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 .
Claim Interpretation
During patent examination, pending claims must be “given their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification.” MPEP 2111; See also, MPEP 2173.02. Limitations appearing in the specification but not recited in the claim are not read into the claim. In re Prater, 415 F.2d 1393, 1404-05, 162 USPQ 541, 550-551 (CCPA 1969). See also, In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321-22, 13 USPQ2d 1320, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 1989) (“During patent examination the pending claims must be interpreted as broadly as their terms reasonably allow”). The reason is simply that during patent prosecution when claims can be amended, ambiguities should be recognized, scope and breadth of language explored, and clarification imposed. An essential purpose of patent examination is to fashion claims that are precise, clear, correct, and unambiguous. Only in this way can uncertainties of claim scope be removed, as much as possible, during the administrative process.
The Examiner respectfully requests of the Applicant in preparing responses, to consider fully the entirety of the reference(s) as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention. It is noted, REFERENCES ARE RELEVANT AS PRIOR ART FOR ALL THEY CONTAIN.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
Claim(s) 1-5, 7, 20, and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by 11,574,027 B1 to Friedland et al. (hereinafter Friedland).
With regard to claim 1, Friedland discloses:
Currently Amended) A method of information displaying, comprising:
in response to a first predetermined condition being satisfied, obtaining, for a first entity associated with a first session to which a first user belongs, predetermined information of a second session associated with the first entity (see, detailed description, including, receiving posted content from a friend based on predetermined social network associations, see Fig. 4G, receiving content item 462 from a first user; col. 13, line 40; Users may join the social networking system 630 and then add connections to any number of other users of the social networking system 630 to whom they desire to be connected. Col. 6, line 62. The obfuscation module 300 can allow users to visually obfuscate some, or all, portions of content items to be posted through the social networking system. Col. 10, line 54, As shown in Fig. 4G, the input 454 can have a region 456 through which a user operating the computing device 452 can post one or more content items to the social networking system);
displaying information of the first session in an interface of the first user, and displaying, in association, the predetermined information of the second session in the interface of the first user (see, as above, and As shown in Fig. 4G, the input 454 can have a region 456 through which a user operating the computing device 452 can post one or more content items to the social networking system).
With regard to claim 2, Friedland discloses:
2. (Original) The method of claim 1, wherein the second session excludes the first session; or the second session comprises the first session and other sessions (see, detailed description, including, for example, The obfuscation module 300 can allow users to visually obfuscate some, or all, portions of content items to be posted through the social networking system. Col. 10, line 54, As shown in Fig. 4G, the input 454 can have a region 456 through which a user operating the computing device 452 can post one or more content items to the social networking system);
With regard to claim 3, Friedland discloses:
3. (Original) The method of claim 2, wherein the predetermined information of the second session comprises one or more of:
unread message-related information in the second session;
task-related information in the second session;
online document and/or offline file-related information in the second session (see, Fig. 6, and detailed description, including, n edge in the social graph is generated connecting a node representing the first user and a second node representing the second user. As various nodes relate or interact with each other, the social networking system 630 modifies edges connecting the various nodes to reflect the relationships and interactions, col. 14, lines 54-60); and
schedule-related information in the second session.
With regard to claim 4, Friedland discloses:
4. (Original) The method of claim 1, wherein the second session comprises a session with a specific attribute associated with the first entity (see. As above claim 3, and Fig. 6, and detailed description, including, an edge in the social graph is generated connecting a node representing the first user and a second node representing the second user. As various nodes relate or interact with each other, the social networking system 630 modifies edges connecting the various nodes to reflect the relationships and interactions, col. 14, lines 54-60).
With regard to claim 5, Friedland discloses:
5. (Currently Amended) The method of claim 4, wherein the predetermined
information of the second session comprises unread message-related information in the second session, and the session with the specific attribute comprises: a session in which message notification is not turned off (e.g., in response to a selection to reveal a blurred image, switching the blurred image (i.e., predetermined second display state) col. 6, line 66; The obfuscation module 110 can provide options for visually obscuring (or concealing) content in posts (e.g., text images, video). For example, the obfuscation module 110 can provide an option that allows a user to visually obscure some, or all, portions of a given content before the content item is posted and made accessible through the social networking system.)
With regard to claim 7, Friedland discloses:
7. (Original) The method of claim 1, wherein the displayed information of the first session further comprises: a first identifier indicating a subordinative relationship between the first session and the first entity (see, Fig. 6, and detailed description, including, an edge in the social graph is generated connecting a node representing the first user and a second node representing the second user. As various nodes relate or interact with each other, the social networking system 630 modifies edges connecting the various nodes to reflect the relationships and interactions, and also may be interpreted to shoe or demonstrate a subordinate relationship, especially when the new node or edge offers a further definition presenting a subset of the previous node col. 14, lines 54-60).
