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 .
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Response to Amendment
This action is in response to amendment filed 8/28/2026. Claim 1 has been amended. Claims 6 and 7 have been added. No claims have been canceled.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 5/30/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement has been considered by the examiner.
Specification
The new title of the invention is accepted.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
Claim 1, 6 and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Koga (US 20170078486 A1) in view of Nasir et al. (US 2016/0065742 A1), hereinafter “Nasir”.
Koga discloses a call center telephone system in which a private branch exchange (PBX 50) captures a conference trunk (52) and connects an outside line (3, to customer terminal 40), an operator terminal (10), and a supervisor terminal (20) into a multi-party call. The operator initiates addition of the supervisor by pressing a “call supervisor” button on the operator terminal, which transmits a signal to the PBX; the PBX then calls the supervisor terminal and switches its lines onto the captured conference trunk.
(Note that Nasir discloses a conference call system in which a participant, using a graphical interface on a user device (210), selects one or more parties from a stored phone book (520, Fig. 5A) of identification information including telephone numbers, and transmits an add command containing that identification information to a conference call server (220), which identifies the selected device and adds it to the ongoing conference call.)
Koga discloses:
a telephone conference system, Koga, Abstract; FIG. 1. Koga’s call center telephone system joins three parties in a conference via the PBX 50 and conference trunk 52.
a conference circuit configured to allow a plurality of registered telephones registered in advance to make a call to each other, Koga, FIG. 1 and accompanying description of conference trunks 52 “for three-way call connections,” housed in PBX 50 together with outside line housing package 51 and extension terminal housing package 53. Extension terminal housing package 53 houses operator terminal 10 and supervisor terminal 20 via first extension 1 and second extension 2. The conference trunk performs the interconnection function such that each connected terminal receives the audio of the others.
a telephone exchange storing a telephone number of each of the plurality of registered telephones and is configured to connect the plurality of registered telephones to the conference circuit, Koga teaches that PBX 50 includes an internal switch network by which it connects outside line housing package 51 to conference trunk 52 or to extension terminal housing package 53, and likewise connects conference trunk 52 to either package. Koga further teaches the PBX using the line and extension identifications of the respective terminals to disconnect and re-switch specific transmission and reception lines onto the captured conference trunk. The phone number of the operator terminal and supervisor terminal must be stored for the purpose of connecting the terminals to the conference trunk, see abstract, Fig. 2 and [0072]1.
(Note that Nasir teaches stored identification information expressly including telephone numbers, phone book 520 comprising “names, caller identifiers, telephone numbers, etc.” corresponding to user devices 210, populated by information “stored by conference call server 220” among other sources, [0035].)
and a selection device, Koga teaches the use of operator terminal 10 and its call (add) supervisor button which initiates a call to a predetermined destination.
(Note that Nasir, Abstract and FIGS. 5A–5B, discloses a user device providing a graphical interface through which the user communicates with the conference call server to “add a user device to the conference call, drop a user device from the conference call, organize the user devices into conference call groups,” and otherwise control the call. Nasir emphasizes that the user “dynamically control[s] functionality relating to a conference call or multiple conference calls, while the call(s) are ongoing.”[0020])
wherein when a reception telephone connected in advance to the conference circuit receives a call from an external telephone, the telephone exchange is configured to connect the external telephone to the conference circuit, and connect a first registered telephone predetermined from among the plurality of registered telephones to the conference circuit, Koga teaches that when there is an incoming call from a customer to the call center telephone system, one of the available conference trunks may be immediately captured, and the two-way call state between the customer and the operator configured such that the connections are established via conference trunk 52. Operator terminal 10 is the predetermined extension handling the incoming customer call, and Koga teaches that this two-way state is thereafter switchable to a three-way state including the supervisor terminal [0006], [008], [0015].
the selection device is configured to allow a user of the first registered telephone to select a second registered telephone to be connected to the conference circuit from among the plurality of registered telephones and to transmit connection request information to the telephone exchange”, Koga teaches that the user of the first registered telephone initiates the addition: the operator dealing with the customer presses a call supervisor button on operator terminal 10, and the PBX receives that press signal via first extension 1 and transmits a call signal to supervisor terminal 20 via second extension 2 to call the supervisor. Koga thus teaches transmission of connection request information from the first registered telephone to the exchange, causing the exchange to bring an additional registered telephone into the conference [0057].
Koga does not expressly teach that the operator selects which of a plurality of registered telephones is added; in Koga the supervisor terminal is predetermined.
Nasir teaches that a user of user device 210 causes conference call server 220 to add one or more user devices to a conference call “by selecting one or more users in phone book 520 followed by the Add button of command buttons 530,” and user device 210 “add[s] a user device to a conference call by communicating an add command to conference call server 220, which may include one or more types of identification information corresponding to the user devices 210 to be added[0036].” Nasir further teaches an add prompt 510 displayed to the user prompting selection of the parties to be added.
and the telephone exchange is configured to receive the connection request information, refer to stored registration information including the telephone numbers of the plurality of registered telephones, and connect the second registered telephone, which is identified based on the connection request information, selected by the selection device to the conference circuit”, Nasir teaches the server receiving the add command and adding the identified device: “receive an add command to add a user device from one of the at least three user devices to the conference call; add the user device to the conference call in accordance with the add command [0033], claim 7.” Nasir teaches the same receive-identify-act sequence for other commands carrying identification information, confirming that the server resolves the received identifier against its stored information before acting — e.g., identifying the target device “based on the identification information of the filter noise command, [0052, claim 10]” and removing a device “in accordance with the drop command.”
