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 . This action is made non-final.
Claims 1-7 and 9-21 are pending in the case. Claims 1, 9, and 10 are independent claims. Claim 8 has been canceled.
Priority
Acknowledgement is made of Applicant’s claim of foreign priority of Chinese application CN202111172202.0 filed 10/08/2021. The instant application is a 371 of PCT/CN2022/123394 filed 09/30/2022.
Specification
The title of the invention is not descriptive. A new title is required that is clearly indicative of the invention to which the claims are directed.
Claim Objections
Claim 11 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 11 recites “the sub-control panel” but should recite “a sub-control panel”.
Appropriate correction is required.
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.
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 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Claim 10 does not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the claim is directed to signals per se. The claim recites “[a] storage medium” in line 1 of the claim. With no explicit definition nor clear disavowal in the Specification, the claimed “storage medium” encompasses transitory forms of signal transmission. Such a transitory signal does not possess concrete structure that would qualify as a device or part under the definition of a machine, is not a tangible article or commodity under the definition of a manufacture (even though it is man-made and physical in that it exists in the real world and has tangible causes and effects), and is not composed of matter such that it would qualify as a composition of matter. Nuijten, 500 F.3d at 1356-1357, 84 USPQ2d at 1501-03. As such, a transitory, propagating signal does not fall within any statutory category. Mentor Graphics Corp. v. EVE-USA, Inc., 851 F.3d 1275, 1294, 112 USPQ2d 1120, 1133 (Fed. Cir. 2017); Nuijten, 500 F.3d at 1356-1357, 84 USPQ2d at 1501-03.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-3, 6, 7, and 9-21 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Jin et al. (US 2015/0309689 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Jin teaches a method for information processing, comprising:
in response to a first predetermined operation on a first control of a first document, displaying a control panel corresponding to the first control, the control panel comprising at least one second control (FIG. 28 and [0231-0233]: first predetermined operation occurs at FIG. 28(a), on a first control, such as left edge, of a first document. In response to this operation, a control panel/application tray, comprising at least one second control, is displayed; For additional context for the control panel, see FIGS. 8 and 9 and [0150-0160]);
in response to a second predetermined operation on the control panel, determining whether a distance between the first control or the control panel and a page edge of the first document is greater than a predetermined threshold (FIG. 28 and [0231-0233]: second predetermined operation occurs at FIG. 28(b). In response to the dragging, it is determined whether a distance between the control panel and a page edge/right edge of the first document is greater than a predetermined threshold. For example, a predetermined threshold may correspond to zero, which would indicate the control panel has reached a page edge of the first document); and
if the distance is greater than or equal to the predetermined threshold, expanding a display area of the control panel and displaying a third control in the expanded display area (FIG. 28 and [0231-0233]: as seen in the case of FIG. 28(b), the distance between the control panel and the page edge is greater than zero, thus a display area of the control panel is expanded to the state seen in FIG. 28(c). A third control, such as an icon not previously displayed, is displayed in the expanded display area).
Regarding claim 2, Jin further teaches the method for information processing of claim 1, wherein the page edge corresponds to an extending direction of the control panel (FIG. 28 and [0231-0233]: the page edge/right edge corresponds to an extending direction of the control panel).
Regarding claim 3, Jin further teaches the method for information processing of claim 1, wherein if the distance is greater than or equal to the predetermined threshold value, a control in the control panel slides with the second predetermined operation while expanding the display area of the control panel and displaying the third control in the expanded display area (FIG. 28 and [0231-0233]: for example, see how the lightbulb icon is slid with the second predetermined operation from (b) to (c) of FIG. 28 while the display area of the control panel is expanded. A third control, such as an icon not previously displayed, is displayed in the expanded display area).
Regarding claim 6, Jin further teaches the method for information processing of claim 1, wherein the control panel comprises a plurality of control areas, and controls in the control panel are located in corresponding areas according to their respective properties (FIGS. 28-29 and [0231-0237]: as seen in FIG. 29, the control panel comprises a plurality of control areas as marked by boundaries. The controls are located in corresponding areas according to their respective properties, such as social media for the top controls or photography for the bottom controls).
Regarding claim 7, Jin further teaches the method for information processing of claim 1, further comprising: in response to a third predetermined operation on the control panel, causing a control in the control panel to slide with the third predetermined operation without hiding the expanded display area of the control panel (FIG. 29 and [0234-0236]: a third predetermined operation of scrolling occurs on the control panel. In response, a control slides with the third predetermined operation without hiding the expanded display area of the control panel).
