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 .
Response to Amendment
Applicants’ amendment filed on 5/8/26 has been entered. No claims have been amended. No claims have been canceled. No new claims have been added. Claims 1-20 are still pending in this application, with claims 1, 9, 15 being independent.
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 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.
Claims 1-2, 9 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) as being anticipated by U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20220406318 to Tyagi et al. (“Tyagi”).
As to claim 1, 9 and 15, Tyagi discloses a method, a non-transitory computer-readable medium, and a system, the method comprising: joining a first client device to a video conference, a plurality of client devices connected to the video conference [paragraph 0045: “video conference room systems 116, 118”]; receiving, from the first client device, a modified first audio stream comprising information about the modification to the first audio stream [Fig. 2, paragraphs 0046-47, 0100: IVAS bitstreams are received; table index and metadata quantization level information (i.e. information about the modification), as well as the EVS bitstreams (i.e. the modified first audio stream),also see paragraph 0045 and Fig. 1]; generating a second audio stream using the modified first audio stream and the information about the modification to the first audio stream [paragraph 0100: the IVAS decoder reconstructs the downmix signal using the EVS bitstreams and the information about the modification]; and outputting the second audio stream [paragraph 0049: output for playback].
As to claim 2, Tyagi discloses wherein the second audio stream is generated to approximate an unmodified first audio stream [paragraph 0100].
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 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 of this title, 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 3-4, 10, 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. No. 20220406318 to Tyagi et al. (“Tyagi”) in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20240105198 to Yang et al. (“Yang”).
As to claim 3, Tyagi discloses the method of claim 1 [see rejection of claim 1].
Tyagi does not expressly wherein the second audio stream is output to an automatic speech recognition service.
In the same or similar field of invention, Yang discloses wherein the second audio stream is output to an automatic speech recognition service [paragraphs 0048, 0118-0120, 123-127].
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify Tyagi to have the second audio stream is output to an automatic speech recognition service as taught by Yang. The suggestion/motivation would have been to improve the accuracy, intelligence, quality of the conference along with the user experience of the conference [Yang paragraph 0026].
As to claims 4, 10 and 16, Yang discloses wherein the modification to the first audio stream includes noise suppression [paragraphs 0090, 0097-100]. In addition, the same motivation is used as the rejection of claim 3.
Claims 6, 12 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. No. 20220406318 to Tyagi et al. (“Tyagi”) in view of U.S. Patent No. 11563855 to Spivak et al. (“Spivak”).
As to claims 6, 12 and 18, Tyagi discloses the method of claim 1, the non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8 and the system of claim 15 [see rejection of claims 1, 8 and 15].
Tyagi does not expressly outputting an indication to disable modification of audio streams; and receiving, from the first client device, an unmodified third audio stream.
In the same or similar field of invention, Spivak discloses outputting an indication to disable modification of audio streams; and receiving, from the first client device, an unmodified third audio stream [Spivak Fig. 5: 510, column 12 lines 31-44]. When user activate the button 510, modified stream with spatial sound will be streamed. Further, when user deactivate the spatialization button 510, unmodified audio stream will be streamed.
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify Tyagi to have feature of outputting an indication to disable modification of audio streams; and receiving, from the first client device, an unmodified third audio stream as taught by Spivak. The suggestion/motivation would have been to customize audio mixing for users in virtual conference calls [Spivak column 1 lines 7-8].
Claims 7, 13 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. No. 20250316279 to Tyagi et al. (“Tyagi”) in view of U.S. Patent No. 20250316279 to Wang et al. (“Wang”).
As to claims 7, 13 and 19, Tyagi discloses the method of claim 1, the non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 8 and the system of claim 15 [see rejection of claims 1, 8 and 15]. Tyagi further discloses the IVAS bitstream. There are headers and audio frames [Fig. 5A, paragraphs 0107]. It would have been extremely obvious to include the information about the modification as extension data.
However, in the same or similar field of invention, Wang discloses the information about the modification to the first audio stream comprises extension data, including a representation of the modification to the first audio stream; and the modified first audio stream comprises one or more packets, each packet comprising: a header; an audio frame; and the extension data [Wang Figs. 6A-6C, paragraphs 0074-0084].
