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
Priority is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Response to Amendment
The response filed on 6/2/2026 has been entered and made of record. Claims 1, 5, 9, 12, 15, and 21 are amended. Claims 1, 3-5, 7-21, and 24 are pending.
The previous rejections of claims 1, 12, 13, 21, 24 under 35 USC 103 under Casillas et al in view of Ma, and claim 16 under 35 USC 103 under Casillas et al in view of Ma and Spotify have been maintained, but were updated as necessitated by the amendment.
Specification
The lengthy specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
Drawings
The drawings filed 5/20/2024 are accepted.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-5, 7-11, 14-15 and 17-20 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. In particular the concept of multiple combinations of playlist name, cover, and description was not taught by the cited art, nor could examiner make an additional rejection further in view of art that just provided a user with multiple selectable options, because the second set of objects (cover, name, description) made the combination non-obvious.
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, 12, 13, 21, 24 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Casillas et al (US20190272286A1; filed 5/21/2019; hereinafter referred to as Casillas) in view of Ma (CN107193878B; published 9/22/2017).
With regards to claim 1, Casillas discloses A system comprising: an electronic device (Casillas, Fig. 1: user device 105) configured to:
detect a first operation of creating a first playlist of a user… (Casillas, abstract: “generating a playlist… a method includes initiating an online mode of the music service, where the device is connected to a music service server, and storing, in a cache memory of the device, at least one media object accessed by the user using the music service… automatically adding the at least one media object to a playlist stored in the cache memory;” The initiation of the online mode which results in the generation of the playlist is interpreted as the first operation of the user);
send, in response to detecting the first …, first request information (Casillas, paragraph 20: “the music service server 115 can receive music data requests from the device 105 and can transmit or stream music data to the device 105 according to the requests…;
receive the first name and the first description; and display the first name and the first description (Casillas, paragraph 45: “the select playlist option 513 includes a graphical depiction representing the automatically-generated playlist and the title of the playlist”); and
a server coupled to the electronic device and configured to (Casillas, Fig. 2: Music server 206):
receive the first request information (Casillas, Fig. 2: Music Server 206 connected to device 204 in online mode 210; see rejection above regarding the request);
obtain, in response to the first request information, first playlist information of the first playlist (Casillas, paragraph 20: “the music service server 115 can receive music data requests from the device 105 and can transmit or stream music data to the device 105 according to the requests;” paragraph 19: “the music service server 115 and components thereof can provide music data or objects to the device 105;” ), …
obtain… the first name and the first description; and send, to the electronic device, the first name and the first description (Casillas, paragraph 19: “the music service server 115 can stream songs, tracks, playlist files including songs, and/or other music objects to the device 105 for access and consumption by the user 106;” the playlist files streamed to the user device are interpreted as including name and description information, because data such as the title, number of songs, and artwork are shown in Fig. 7: interface 600).
However Casillas does not disclose receive a selection of a first song by the user for addition to the first playlist; send, in response to detecting the first operation and receiving the selection of the first song, first request information to request a first name of the first playlist and a first description of the first playlist … wherein the first playlist information comprises first lyric information of the first song or first audio information of the first song; obtain, based on the first playlist information, the first name.
Ma teaches receive a selection of a first song by the user for addition to the first playlist (Ma, abstract: “The method includes: acquiring the song selected by the user when creating a new song list”); send, in response to detecting the first operation and receiving the selection of the first song, first request information to request a first name of the first playlist and a first description of the first playlist (Ma, abstract: “The method includes: acquiring the song selected by the user when creating a new song list; acquiring the label of each song; tag, and generate the name of the playlist according to preset rules”)… wherein the first playlist information comprises first lyric information of the first song or first audio information of the first song (Ma, abstract: “The embodiment of the present invention obtains the labels of the songs in the playlist”);
obtain, based on the first playlist information, the first name (Ma, abstract: “automatically generates the name of the playlist according to the preset rules”). Note: the “sending” taught by Ma is not the sending from a server to a client device or vice versa.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Casillas and Ma such that the name of the playlist is generated based on the song information of the song(s) within the playlist. This would have enabled the invention to name the playlist to reflect the characteristics of the songs of the playlists (Ma, abstract: “avoids the manual input of the name of the playlist by the mobile terminal user, and can also reflect the characteristics of at least a part of the songs in the playlist. It is convenient for mobile terminal users to preliminarily determine whether they want to listen to the songs in the playlist through the name of the playlist, which improves the user experience”).
Claim 12 recites substantially similar limitations to claim 1 and is thus rejected along the same rationale.
With regards to claim 13, which depends on claim 12, Casillas discloses obtaining, from the server, a cover of the first playlist, wherein the cover is based on the first playlist information; and displaying the cover (Casillas, Fig. 7: Cover artwork is displayed next to the playlist name, and is based on the songs in the playlist (the first song has an album cover matching the displayed playlist artwork)).
Claim 21 recites substantially similar limitations to claim 1 and is thus rejected along the same rationale.
Claim 24 recites substantially similar limitations to claim 13 and is thus rejected along the same rationale.
Claim(s) 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Casillas et al in view of Ma, and further in view of Spotify (“How to Upload a Custom Playlist Image Using Your Phone.” Spotify, 8 Dec. 2020, newsroom.spotify.com/2020-12-08/how-to-upload-a-custom-playlist-image-using-your-phone/.).
With regards to claim 16, which depends on claim 12, Casillas and Ma do not disclose wherein the first playlist information further comprises a cover from the user and that is of the first playlist.
However, Spotify teaches wherein the first playlist information further comprises a cover from the user and that is of the first playlist (Spotify, paragraph 2: “Spotify users everywhere will be able to upload custom covers and descriptions to their homemade playlists—using their phones”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Casillas, Ma, and Spotify such that the user can upload their own playlist covers. This would have enabled a user to customize the playlist more (Spotify, paragraph 1: “Nothing says “I’m thinking of you” like a custom playlist. (It’s basically the new mixtape.) And after putting care, thought, and creativity into the tracks and podcasts on your homemade playlist, you may want to take an extra step to make it your own, perhaps with custom cover art, a name, and a description.”).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 6/2/2026 regarding the 35 USC 103 rejections to the independent claims (and claims dependent on them) have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Applicant argues that the combination of Casillas et al and Ma do not teach the selection of a song and receiving the playlist name in response to the sending of the selection to the server. Examiner disagrees and has amended the rejection of claim 1 above to include rejections to the amended limitations. In particular, Casillas et al discloses the communication with a server, while Ma teaches the selection, sending of songs, and receiving of playlist titles/information. In combination they teach the claims as a whole, even if neither teaches the individual limitations by themselves. Thus the argument is not persuasive.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 BRODERICK C ANDERSON whose telephone number is (313)446-6566. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Tuesday, Thursday-Saturday 9-5 PST.
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/B.C.A/Examiner, Art Unit 2178
/STEPHEN S HONG/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2178
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