Regarding claim 11, Jin further teaches the method for information processing of claim 1, wherein a fourth control comprises a plurality of sub-controls and the method further comprises:
in response to a fourth predetermined operation on the fourth control, displaying a plurality of sub-controls in the sub-control panel (FIGS. 28-29 and [0231-0237]: as seen in FIG. 29, the control panel comprises a plurality of control areas as marked by boundaries. For example, a fourth predetermined operation is an input in FIG. 29(a) delineating a sub-control panel for a plurality of sub-controls in the top region marked by boundary 70).
Regarding claim 12, Jin further teaches the method for information processing of claim 1, wherein the page edge indicates an edge of a document page corresponding to the extending direction of the control panel (FIG. 28 and [0231-0233]: the page edge/right edge indicates an edge of a document page which corresponds to an extending direction of the control panel).
Regarding claim 13, Jin further teaches the method of claim 7, the third predetermined operation is an opposite operation to the second predetermined operation.
Regarding claims 9 and 14-21, the claims recite a terminal, comprising: at least one memory and at least one processor; wherein the at least one memory is used to store program code, and the at least one processor is used to call the program code stored in the at least one memory (controller 1500 and memory 1400 of FIG. 75 and [0473-0493]) to perform acts comprising operations corresponding to the method of claims 1-7, 11, and 12, respectively, and are therefore rejected on the same premises.
Regarding claim 10, the claim recites a storage medium, wherein the storage medium is used to store program code and the program code is used ([0515-0516]) to perform acts comprising operations corresponding to the method of claim 1 and is therefore rejected on the same premise.
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 4 and 5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jin et al. (US 2015/0309689 A1), in view of Ellis et al. (US 2021/0365174 A1).
Regarding claim 4, Jin further teaches the method information processing of claim 1.
Jin does not explicitly teach wherein if the distance is less than the predetermined threshold, the display area of the control panel remains unchanged and a control in the control panel slides with the second predetermined operation.
Ellis teaches wherein if the distance is less than the predetermined threshold, the display area of the control panel remains unchanged and a control in the control panel slides with the second predetermined operation (FIGS. 8BP-BS and [0325-0329], FIG. 8M: for example, the distance is less than a predetermined threshold when the dialog affordance 873/control panel has reached its maximum display size and cannot expand further, as seen in either FIG. 8BS or FIG. 8M. For example, see the distance between the top of dialog affordance 873 and the top edge of the UI displayed on device 800. This distance is less than a predetermined threshold, meaning dialog affordance 873 cannot further expand. As such, the second predetermined operation of sliding in the direction of the expansion of the control panel results in a control/UI element in the control panel sliding with the second predetermined operation, as supported by scroll indicator 876).
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 Jin by incorporating the teachings of Ellis so as to include wherein if the distance is less than the predetermined threshold, the display area of the control panel remains unchanged and a control in the control panel slides with the second predetermined operation. Doing so would allow the user to access a greater amount of controls in the control panel despite the restricted expansion of the display area of the control panel. The user may more intuitively perform the second predetermined operation, which is the same operation as expanding the display area of the control panel, to access additional controls. Thus, the user may associate the second predetermined operation with accessing additional controls regardless of whether the control area has fully expanded or not, streamlining the user experience.
Regarding claim 5, Jin teaches the method for information processing of claim 1.
Jin does not explicitly teach wherein while a control in the control panel slides with the second predetermined operation, a scroll bar is displayed at a predetermined position of the control panel.
Ellis teaches wherein while a control in the control panel slides with the second predetermined operation, a scroll bar is displayed at a predetermined position of the control panel (FIGS. 8BP-BS and [0325-0329], FIG. 8M: while a control/UI element in the control panel/dialog affordance 873 slides with the second predetermined operation of a scrolling operation, a scroll bar/scroll indicator 876 is displayed at a predetermined position of the control panel).
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 Jin by incorporating the teachings of Ellis so as to include wherein while a control in the control panel slides with the second predetermined operation, a scroll bar is displayed at a predetermined position of the control panel. Doing so would allow the user greater context about where the user is situated within the control panel so that the user can more predictably and precisely navigate the control panel. In this way, the user can reference the scroll bar to more easily move and/or return to a relevant portion of the control panel, improving efficacy and convenience to the user.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure, including:
US 2018/0164963 A1: extended panel region with controls
US 20150378592 A1: scrollable display region with selectable UI elements
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KENNY NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)272-4980. The examiner can normally be reached M-Th 7AM to 5PM.
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/KENNY NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2171