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 Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 07/22/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. It is respectfully held that Applicant interprets certain independent claim limitations more narrowly than a broadest reasonable interpretation (“BRI”) allows. Claim 1, which is considered representative, does not include any evidence of what hardware, software and/or functionality a “user interface” comprises. As such, this limitation is not confined to covering an input interface that receives commands from a user (e.g., hardware or software buttons or a mouse). A broadest reasonable interpretation of a “user interface” includes a graphical user interface (GUI) as would be understood by one having ordinary skill in the art. Bennett’s GUI meets the limitation of a user interface.
Additionally, claim 1 does not elaborate as to what is meant by the negative limitation “when a virtual item … is not selected”. Regarding the “when” condition, “when” is a relative pronoun used to refer to a time or a period. However, the claim lacks any language that could describe a moment in time or period during which virtual item selection are to be excluded. And regarding the condition “…is not selected”, the claim does not provide any metes or bounds specifically excluding any particular computer software module or processing steps or hardware components or user inputs or users from selecting a virtual item. Nor does the claim provide any metes or bounds specifically excluding any particular manner of selection.
As such, Applicant’s interpretation of the cited art of Bennett as violating the limitation “when a virtual item … is not selected” is interpreting the claim narrower than a BRI allows; meeting this limitation merely requires a virtual item in the prior art to not be selected in any arbitrary manner and at any arbitrary point in time. Bennett’s inventory coach model GUI prompting, in step 210 of Fig. 2, video game assets to discard is automatically generated based on the use of a trained machine learning model, see prior steps 200-208. Note that none of steps 200-208 require explicit user selection of a virtual item prior to or during the execution of step 210. Step 210 meets the limitation of occurring “…when a virtual item owned by a virtual object is not selected.” In other words, if at a point in time where a GUI prompt to discard an item occurs while a user is not actively making inputs designating the item to be discarded, the claim limitation is met.
As discussed above, the claim does not include any language that places metes and bounds on an object “is not selected” – there is no mention of in what manner, how, when, by what/whom, or by what specific inputs/operations an object must not be selected. User inputs made subsequent to an occurrence of step 210 (such as confirming the prompt after it is displayed) were not relied on by the examiner to teach the “is not selected” limitation. A condition of “is not selected” only had to occur at one point in time in the prior art, which in Bennett, was leading up to the generation of the GUI prompt in step 210. It is noted that negative claim limitations can be problematic for reasons made apparent by the preceding analysis.
The outstanding 35 U.S.C. § 102 rejection of claims 1-10 and 12-20 under US 2023/0024836 A1 to Bennett is maintained.
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)(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 1-10 and 12-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by US 2023/0024836 A1 to Bennett.
Summary: Bennett is a video game inventory coach AI model that can suggest video game inventory items to discard based on a user’s gameplay style and clusters of other players (see abstract, [0003]-[0013].
Re claim 1, Bennett teaches: a method comprising: receiving, by a computing device, a first operation on an item management control on a user interface
Fig. 2 diagrams that, during execution of a video game, gameplay is analyzed, reference groups/clusters of elite gameplayers are used for reference, an inventory coach model is trained and used to associate the player with one or more clusters, and ultimately, in step 210, the inventory coach is used to suggest video game assets to discard (or obtain, or use) based on gameplay style and portions of gameplay remaining.
when a virtual item owned by a virtual object is not selected,
As discussed in the response to arguments, no context is provided in the claim for this limitation. The claim does not specify whether the “when” condition is intending to designate a moment in time or a period, and if so, how this moment in time or period is/are defined or measured or used as a basis of judgement. Nor does the claim specify in what manner or by what processing operations or by what user input(s) the negative limitation of “virtual item … is not selected” is evaluated. Meeting this limitation merely requires a virtual item in the prior art to not be selected in any arbitrary manner and at any arbitrary point in time.