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify Tyagi to have feature of outputting an indication to disable modification of audio streams; and receiving, from the first client device, an unmodified third audio stream as taught by Wang. The suggestion/motivation would have been to provide bandwidth extension data to improve the quality of the audio frame and also improving the audio playing effect [Wang paragraph 0036].
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5, 8, 11, 14, 17 and 20 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.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed on 5/8/26 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
On page 6-7 of applicant’s remark, the applicant argues the following:
“Tyagi does not disclose at least "receiving, from the first client device, a modified first audio stream comprising information about the modification to the first audio stream" or "generating a second audio stream using the modified first audio stream and the information about the modification to the first audio stream," as recited in claim 1.”
“As Tyagi, [0047] makes clear, the "metadata quantization" is one of "several levels of increasingly coarse quantization" applied to spatial metadata coefficients extracted from the downmixed input audio signal during spatial analysis. That is, if the "metadata quantization" modifies anything, it is only modifying metadata about an audio stream, not the audio stream itself.”
“As discussed above, the "the metadata quantization level information are included in overhead bits of an IVAS bitstream" are not "information about[] modifications to [an] audio stream," as recited in claim 1. The "metadata quantization level information" is instead information that allows "the IVAS decoder [to] read[] the table index and metadata quantization level from the overhead bits in the IVAS bitstream and decode[] the spatial MD," and thus carries no information about any modification made to the audio stream itself. See Tyagi, [0100].”
“Likewise, the "table index ... included in overhead bits of an IVAS bitstream" is not "information about [] modifications to [an] audio stream" as recited in claim 1. It is instead an index by which "the EVS bits are divided among input audio signal channels as per the ratio indicated by the table index," used to allocate bits to "[reconstruct] the downmix audio channels." See Tyagi, [0073] and [0100].”
Examiner respectfully disagrees with Applicant's arguments for the following reasons: Claim 1 requires “receiving, from the first client device, a modified first audio stream comprising information about the modification to the first audio stream”. Tyagi discloses an immersive voice and audio services (IVAS) system [Fig. 1]. In one of the IVAS codec use case example, various devices communicate through call server 102 that is configured to receive audio signals from, for example, a public switched telephone network (PSTN) or a public land mobile network device (PLMN) illustrated by PSTN/OTHER PLMN 104. Use cases 100 also support stereo capture and immersive rendering of stereo audio signals for home theatre systems 120, and computer 112 for mono capture and immersive rendering of audio signals for virtual reality (VR) gear 122 and immersive content ingest 124 [Fig. 1, paragraph 0045]. Thus call server can receive an audio stream in mono from computer 112, modified that audio stream and then render the modified audio stream to VR gear 122 in immersive render Or vice versa. Thus, Tyagi clearly teaches modifying audio stream. Tyagi discloses spatial metadata is input into quantization. Based on quantization EVS encoding unit encodes the channels of audio into one or more EVS bitstreams [paragraph 0047]. As per Tyagi, IVAS bitstreams are received (paragraph 0046). These IVAS bitstreams comprise the table index and metadata quantization level information (e.g. information about the modification, as well as the modified audio streams) [paragraph 0100]. It is well known in the art that term quantizing audio stream (or dynamically adjusting spatial metadata) is considered a modification of the original audio stream. Thus, Tyagi clearly discloses “receiving, from the first client device, a modified first audio stream comprising information about the modification to the first audio stream”. Further, IVAS decoder reconstructs the downmix signal using the EVS bitstreams and the information about the modification [paragraph 0100, same as “generating a second audio stream using the modified first audio stream and the information about the modification to the first audio stream “]. Thus, Tyagi discloses all the limitations of claim(s) 1 (claims 9 and 15), including "receiving, from the first client device, a modified first audio stream comprising information about the modification to the first audio stream" or "generating a second audio stream using the modified first audio stream and the information about the modification to the first audio stream".
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 ANTIM G SHAH whose telephone number is (571)270-5214. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 7:30am-4pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ahmad Matar can be reached at 571-272-7488. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ANTIM G SHAH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2693
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