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 .
Priority
Applicant claims the benefit of US Provisional Application No. 1865808, filed May 15, 2023. Claims 1-11 have been afforded the benefit of this filing date.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim does not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the claim recites a computer program per se (“A computer program for an information processing apparatus connected with an operation apparatus including multiple buttons […]”).
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 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.
Claim(s) 1-7 and 10-11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Steam Input Configurator in view of RetroSpy as evidenced by SNES Input Display Test and RetroSpy Dreamcast Demo.
Regarding claim 1, Steam Input Configurator discloses “an information processing apparatus connected with an operation apparatus including multiple buttons” (“The steam input configurator (SIC) is built into the steam client and sits between the player and their game/application. The SIC receives input from your input device [the “operation apparatus”], and translates that data appropriately depending on the player's settings before passing it along to the game”; here, the computer running the game/application would be analogous to the “information processing apparatus” recited in the claim), “the information processing apparatus comprising a screen display section that causes an edit screen to be displayed in an edit mode” (Fig. 1), “the edit screen allowing a freely-selected button of the operation apparatus to be set to a special mode in which an input state of the button continues” (see the “Toggle Off/On” option in Fig. 1; see also the description of the Toggle Activator setting, “Toggle will make this activator continue to be active after releasing it until it is pressed again”).
However, Steam Input Configurator does not disclose “on a screen after termination of the edit mode, the screen display section causes information regarding the continuation of the input state of the button set to the special mode to be displayed.”
Computer applications that visually represent the current input state of buttons on a physical input device in real time (e.g., whether they are currently being pressed or held down) are well-known in the art, with many such as InputVisualizer, Keypress Hero, and RetroSpy being freely available for download online. RetroSpy teaches the screen display section of an information processing apparatus causing information regarding the input state of a button on an operation apparatus to be displayed, as evidenced by SNES Input Display Test, which depicts a pictorial representation of an SNES controller corresponding to an actual SNES controller being displayed on a screen, wherein the user holding down the yellow “B” button, the right directional button, and the right shoulder button on the controller causes pictorial representations of the “B” button, the right directional button, and the right shoulder button to update visually by becoming “filled in”, as seen in Figs. 2-3, which are included for reference; the pictorial representations of these buttons remain “filled in” until the user releases the buttons, as seen throughout the video as the player steers the car around the track. RetroSpy also teaches the visualization of controller inputs in a display window as being useful for such applications as speedrunning and creating game tutorials. The use of RetroSpy and similar tools for these applications are well known in the art, as they are widely popular among digital content creators who frequently employ them during video game livestreams and when filming recordings of video game speedruns.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the software of Steam Input Configurator to visually display information regarding the inputs sent to the information processing apparatus by input macros executed by the Steam Input Configurator in response to inputs from an input device, as taught by RetroSpy, with a reasonable expectation of success, and they would have been motivated to do so to allow users employing the Steam Input Configurator to assign input macros to inputs received from an input device to capture the actions performed by these macros when recording gameplay of a video game for the purpose of revealing their inputs to an audience viewing the recorded gameplay, as taught by RetroSpy, as other methods for capturing player input known in the art, such as recording the controller with a camera, would be incapable of capturing the actions performed by the macros assigned by Steam Input Configurator, as these occur at the software level.
The rejection of system claim 1 above applies mutatis mutandis to the corresponding limitations of apparatus claim 9, method claim 10, and computer program claim 11 while noting that the rejection above cites to both device and method disclosures. Claims 9, 10, and 11 are mapped below for clarity of the record and to specify any new limitations not included in claim 1.
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Fig. 1: An example of the edit screen allowing a user to assign “Activators” to a button on an input device using the Steam Input Configurator.
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Figure 2: Screen capture from SNES Input Display Test demonstrating the output of the RetroSpy software rendered in the top right corner of the screen.
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Figure 2: Screen capture of SNES Input Display Test demonstrating the output of the RetroSpy software rendered in the top right corner of the screen. At the moment of capture, several buttons on the input device are being pressed, as can be seen in the top right.
Regarding claim 2, Steam Input Configurator (in view of RetroSpy) discloses “the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the information regarding the continuation of the input state of the button set to the special mode includes identification information regarding the button set to the special mode” (see Figs. 2 and 3: the identity of the button being pressed is conveyed by the location of the pictorial representation of the button on the pictorial representation of the controller matching the location of the corresponding physical button on the physical controller).
Regarding claim 3, Steam Input Configurator (in view of RetroSpy) discloses “the information processing apparatus according to claim 1.”
However, Steam Input Configurator (in view of RetroSpy) is silent on whether “the information processing apparatus is capable of being connected with multiple operation apparatuses and whether the screen display apparatus is capable of causing information regarding continuation of an input state of a button set to the special mode to be displayed separately for each operation apparatus.”
That being said, multiplayer games, and particularly the local multiplayer/”couch co-op” games to which the claim seems to be directed, have been known in the art for decades, and their popularity would necessarily motivate an extension to the capabilities of the apparatus taught by Steam Input Configurator (in view of RetroSpy) to accommodate multiplayer games in addition to single-player games so that all of the participating players can receive the same benefit as a single player would while playing alone, such as by displaying multiple pictorial representations of controllers on the screen simultaneously, each corresponding to one of the multiple physical controllers connected to the information processing apparatus. Furthermore, it should be noted that implementing these changes would simply constitute adding more controllers and/or replicating the programming code used to display input information for each additional controller, whether explicitly (such as by manually duplicating the instructions in the program code) or implicitly through the use of loop control structures, as is commonly known in the field of computer programming: In re Harza, 274 F.2d 669, 124 USPQ 378 (CCPA 1960), the Court has held that the mere duplication of parts has no patentable significance unless a new and unexpected result is produced.
