DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
2. A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 06/26/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
2. Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-7 and 11-25 have been considered but are moot in view of a new ground(s) of rejection discussed below. The amendments to the claims necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection. This office action is non-final.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
3. 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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
5. Claim(s) 1-7 and 11-25 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over CHOR et all (6,141,003) in view of TIAN (2024/0205215)
As to claims 1-2, CHOR discloses channel bar user information for an information system and further discloses a display device, comprising:
a user input interface configured to receive a user-customized channel generation command from a remote control device; a processor configured to: acquire at least one user-preferred category in response to the user-customized channel generation command, add a content list including at least one content to each of the acquired at least one user-preferred category, and generate a user-customized channel list by matching and generating the user- preferred category including the content list to a first user-customized channel; and a display configured to display the user-customized channel list (figs.1-7, Abstract, Col.2, line 9-Col.3, line 11; Col.4, line 1-Col.5, line 15, Col.6, line 8-Col.8, line 67 and Col.9, line 1-Col.10, line 24), generate channels and channel bar listing programs and genres: movies, shows, sports, news, etc. and further websites or other target specifications on the internet; updating listing of programs upon channel changes to display current channel bar and programs listings or different icon with the respective content; channel(s) set based on genre preference, demographic information, etc. and wherein the processor is further configured to: acquire a content change command from the remote control device through the user input interface, determine whether the acquired content change command is a channel change command or a content move command, based on a direction of the content change command (figs.1-3, Col.1, line 35-Col.2, 52 and Col.5, line 40-Col.8, line 27); a viewer remote control permits the viewer to navigate or manipulate to select desired icon or URL and/or channel up/down changes and content changes; the processor further processes each digit enter including movement of respective arrow indicators on the RC and other user inputs via the RC to determine if it’s a channel change command or content move command, programs can be add by selecting add icon or can be updated by the User computing device using the viewer usage patterns; wherein the processor is configured to determine the content change command as the channel change command if the content change command is one of: an up movement command corresponding to an up movement button input of the remote control device, or a down movement command corresponding to a down movement button input of the remote control device, wherein the processor is configured to determine the content change command as the content move command if the content change command is one of: a left movement command corresponding to a left movement button input of the remote control device, or a right movement command corresponding to a right movement button input of the remote control device, and wherein the processor is configured to either: move to a channel corresponding to the determined channel change command and play one content from a content list of the moved channel, or move to a content corresponding to the determined content move command and play the moved content (Col.1, line 35-Col.2, 52 and Col.5, line 40-Col.8, line 27); a viewer remote control permits the viewer to navigate or manipulate to select desired icon or URL and/or channel up/down changes and content changes; the processor further processes each digit enter including movement of respective arrow indicators on the RC and other user inputs via the RC to determine if it’s a channel change command or content move command, programs can be add by selecting add icon or can be updated by the User computing device using the viewer usage patterns and acquire at least one user-preferred content provider in response to the user-customized channel generation command, generate by matching each of the acquired at least one user-preferred content provider with at least one second user-customized channel, receive a content list from a server of each of the at least one user-preferred content providers, add the received content list to each of the at least one second user-customized channel, and cause the user-customized channel list to include at least one second user-customized channel and a content list added to each of the at least one second user-customized channel (Col.4, line 1-Col.5, line 15, Col.6, line 8-Col.8, line 67 and Col.9, line 1-Col.10, line 24), change list is updated accordingly upon displaying a channel bar including updating icons or URLs associated with the channel and other channel related icon; a viewer remote control permits the viewer to navigate or manipulate to select desired icon or URL and/or channel up/down changes and content changes; the processor further processes each digit enter including movement of respective arrow indicators on the RC and other user inputs via the RC to determine if it’s a channel change command or content move command, programs can be add by selecting add icon or can be updated by the User computing device using the viewer usage patterns and acquire at least one user-preferred
wherein the processor is further configured to: determine whether a channel adjacent to a channel on which content is being played is a user-preferred content provider channel, and if the channel adjacent is a user preferred content provider, execute an application of the content provider of the channel adjacent in a background, and perform automatic login for a user ID in the application running in the background and perform preload for each content in a content list of the channel adjacent (figs.5-6, Col.9, line 41-Col.10, line 24), user may search channels or websites of interest running in the background during viewing of the current displayed channel, and log on to access content using password or key to restrict viewing to authorized viewers.
CHOR appears silent as to perform automatic login for a user ID in the application running in the background and executing other function or apps to run content
However, in the same field of endeavor, TIAN discloses automatic web page login for web-based applications to interact with other apps and pages (Abstract, figs.1+, [0014-0024] and [0028-0038]).
