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 .
DETAILED ACTION
The instant application having Application No. 18/906,365 filed on 10/04/2024 is presented for examination.
Examiner Notes
Examiner cites particular columns and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the applicant fully consider the references in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the examiner.
Drawings
The applicant’s drawings submitted are acceptable for examination purposes.
Authorization for Internet Communications
The examiner encourages Applicant to submit an authorization to communicate with the examiner via the Internet by making the following statement (from MPEP 502.03):
“Recognizing that Internet communications are not secure, I hereby authorize the USPTO to communicate with the undersigned and practitioners in accordance with 37 CFR 1.33 and 37 CFR 1.34 concerning any subject matter of this application by video conferencing, instant messaging, or electronic mail. I understand that a copy of these communications will be made of record in the application file.”
Please note that the above statement can only be submitted via Central Fax, Regular postal mail, or EFS Web.
Information Disclosure Statement
As required by M.P.E.P. 609, the applicant’s submissions of the Information Disclosure Statement dated 1/03/2025 and 5/07/2025 are acknowledged by the examiner and the cited references have been considered in the examination of the claims now pending.
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.
Claims 1-3, 7, 10-14, and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ahmed (US 20160328272) in view of Staudenmaier (US 20180018936).
As per claim 1, Ahmed discloses a channel allocation method for a display subsystem (Abstract “A vehicle interface system includes a graphics processing unit and a plurality of processing domains. The processing domains execute vehicle applications and generate tasks for the graphics processing unit. The system further includes a task scheduler configured to receive the tasks generated by the processing domains and to determine an order in which to send the tasks to the graphics processing unit.”), comprising:
determining a target to-be-displayed layer based on a priority of a first to-be-displayed layer and a priority of a second to-be-displayed layer (Paragraph 5 “the task scheduler identifies a priority level associated with each of the tasks and determines the order in which to send the tasks to the graphics processing unit based on the identified priority levels. Identifying a priority level associated with a task may include identifying which of the plurality of processing domains generated the task, identifying a priority level associated with the identified processing domain, and assigning a priority level to the task according to the priority level associated with the identified processing domain.”), wherein the first to-be-displayed layer belongs to a first domain, the second to-be-displayed layer belongs to a second domain (Paragraph 15 “In some embodiments, the high priority tasks are generated by vehicle applications that relate to at least one of a safety of the vehicle and critical vehicle operations. The low priority tasks may be generated by at least one of vehicle infotainment applications, cloud applications, and autonomous driver assistance system applications.”), the first domain is different from the second domain (Paragraph 15), and the target to-be-displayed layer is a layer with a higher priority between the first to-be-displayed layer and the second to-be-displayed layer (Paragraph 95 “Referring now to FIG. 7, an illustration of system components to facilitate display output on a common display system is shown, according to an exemplary embodiment. As shown in FIG. 7, the native HMI domain 412 includes a graphics and compositor component 450. Graphics and compositor component 450 generally serves to combine frame buffer information (i.e., graphic data) provided to it by the other domains (e.g., 408, 410, 414) and/or generated by itself (i.e., on native HMI domain 412). This flow of data is highlighted in FIG. 7. Native HMI domain 412 is shown to include a frame buffer (“FB”) video module 452 while the other domains each contain a frame buffer client module (i.e., FB clients 454, 456, 458).”).
Ahmed does not expressly disclose but Staudenmaier discloses allocating, in at least one synthesis channel (Paragraph 17 “blender” layer), a target synthesis channel to the target to-be-displayed layer, wherein the target synthesis channel is configured to transmit the target to-be-displayed layer to an image synthesizer, so that the image synthesizer synthesizes the target to-be-displayed layer into a to-be-displayed image (Paragraph 17 “A pixel format converter 212 receives the pixel image data for the individual graphics layers from the input buffers 211, which may be encoded in different formats, and converts the pixel image data into a common format, for example a 32-bit RGBA format, to enable subsequent blending of the layers to be more easily performed. A blender 213 receives the converted pixel data for the individual graphics layers and blends the pixel data to generate composite pixel data to be displayed. A gamma correction component 214 performs gamma correction on the composite pixel data, and outputs the corrected composite pixel data to an output buffer 215. A display driver 216 reads the (gamma corrected) composite pixel data from the output buffer 215, and transmits display data 217 to the display device 160, the display data comprising the composite pixel data read from the output buffer 215.”).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method of Ahmed to include the teachings of Staudenmaier because the modification ensures that higher priority graphic content receives an available display before lower priority content which reduces delay of safety related information.