Regarding claim 4, after modifying the information processing apparatus of Steam Input Configurator (in view of RetroSpy) to accommodate multiple players simultaneously, it would become immediately apparent that players would be unable to identify which of the multiple pictorial representations of controllers on the screen corresponds to the physical controller they are personally operating. It would then be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to further modify the information processing apparatus to display additional information that would allow players to distinguish between the multiple pictorial representations displayed on the screen by using any one of a number of techniques widely known in the art, such as assigning a number to each controller and displaying the number associated with each controller alongside the pictorial representation corresponding to that controller on the screen.
Regarding claim 5, Steam Input Configurator (in view of RetroSpy) discloses “the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the continuation of the input state in the special mode includes intermittent continuation of the input state” (in light of the specification, this “intermittent continuation” is reminiscent of a “turbo/rapid-fire mode”, as is known in the art, which is another Activator option provided by Steam Input Configurator: see the “Hold to Repeat (Turbo)” setting in Fig. 1; see also the description for the Turbo Activator setting, “Turbo will make this activator activate and deactivate at a rapid pace while held”; although this seems to imply the physical button must be held down continuously, the “Turbo” mode may be assigned to require only a single button press, as evidenced by the example provided in the Activators documentation: “Now, whenever Dpad Down is pressed and held for longer then 0.15 seconds, every 0.9 seconds therafter it will pulse an additional Dpad Down event until the input is released”).
Regarding claim 6, Steam Input Configurator (in light of RetroSpy) discloses “the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the screen display sections causes both a screen of a system of the information processing apparatus and a screen of an application executed on the information processing apparatus to display the information regarding the continuation of the input state of the button set to the special mode” (RetroSpy, as evidenced by RetroSpy Dreamcast Demo, is capable of generating an overlay which can be rendered on top of screens generated by other software, whether system software or application software such as video games; see Fig. 4 for an example of the latter).
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Figure 4: Screen capture from RetroSpy Dreamcast Demo demonstrating an overlay generated by the RetroSpy software and the graphical output from a video game being rendered simultaneously.
Regarding claim 7, Steam Input Configurator (in light of RetroSpy) discloses “the information processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the screen display section causes information regarding continuation of an input state of up to a predetermined number of buttons among multiple buttons set to the special mode to be displayed” (see Figs. 2 and 3: RetroSpy can display information regarding the state of as many buttons as exist on the physical controller being represented on the screen).
Regarding claim 9, claim 9 is identical in scope to claim 1 aside from the recitation of a processor instead of a “screen display section”. Steam Input Configurator (in view of RetroSpy) is read as inherently possessing a processor, as the Steam Input Configurator is a computer software program and thus necessarily requires an electronic processor to run: thus, claim 9 is rejected under the same reasoning as for claim 1.
Regarding claim 10, claim 10 is identical in scope to claim 1 aside from the recitation of an “information processing method” instead of an “information processing apparatus”: thus, claim 10 is rejected under the same reasoning as for claim 1.
Regarding claim 11, claim 11 is identical in scope to claim 1, aside from reciting the features of the information processing apparatus of claim 1 as being implemented by a computer program. Thus, claim 11 is rejected under the same reasoning as for claim 1.
Claim(s) 8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Steam Input Configurator in view of RetroSpy as evidenced by SNES Input Test and RetroSpy Dreamcast Demo as applied to claims 1-7 and 9-11 above, and further in view of Off-screen Enemy Indicator Algorithm.
Regarding claim 8, Steam Input Configurator (in view of RetroSpy) discloses “the information processing apparatus according to claim 7.”
However, Steam Input Configurator (in view of RetroSpy) does not disclose “in a case where the number of buttons that are set to the special mode and whose input state is continuing exceeds the predetermined number, the screen display section further causes a difference between the number of the buttons and the predetermined number to be displayed.”
That being said, the issue of visual clutter in video games is a well-established problem in the art, and many techniques have arisen to address it. One such technique involves aggregating or “clustering” information such as visual indicators pointing in the direction of off-screen enemies into a single visual indicator with a number indicating the number of enemies in the direction indicated by the enemies, as evidenced by the Off-screen Enemy Indicator Algorithm post on the StackOverflow forum.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the information processing apparatus of Steam Input Configurator (in view of RetroSpy), when faced with the problem of having too much visual information regarding the input state of the buttons on multiple controllers cluttering the screen, to first consolidate the visual information and “free up” more screen area by displaying only pictorial representations of the buttons on each controller that are currently active instead of displaying pictorial representations of entire controllers, and then, if the problem of too much visual clutter persists, to consolidate the information further by displaying only up to a certain number of pictorial representations of active buttons alongside a numeral indicating the number of entities that are not currently being displayed on the screen due to a lack of space (i.e., buttons that are active but have no corresponding pictorial representation on the screen), as taught by Off-screen Enemy Indicator Algorithm, with predictable results.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KENNETH HAROLD JOHANSSON whose telephone number is (571)272-5755. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday from 8:30 to 6:30.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Peter Vasat can be reached at (571)270-7625. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/K.H.J./
Examiner, Art Unit 3715
/PETER S VASAT/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3715
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