Hence it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to one of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the teaching of TIM into the system of CHOR to automatically login the user to other apps running in the background to efficiently process the various contents associated with the apps for viewing as desired.
As to claims 3-7, CHOR further disclose wherein the processor is configured to: generate an automatic recommendation channel, acquire a list associated with a user ID, acquire a content list including at least one content based on at least one ID included in the list associated with the user ID,
add the acquired content list to the automatic recommendation channel, and cause the user-customized channel list to include the automatic recommendation channel and the content list added to the automatic recommendation channel, generate the content list by sorting at least one news content preferred by a user in order of latest when the at least one user-preferred category is news. generate the content list including at least one drama content based on a drama genre preferred by a user, when the at least one user-preferred category is a drama generate the content list including the drama content from a last viewing point of a drama watched by the user to a current broadcasted episode, if the drama content included in the content list is the drama content previously watched by the user, the watched drama content consists of a plurality of episodes, and generate the content list including one or more sports contents related to a user's preferred team or sport, if the at least one user-preferred category is a sport (Col.4, line 1-Col.5, line 15, Col.6, line 8-Col.8, line 67 and Col.9, line 1-Col.10, line 24), change list is updated accordingly upon displaying a channel bar including updating icons or URLs associated with the channel and other channel related icon; a viewer remote control permits the viewer to navigate to select desired icon or URL; the processor processes each user input via the RC to determine if it’s a channel change command or content move command, programs can be add by selecting add icon or can be updated by the User computing device using the viewer usage patterns.
As to claim 11-14, CHOR further disclose move to a channel corresponding to the channel change command and play a content corresponding to a highest priority among a content list of the moved channel; play alive sports content with a highest priority among the content list of the moved channel, if a user-preferred category of the moved channel is sport; determine whether a channel adjacent to a channel on which content is being played is a user-preferred content provider channel, and if the channel adjacent is a user-preferred content provider, execute an application of the content provider of the channel adjacent in a background and perform automatic login for a user ID in the application running in the background and perform preload for each content in a content list of the channel adjacent(see figs.5, Col.4, line 1-Col.5, line 15, Col.6, line 8-Col.8, line 67 and Col.7, line 31-Col.10, line 24), The UCD can indicate current live programs and further show other favorite programs; where a user uses remote control to navigate programs as desired; the UCD has a dial up access or modem to the Internet to automatically login the user to tune or access a desired content; the processor is responsive to movement of the remote control in various specific direction to select a desired icon or URL within the channel, processes each user input via the RC to determine if it’s a channel change command or content move command, programs can be add by selecting add icon or can be updated by the User computing device using the viewer usage patterns to select recent channels and/or ions or URLs associated with specific content.
As to claims 15-16, the claimed “A display device…” is composed of the same structural elements that were discussed with respect to claims 1-2.
Claims 17-21 are met as previously discussed in claims 3-7
As to claims 22-23, CHOR further discloses wherein the processor is configured to: move to a channel corresponding to the channel change command and play a content corresponding to a highest priority among a content list of the moved channel and wherein the processor is configured to: play a live sports content with a highest priority among the content list of the moved channel, if a user-preferred category of the moved channel is sport (figs.1-3, Col.1, line 35-Col.2, 52 and Col.5, line 40-Col.8, line 27); generates five favorite list based on viewing patterns; a viewer remote control permits the viewer to navigate or manipulate to select desired icon or URL and/or channel up/down changes and content changes; the processor further processes each digit enter including movement of respective arrow indicators on the RC and other user inputs via the RC to determine if it’s a channel change command or content move command, programs can be add by selecting add icon or can be updated by the User computing device using the viewer usage patterns.
As to claims 24-25, CHOR further discloses wherein the processor is configured to: determine whether a channel adjacent to a channel on which content is being played is a user-preferred content provider channel, and if the channel adjacent is a user-preferred content provider, execute an application of the content provider of the channel adjacent in a background and wherein the processor is configured to: perform automatic login for a user ID in the application running in the background and perform preload for each content in a content list of the channel adjacent (figs.1-3, Col.1, line 35-Col.2, 52 and Col.5, line 40-Col.8, line 27); generates or pop-ups five favorite list and channel and/or content bars based on viewing patterns and; a viewer may navigate or manipulate to select desired icon or URL and/or channel up/down changes and content changes, to tune to the content or play the streaming content from the content provider accordingly via website or URL; the processor further processes each digit enter including movement of respective arrow indicators on the RC and other user inputs via the RC to determine if it’s a channel change command or content move command, programs can be add by selecting add icon or can be updated by the User computing device using the viewer usage patterns.
Conclusion
6. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANNAN Q SHANG whose telephone number is (571)272-7355. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 7-4.
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/ANNAN Q SHANG/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2424
ANNAN Q. SHANG
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