Koga supplies the corresponding exchange-side switching: upon receiving the button press signal from the terminal, the PBX switches the reception line and transmission line of the additional terminal onto the captured conference trunk 52.
Koga and Nasir are both directed to multi-party conference systems in which an additional party is brought into an ongoing call at the request of a participant already on that call. Koga supplies the entire architecture recited in claim 1: a conference circuit (conference trunk 52), a telephone exchange that stores and uses terminal identification to switch lines onto that circuit (PBX 50 and its switch network), an external telephone (customer terminal 40), a reception path for the incoming call, and a first registered telephone (operator terminal 10) whose user presses a button causing the exchange to add a further registered telephone. Koga’s sole difference relative to claim 1 is that the identity of the added party is fixed rather than user selected.
Nasir teaches that precise refinement: the participant selects the party to be added from stored identification information including telephone numbers, transmits an add command identifying that selection, and the server uses the received information to identify and connect the selected device. Nasir articulates the motivation — flexible, dynamic control of conference membership by the participant while the call is ongoing.
It would therefore have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to modify Koga such that the user of operator terminal 10 selects the destination terminal from among the plurality of registered extension terminals and transmits corresponding connection request information to PBX 50, and such that PBX 50 refers to its stored registration information including the telephone numbers of those terminals to identify and connect the selected second registered telephone to conference trunk 52. The modification substitutes a user-selected destination for Koga’s fixed destination using the selection-and-add mechanism expressly taught by Nasir, and yields only the predictable result of permitting the operator to escalate the call to whichever appropriate party is available. KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007) (“The combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results.”).
Claim 6 recites “wherein the telephone exchange stores the registration information in a registration table.”
Koga teaches that the exchange stores terminal information used for routing, and Nasir teaches a stored phone book of identification information including telephone numbers (¶ [0022]. Storing such information in tabular form is a conventional and obvious implementation choice for stored directory data. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to store the registration information of Koga/Nasir in a registration table, as tabular storage of telephone numbers and associated identifiers is a routine data-structure selection that yields predictable results and facilitates lookup.
Claim 7 recites “wherein the connection request information includes information indicating a medical institution.”
Nasir teaches that the add command includes “one or more types of identification information corresponding to the user devices 210 to be added” (¶ [0079]). Koga’s identification information corresponds to organizational entities (operator, supervisor).
Neither reference expressly recites a medical institution as the identifier.
However, this limitation merely specifies the content of a data field — the identity of the organization to which the selected telephone belongs — and does not alter the structure or operation of the claimed system. Selecting a particular label or organizational category for stored identification information is a matter of intended use and non-functional descriptive matter. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to populate the identification information of Koga/Nasir with the name of a medical institution when the system is deployed in a medical setting, without any change to the underlying selection, transmission, or connection operations.
Claims 2 – 4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Koga in view of Nasir as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Garcia US 9014358 B2.
For claim 2, the Koga/Nasir combination does not teach storing the “utterance content” and converting it to text for display. Garcia teaches (PP 14) in a linked transcript, portions of the text are mapped to the corresponding recorded audio, such that a user can read the text of the transcript or listen to the corresponding audio recording from which the text was created. In PP 41, data 227 can include an audio recording of the entire conference. Data 227 can also include various types of transcripts. For example, types of transcripts can include partial, complete, audio, text, linked, or any combination thereof. See for example, display 204 for displaying the text , in Fig. 2
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the current invention to record and convert the conversation to text, as taught by Garcia, to present it to the added person so that the newly added person can more easily and quickly contribute to the conversation -in Koga/Nasir.
For claim 3, in the combination, the user joining the conversation (conference) such as the second reregistered telephone who joins the conference will be presented with text on the display unit.
For claim 4, the use of Machine Learning to generate the text from the audio is well-known in the art and provides obvious advantages.
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Koga in view of Nasir, as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Lipp (US-20210021787-A1).
Claim 5 basically recites the “intended use” of the system. That is to use the Koga/Nasir system in medical institutions with doctors and medical specialist.
On one hand, one of ordinary skill in the art may obviously use the Koga conferencing system in many different environments such as branches of company, departments within a university, offices within a government agency and medical institutions belonging to a hospital.
On the other hand, Lipp teaches that a nurse may go to an external location such as patient residence and may call (using an “external telephone”) the family doctor (“first registered telephone”) who many need to further consult with a medical specialist (“second registered telephone”). The
Specialist may be: surgeon, urologist, neurologist, psychiatrist, gynecologist, ENT, dermatologist, physiologist, orthopedist, psychologist, and/or cardiologist, see PP 0035. The patient measurement data can therefore be made available to the family doctor and specialist doctor, as necessary, during the video conference, see PP 0012.
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the filing date of the current application to utilize the conferencing system of Koga/Nasir in a medical environment such as the one disclosed by Lipp so that the services provided by Koga/Nasir to ACD customers may be provided to patients as well.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 8/28/2026 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to AHMAD F. MATAR whose telephone number is (571)272-7488. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9 - 5:30.
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/AHMAD F. MATAR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2693
