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
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.
Claims 1, 11, 17 and are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over (加田 健志, JP 6114848) in view of Genova (US PG pub 2012/0176366).
加田 健志 shows all of the limitations of the claims except for specifying the use of non-player characters (NPCs) in a virtual environment.
加田 健志 shows,
In regards to claims 1, 17 and 20,
determining a query distance range based on current position information of a character controlled by a user in a virtual scene; (figure 7, user 1, virtual reality space 510, field of view 520)
determining data for a plurality of users from a database based on users to be placed in the query distance range, (storage unit 320 is considered a database with user state attributes.)
wherein the data includes a plurality of attributes (distance and bearing to user 1) respectively corresponding to each of the plurality of the users;
determining, by processing circuitry, weights (distance and bearing to user 1) for each of the plurality of users;
generating a first number of users based on a descending order of the weights for each of the plurality of users (distance and bearing to user 1. See the 7 users in field of view based on descending order of distance.),
wherein the first number of users is a subset (2-8) of the plurality of users (2-18); and
transmitting the generated first number of users to a client controlling the player-controlled character, to cause the client to display, in the query distance range, virtual images corresponding to the first number of users. (Figure 1 shows the hardware and transmitting paths to display the field of view in figure 7.)
In regards to claim 11,
wherein the determining the query distance range based on the current position information comprises one of:
determining the query distance range based on a field of view of a first-person perspective or a third-person perspective based on the current position information; (figure 7) or
determining the query distance range based on a geometric area of a predetermined size centered on the current position information.
Genova et al. teaches, figure 1c, rendering NPCs in a virtual environment in a field of view (see paragraph [0071]).
Based on the teaching of Genova, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the 加田 健志 invention to incorporate NPCs in addition or replacement of the users in order to expand the use of virtual characters in the scene.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-10, 12-16 and 18-19 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
In regards to 35 USC 101, a streamline analysis shows that the claimed virtual environment is patent eligible.
In regards to art, many of the dependent claims provide detailed limitations which are not shown or taught by the cited prior art.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MICHAEL A CUFF whose telephone number is (571)272-6778. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 9-5.
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/MICHAEL A CUFF/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3715
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