Bennett’s inventory coach model GUI prompting, in step 210 of Fig. 2, video game assets to discard is automatically generated based on the use of a trained machine learning model, see prior steps 200-208. Note that none of steps 200-208 require explicit user selection of an item to be discarded prior to or during the execution of step 210. Step 210 meets the limitation of occurring “…when a virtual item owned by a virtual object is not selected.” In other words, if at a point in time where a GUI prompt to discard an item occurs while a user is not actively making inputs designating the item to be discarded, the claim limitation is met.
the item management control being configured to trigger management of the virtual item;
[0043] describes an embodiment wherein the inventory coach determines that a player has a certain combat style and triggering the output of a suggestion in weapons changes. [0044] describes another embodiment wherein the inventory coach determines that a player is carrying too many extraneous virtual items, and if so, triggering a prompt to discard or sell certain items.
[0068] describes that a suggestion engine 612 takes output 610 from a cluster classifier as input to identify one or more suggestions to make to a target player to which in-game data 604 pertains. Then in [0069], recommendations or suggestions are to be provided to a target player, in relation to optimizing existing resources in a player’s game inventory, wherein suggestions may include dropping (discarding) items.
[0076]-[0077], describing Fig. 9, illustrates an indication 902 being output responsive to a certain stage of the game being reached at which elite players are known to drop a certain weapon.
[0078] describes a player’s certain progress level triggering virtual inventory management, in this case to drop/discard a certain potion that is determined to be no longer needed for the remainder of play.
displaying discard prompt information based on a determination that the virtual item is unusable by the virtual object; and controlling the virtual object to discard the virtual item in response to an end of the first operation.
Fig. 10 diagrams a suggestion user interface prompting the player “You won’t need Magic Potion 53 for the rest of the game.” and advises the player to “Drop it so you can make room to pick up a pickaxe”. The player can, based on this advice, select UI element 1004, drop potion, to discard the potion item.
Fig. 11 is an additional embodiment of a UI prompt that advises that a sniper rifle is unusable for this player who has been determined to prefer close-quarters combat. The user can correspondingly select UI element 1108 “Drop Sniper Rifle” to discard the sniper rifle item.
Refer to text descriptions of these figures in [0078]-[00810].
Re claims 2, 13, because this claim does not provide any detail as to what features, functions, structure, or step limitations make up a “backpack interface”, a broadest reasonable interpretation is that any interface related to managing a player’s inventory, such as weapons carried, meets this limitation. A discard control operation in a backpack interface, then, is met by the examples such as Fig. 10.
Re claims 3, 14, 16, in the examples shown in Figs. 9, 10, 11 a discard quantity of one of certain items can be determined and controlled – one pistol, one potion, and one sniper rifle, respectively.
Re claims 4, 6, 15, [0057]-[0058] discuss recommending a player discard a plurality of exemplary items (small potions, cleansed water, bamboo) they are judged to have too many of when compared to clusters of reference players. This teaches sorting items and recommending discarding items held in highest or excess quantities.
Re claims 5, 17, because this claim does not provide any detail as to what comprises a “pickup list window”, the UI displaying a list of user selectable options, see Figs. 9, 10 or 11, meets this limitation. Choosing, in Fig. 10, UI function no. 1004, “Drop Potion”, effects controlling a virtual character to discard the potion.
Re claim 7, in Fig. 9, function no. 906 in which a player selects to switch to “Armor Y” is a use control in a display box. Similarly, in Fig. 10, function no. 1006, “Pickup Pickaxe” is a use control in a display box.
Re claim 8, Fig. 9 illustrates suggesting that players who play similar to the player-of interest tend to pick up a sword at this point in the game. This teaches determining a supply type in the pickup window (sword) based on an object attribute of the virtual object (play style attribute of the player character)
Re claims 9, 18, a discard prompt can be made based on the player’s current progress in the game including based on timestamp information and game progress (both indications of game duration).
Re claims 10, 19, refer to the item discard prompt of Fig. 10.
Re claim 12, 20, refer to the rejection of claim 1, wherein an apparatus and computer readable media for enabling the method are necessarily discussed in the rejection of the method.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 11 is 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.
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 STEVEN J HYLINSKI whose telephone number is (571)270-1995. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 10-530.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Dmitry Suhol can be reached at (571) 272-4430. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/STEVEN J HYLINSKI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3715