As per claim 2, Staudenmaier discloses wherein after the allocating, in at least one synthesis channel, a target synthesis channel to the target to-be-displayed layer, the method further comprises:
when an idle channel exists in a non-target synthesis channel among the at least one synthesis channel, allocating the idle channel to a non-target to-be-displayed layer (Paragraph 18 “The memory interface component 210 consists of n (e.g. 6) data channels. In this manner, the display controller 140 is able to generate pixel data for each individual pixel within a composite image to be displayed from a blend of up to n graphics layers. The number of graphics layers that make up the composite image as a whole may be significantly more than the capacity (n) of the display controller 140. As illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2, the descriptor register set 180 may be able to store descriptors for up to k (e.g. 32) layers for the composite image as a whole. For each pixel, the layer selection module 170 is arranged to select up to n layers from which pixel data is to be blended to generate composite pixel data for the respective pixel, and to configure the memory interface component 210 of the display controller 140 to fetch the relevant pixel data for the selected (up to) n layers.”).
As per claim 3, Ahmed further discloses further comprising:
separately determining the priority of the first to-be-displayed layer and the priority of the second to-be-displayed layer based on a priority of the first domain and a priority of the second domain, wherein a priority of a to-be-displayed layer is equal to a priority of a domain to which the to-be-displayed layer belongs (Paragraph 5 “In some embodiments, the task scheduler identifies a priority level associated with each of the tasks and determines the order in which to send the tasks to the graphics processing unit based on the identified priority levels. Identifying a priority level associated with a task may include identifying which of the plurality of processing domains generated the task, identifying a priority level associated with the identified processing domain, and assigning a priority level to the task according to the priority level associated with the identified processing domain.”).
As per claim 7, Ahmed further discloses wherein the method is used in a vehicle cockpit, the vehicle cockpit comprises a first display for displaying vehicle safety information and a second display for entertainment, the first display belongs to the first domain, and the second display belongs to the second domain (Paragraph 4 and Abstract).
As per claim 10, Ahmed discloses a channel allocation method for a display subsystem (Abstract “A vehicle interface system includes a graphics processing unit and a plurality of processing domains. The processing domains execute vehicle applications and generate tasks for the graphics processing unit. The system further includes a task scheduler configured to receive the tasks generated by the processing domains and to determine an order in which to send the tasks to the graphics processing unit.”),, comprising:
determining a first target to-be-displayed layer based on a priority of a first domain and a priority of at least one layer in a layer set of a second domain (Paragraph 5 “the task scheduler identifies a priority level associated with each of the tasks and determines the order in which to send the tasks to the graphics processing unit based on the identified priority levels. Identifying a priority level associated with a task may include identifying which of the plurality of processing domains generated the task, identifying a priority level associated with the identified processing domain, and assigning a priority level to the task according to the priority level associated with the identified processing domain.”), wherein a priority of the first target to-be-displayed layer is higher than the priority of the first domain and the first target to-be-displayed layer is in the layer set of the second domain, and the priority of the first domain is higher than a priority of the second domain (Paragraph 95 “Referring now to FIG. 7, an illustration of system components to facilitate display output on a common display system is shown, according to an exemplary embodiment. As shown in FIG. 7, the native HMI domain 412 includes a graphics and compositor component 450. Graphics and compositor component 450 generally serves to combine frame buffer information (i.e., graphic data) provided to it by the other domains (e.g., 408, 410, 414) and/or generated by itself (i.e., on native HMI domain 412). This flow of data is highlighted in FIG. 7. Native HMI domain 412 is shown to include a frame buffer (“FB”) video module 452 while the other domains each contain a frame buffer client module (i.e., FB clients 454, 456, 458).”).
