DETAILED ACTION
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 2-10 and 12-20 is/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.
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.
Claim 1 and 11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over NakaMats US PG-Pub 2021/0124389 in view of Saarinen US PG-Pub 2001/0011993.
Regarding claim 1 and 11, NakaMats teaches a first display device having at least one first sound reception units; a second display device connected to a side of the first display device and having at least one second sound reception units (Fig. 1 & Fig. 3: the first display device-2 has a microphone-12 at the rear and the second display device-20 has a microphone-120 at the rear, with both display devices being connected side by side); and a sound reception processor electrically connected to the at least one first sound reception units and the at least one second sound reception units; and generating a stereo signal according to the first directional sound signal and the second directional sound signal (Fig. 3 & Claim 9: the smartphone which has audio processor will pickup audio signal from the first display mic-12 and from second display mic-120 to create a stereo sound).
NakaMats failed to teach at least two first sound reception units, at least two second sound reception units; the sound reception processor turning on at least one of the at least two first sound reception units to receive sound in a first normal direction of the first display device to generate a first directional sound signal, turning on at least one of the at least two second sound reception units to receive sound in a second normal direction of the second display device to generate a second directional sound signal.
However, Saarinen teaches at least two first sound reception units for a display device (Fig. 12 & Claim 25 & Claim 27: a display device having two directional microphones-220/222) the sound reception processor turning on at least one of the at least two first sound reception units to receive sound in a first normal direction of the first display device to generate a first directional sound signal (Fig. 12 & Claim 25 & Claim 27: only selecting one of two directional microphones-220/222 based on a mode).
NakaMats and Saarinen are analogous art because they are both in the same field of endeavor, namely microphone devices. Therefore, 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, because having multiple microphones on each display and selecting only one of the microphone is an inventor choice which can be made based on different operation mode selection as Saarinen teaches in Claim 27.
Conclusion
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/WILLIAM A JEREZ LORA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2695