20. With regard to claim 20, claim 20 (a device claim) recites substantially similar limitations to claim 1 (a method claim) and is therefore rejected using the same art and rationale set forth above.
21. With regard to claim 21, claim 21 (a computer readable storage medium claim) recites substantially similar limitations to claim 1 (a method claim) and is therefore rejected using the same art and rationale set forth above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6, 8-18 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.
For convenience they are reproduced below:
6. (Currently Amended) The method of claim 1, wherein when-the predetermined information of the second session comprises unread message-related information in the second session, and the unread message-related information of the second session comprises one or more of: information indicating the total number of all unread messages in the second session; "mention me" identification information and/or "mention all" identification information.
8. (Original) The method of claim 7, wherein the information of the first session comprises: an avatar of the first session, a name of the first session, and a name of the first entity; the first identifier is used to characterize an association relationship between the avatar of the first session and the name of the first entity.
9. (Original) The method of claim 1, wherein the displaying the information of the first session in the interface of the first user comprises: displaying the information of the first session in a session information display region in a session streaming region of an instant messaging client interface for the first user; wherein name information of the first entity and the predetermined information of the second session are displayed in a first sub-region of the session information display region.
10. (Currently Amended) The method of claim 9, wherein the session streaming region of the instant messaging client interface has a plurality of session filtering tags, and the displaying the information of the first session in the interface of the first user comprises:
in response to that a session filtering tag corresponding to a first filtering condition is selected, displaying, in the instant messaging client interface of the first user, the information of the first session in a session information display region in a session streaming region;
wherein each session filtering tag corresponds to a predetermined filtering condition, and the first session satisfies the first filtering condition.
11. (Currently Amended) The method of claim 9, further comprising:
displaying name information of the first session in a second sub-region of the session display region;
wherein the first sub-region and the second sub-region are located on different lines; or, the first sub-region and the second sub-region jointly occupy a specified number of lines and are separated by a special symbol.
12. (Original) The method of claim 1, wherein the first predetermined condition comprises: that the first session to which the first user belongs satisfies a first specified condition; or that the second session satisfies a second specified condition.
13. (Original) The method of claim 12, wherein the first specified condition comprises:
a new message being received in the first session, or the first session being displayed in a session streaming region based on a user instruction;
wherein a new message being received in the first session comprises:
that the first session is not excluded from the main session stream and a new message is received in the first session;
the second specified condition comprises:
the predetermined information of the second session is updated.
14. (Currently Amended) The method of claim 1, further comprising:
in response to an operation of triggering the predetermined information of the second session,
displaying information of one or more first entities associated with the first session in a first specified region of the interface for the first user,
wherein the information of the first entity associated with the first session comprises identification information of the first entity and information of respective sessions associated with the first entity.
15. (Original) The method of claim 1, wherein the first session is associated with more than two first entities, and
in response to a first predetermined condition being satisfied, obtaining, for a first entity associated with a first session to which a first user belongs, predetermined information of a second session associated with the first entity comprises:
in response to the first predetermined condition being satisfied-, determining a target first entity from the more than two first entities, and for the target first entity, obtaining predetermined information of a second session associated with the target first entity.
16. (Original) The method of claim 15, wherein the determining a target first entity from the more than two first entities comprises:
determining at least one target first entity from the more than two first entities based on a second predetermined condition; wherein the second predetermined condition comprises one of:
that a frequency with which information of other sessions associated with the first entity is browsed by the first user is greater than a predetermined frequency threshold; and that a message notification attribute of other sessions associated with the first entity is set to notification.
17. (Original) The method of claim 1, wherein the obtaining predetermined information of
a second session associated with the first session comprises:
sending, to a server, an information obtaining request comprising an identifier of the first entity and/or an identifier of the first session;
receiving predetermined information of a second session associated with the first entity, the predetermined information of the second session sent by the server based on the information obtaining request; wherein
the server stores respective information of a plurality of sessions associated with the first entity and statistical information of the respective information of the plurality of sessions.
18. (Original) The method of claim 17, wherein information of a session comprises one or more of:
unread message-related information in the session;
task-related information in the session;
online document and/or offline file-related information in the session; and
schedule-related information in the session.
A sampling of the prior art made of record and not relied upon and considered pertinent to Applicants' disclosure includes: U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2015/0229598 A1 to Peng et al. that discusses: The method involves obtaining information of an unread message in a dialogue associated with an instant messaging account from a server when the account is logged-in through a current terminal. The information of the unread message is displayed in the current terminal, where the unread message is a message with time information that is later than time stamp in the dialogue. The time stamp is time information of a most recently read message in the dialogue submitted by the messaging account, where time stamp corresponding to the dialogue of the messaging account is stored in the server.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WILLIAM D. TITCOMB whose telephone number is (571)270-5190. The examiner can normally be reached 9:30 AM - 6:30 PM (M-F).
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WILLIAM D. TITCOMB
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2178
/WILLIAM D TITCOMB/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2178 7-31-2026
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