Ahmed does not expressly disclose but Staudenmaier discloses allocating, in at least one synthesis channel, a target synthesis channel to the first target to-be-displayed layer, wherein the target synthesis channel is configured to transmit the first target to-be-displayed layer to an image synthesizer, so that the image synthesizer synthesizes the first target to-be-displayed layer into a to-be-displayed image (Paragraph 17 “A pixel format converter 212 receives the pixel image data for the individual graphics layers from the input buffers 211, which may be encoded in different formats, and converts the pixel image data into a common format, for example a 32-bit RGBA format, to enable subsequent blending of the layers to be more easily performed. A blender 213 receives the converted pixel data for the individual graphics layers and blends the pixel data to generate composite pixel data to be displayed. A gamma correction component 214 performs gamma correction on the composite pixel data, and outputs the corrected composite pixel data to an output buffer 215. A display driver 216 reads the (gamma corrected) composite pixel data from the output buffer 215, and transmits display data 217 to the display device 160, the display data comprising the composite pixel data read from the output buffer 215.”).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method of Ahmed to include the teachings of Staudenmaier because the modification ensures that higher priority graphic content receives an available display before lower priority content which reduces delay of safety related information.
As per claim 11, Staudenmaier discloses further comprising:
determining a second target to-be-displayed layer based on the priority of the first domain and a priority of at least one layer in the layer set of the second domain, wherein the second target to-be-displayed layer comprises a first to-be-displayed layer and a layer in a layer set of the first domain, and a priority of the first to-be-displayed layer is equal to the priority of the first domain and the first to-be-displayed layer is in the layer set of the second domain (Paragraph 18); and
when an idle channel exists in the at least one synthesis channel, allocating the idle channel to the second target to-be-displayed layer (Paragraph 18 “The memory interface component 210 consists of n (e.g. 6) data channels. In this manner, the display controller 140 is able to generate pixel data for each individual pixel within a composite image to be displayed from a blend of up to n graphics layers. The number of graphics layers that make up the composite image as a whole may be significantly more than the capacity (n) of the display controller 140. As illustrated in FIGS. 1 and 2, the descriptor register set 180 may be able to store descriptors for up to k (e.g. 32) layers for the composite image as a whole. For each pixel, the layer selection module 170 is arranged to select up to n layers from which pixel data is to be blended to generate composite pixel data for the respective pixel, and to configure the memory interface component 210 of the display controller 140 to fetch the relevant pixel data for the selected (up to) n layers.”).
As per claim 12, it is a device claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 1 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 13, it is a device claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 2 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 14, it is a device claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 3 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 18, it is a medium claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 1 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 19, it is a device claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 10 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 20, it is a device claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 10 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
Claims 4-6 and 15-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ahmed in view of Staudenmaier in view of Chinnadurai (US 20180189922)
As per claim 4, Ahmed does not expressly disclose but Chinnadurai discloses further comprising:
determining the priority of the first domain and the priority of the second domain based on a refresh rate of a layer set in the first domain and a refresh rate of a layer set in the second domain, wherein the layer set in the first domain comprises the first to-be-displayed layer, the layer set in the second domain comprises the second to-be-displayed layer, and a higher refresh rate of a layer set indicates a higher priority of a domain to which the layer set belongs (Paragraph 19 “A method of selectively composing layers via system hardware is provided. The method may include, for each layer included in a plurality of layers that form a display frame, determining, by a frame composition controller circuit, a frame-to-frame change rate value corresponding to a predicted compositional load the respective layer would place on a graphical processing unit (GPU); identifying a layer having a frame-to-frame change rate value corresponding to placing the greatest predicted compositional load on the GPU; causing a hardware overlay circuit coupled to a display controller circuit to compose the layer identified as having the frame-to-frame change rate value corresponding to placing the greatest predicted compositional load on the GPU to provide a first frame overlay; causing the GPU to compose at least a portion of the remaining layers included in the plurality of layers to provide a second frame overlay; and causing the display controller circuitry to composite the first frame overlay and the second frame overlay to provide the display frame.”).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method of Ahmed as modified to include the teachings of Chinnadurai because it prioritizes the highest refresh rate for the highest priority domain.
