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 .
Claim Objections
2. Claims 3 and 4 are objected to because of the following informalities: the claims unnecessarily repeat the same verbiage seen in the claims from which they depend. For the purpose of clarity of interpretation of features in the preamble the Examiner has listed the body of the claims in the rejection below and invites the Applicant to a quick phone discussion if desired to review said interpretations in further detail.
Appropriate clarification/correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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.
4. Claims 1 – 7, 9, 10, and 12 – 22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Magazine (US Publication Number 2017/0244800).
5. As per claims 1, 9, and 10, Magazine teaches a peripheral device connection control method, device, and non-transitory storage medium (non-transitory medium seen in paragraph 43) comprising: in response to a focus of a computer (computer 200, figure 3 seen in light of figures 2 and 4) switching (focus switches between 152a and 152b, figure 2 based on requests) to a first operation interface (operations of print or scan, 178, figure 2) of a plurality of operation interfaces (operation interfaces consist of the cloud 154 application layer along with a plurality of client cloud devices 152a/b further elaborated in figure 4 which shows the vast local networked devices, paragraph 40), establishing a connection between an operating system (operating system 216, figure 2, paragraph 49) of a background device corresponding to the first operation interface and a target peripheral device (background device is the next in line to have its request serviced paragraph 50, and the target peripheral device can be seen in figure 184, figure 2), wherein the target peripheral device comprises a peripheral device connected with a first communication interface of the computer (connectivity through the peripheral service, paragraph 31).
6. As per claims 2, 15, and 16, Magazine teaches a method, wherein the plurality of operation interfaces comprise at least one of a local desktop, a cloud desktop, and a cloud application interface (figure 4 exemplifies at least one of the plurality of interfaces in the form of client/database/server).
7. As per claim 3, Magazine teaches a method, further comprising: disconnecting the connection between an operating system of a background device corresponding to the second operation interface and the target peripheral device, and establishing the connection between the operating system of the background device corresponding to the first operation interface and the target peripheral device (paragraphs 38 – 40, the target device is not consistently connected to the background device until it is selected by the user upon which the connection is made until the job is completed, figure 10 upon which the “connect” state becomes a disconnected state).
8. As per claims 4 and 21, Magazine teaches a method, further comprising: disconnecting the connection between the operating system of the background device corresponding to the second operation interface and the target peripheral device when the target peripheral device is in an idle state (sleep state of the peripheral for switching peripheral devices, paragraph 31).
9. As per claims 5 and 20, Magazine teaches a method, wherein establishing the connection between the operating system of the background device corresponding to the first operation interface and the target peripheral device comprises at least one of followings: redirecting protocol data sent by the target peripheral device to the operating system of the background device corresponding to the first operation interface (paragraph 30); and redirecting a protocol request received by the background device based on the first operation interface to the target peripheral device (paragraph 31, protocol handling is interpreted as the target peripheral device driver handling).
10. As per claim 6, Magazine teaches a method, further comprising: based on a selection operation of a user, determining the target peripheral device from at least one peripheral device connected with a first communication interface of the computer (user selection via figures 6 – 8).
11. As per claim 7, Magazine teaches a method, wherein the first communication interface is a master-slave architecture communication interface (master 156/slave 184, figure 2 architecture).
12. As per claim 12, Magazine teaches a method, wherein the method is applied to a peripheral device driver module (drivers, 174, figure 2) or proxy module arranged on the computer.
13. As per claim 13, Magazine teaches a method, wherein the focus is an area on an output device of the computer that a user pays attention to (GUI 118, figure 1, paragraph 37).
14. As per claim 14, Magazine teaches a method, wherein the focus is an area where a cursor is activated (curse seen in figure 6, “Enter data here”).
As per claim 17, Magazine teaches a method, wherein the local desktop is an operation interface provided by the operating system of the computer (computer operating system, paragraph 49).
15. As per claim 18, Magazine teaches a method, wherein the cloud desktop and the cloud application interface are operation interfaces provided by an operating system of a remote server (252/254 cloud servers, figure 4).
16. As per claim 19, Magazine teaches a method, wherein the background device corresponding to the first operation interface is a device for providing data for the first operation interface to provide user interaction service (GUI presented to user, figures 6 – 8).
17. As per claim 22, Magazine teaches a method, wherein a background operation state of the target peripheral device is determined by detecting activity data of the target peripheral device (activity detected at 170, figure 2).
Conclusion
18. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Ren/Dai/Lee/Sip/Riley/Ekpenyong have teachings of a plurality of requesting devices interfaced both local and via cloud interfaces to a plurality of peripherals with arbitration and connectivity mechanisms therein.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to AURANGZEB HASSAN whose telephone number is (571)272-8625. The examiner can normally be reached 7 AM to 3 PM.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Henry Tsai can be reached at 571-272-4176. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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AH
/STEVEN G SNYDER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2184