in view of Bates teaches: wherein the HU calling number is an emergency calling number (Bates: col. 13, lines 56-61; col. 18, lines 38-49).
As to claim 11, Steel in view of Bates teaches: upon termination of the first communication link, monitoring for a call using the temporary relay calling number (Bates: after a communication has ended, the service provider waits a threshold amount of time to receive a return call from the temporary telephone number; col. 12, lines 42-65).
As to claim 12, Steel in view of Bates teaches: upon receiving a call using the temporary relay calling number, use the temporary calling number to identify the network address of the AU device (Bates: service provider accesses information associated with the temporary telephone number to determine the associated user communication device, such as the IP address; col. 20, lines 26-53).
Claim 8 is rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Steel in view of Bates, as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Chin et al. (US 2004/0203565 A1, “Chin”).
Steel in view of Bates differs from claim 8 in that although it teaches re-establishing communication when the temporary calling number is received (Bates: return call is placed to the temporary telephone number by the PSAP; col. 3, line 59 - col. 4, line 6; col. 20, lines 8-53)., it does not specifically teach: wherein, upon receiving a call using the temporary relay calling number, the relay expedites re-establishment of the communication with the AU device because the call is recognized as an emergency call back call.
Chin teaches recognizing an emergency call back situation and handling a call back number at a higher priority (para. 0019). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Steel in view of Bates with the above teaching of Chin in order to improve emergency call back completion, as taught by Chin (para. 0019).
Claim 13 is rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Steel in view of Bates, as applied to claim 12 above, and further in view of Nola et al. (US 2007/0064888 A1, “Nola”).
Steel in view of Bates differs from claim 13 in that although it teaches: using the network address associated with the AU device to re-establish communication with the AU device (Bates: call back is routed to the IP address associated with the impaired customer device; col. 20, lines 41-53), it does not teach: transmitting HU voice signal from the relay.
Nola teaches a relay service providing Voice Carry Over to a hearing-impaired user over a data network (Fig. 1, para. 0040). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Steel in view of Bates with the above teaching of Nola in order to provide the hearing user’s voice along with the captioned text to the hearing-impaired user.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-7, 17-18 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Stella L Woo whose telephone number is (571)272-7512. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
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, Ahmad Matar can be reached at 571-272-7488. 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.
/Stella L. Woo/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2693