As per claim 5, Chinnadurai discloses further comprising:
determining a layer subset in a layer set in the first domain, wherein a refresh rate of a layer in the layer subset is higher than a refresh rate of the second to-be-displayed layer, and the layer subset comprises the first to-be-displayed layer (Abstract “Device performance and battery life may be increased by prioritizing access to the display controller hardware overlay support such that the layer(s) placing the greatest potential demand (i.e., those layers that are frequently changing and/or large) on the GPU are instead handled in the display controller hardware overlay support. Device performance and battery life may be further increased by identifying those layer(s) that do not change frame-to-frame and excluding those layer(s) from composition.”).
As per claim 6, Staudenmaier further discloses further comprising:
adjusting the priority of the first domain and/or the priority of the second domain (Paragraph 27 “For example, at night a warning that a vehicles lights are not working properly is more important than during the day. Accordingly, a graphics object used to warn that a vehicle's lights are not working may have a higher importance at night than during the day. Accordingly, the computer program code 135 may determine the importance of a graphics object based on a simple or a complex decision making algorithm, taking into account any number of factors as appropriate.”).
As per claim 15, it is a device claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 4 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 16, it is a device claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 5 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 17, it is a device claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 6 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
Claims 8 and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ahmed in view of Staudenmaier in view of Raghunathan (US 20140375447)
As per claim 8, Ahmed does not expressly discloses but Raghunathan discloses further comprising:
adjusting the priority of the first domain and/or the priority of the second domain based on a running state of a vehicle in which the vehicle cockpit is located, wherein the priority of the to-be-displayed layer is equal to the priority of the domain to which the to-be-displayed layer belongs (Paragraph 6 “The present disclosure relates to a dashboard for a vehicle comprising: a primary display area; a secondary display area; and one or more hardware processors, wherein the one or more hardware processors are in communication with the primary display area and the secondary display area, and wherein the one or more hardware processors are configured to: (A) determine whether the vehicle is in motion, stationary in traffic, or stationary in park based on at least one of: a vehicle's engine state, a vehicle's speed, a proximity of the vehicle to a traffic signal junction; a proximity of the vehicle to a parking lot, or a vehicle's gear state; (B) receive a notification request containing a notification from an application being executed by the one or more hardware processors; (C) provide the notification using at least one of the primary display area or the secondary display area based on (I) the determination of whether the vehicle is in motion, stationary in traffic, or stationary in park; and (II) a categorization of the application; and (D) prioritize execution of the application by the one or more hardware processors based on the categorization of the application.”).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method of Ahmed as modified to include the teachings of Raghunathan because it allows for priority levels to be changed depending on whether the vehicle is parked or moving.
As per claim 9, Raghunathan further discloses wherein the adjusting the priority of the first domain and/or the priority of the second domain based on a running state of a vehicle in which the vehicle cockpit is located comprises:
when the vehicle is in a parking state, adjusting the priority of the first domain and/or the priority of the second domain, so that the priority of the first domain is lower than the priority of the second domain (Paragraph 6); or
when the vehicle is in a driving state, adjusting the priority of the first domain and/or the priority of the second domain, so that the priority of the first domain is higher than the priority of the second domain (Paragraph 6).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Rajendran (US 20170043664) discloses presenting information to passengers within a vehicle having at least one sheet of transparent material associated with a passenger compartment of the vehicle. A first priority level is assigned to first infotainment content. The first infotainment content is displayed in association with the sheet of transparent material. A second priority level is assigned to second infotainment content. It is determined whether the second priority level is higher than the first priority level. If the second priority level is higher than the first priority level, then the displaying of the first infotainment content is ceased, and displaying of the second infotainment content in association with the sheet of transparent material is initiated. If the second priority level is not higher than the first priority level, then the displaying of the first infotainment content is continued.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TIMOTHY A MUDRICK whose telephone number is (571)270-3374. The examiner can normally be reached 9am-5pm Central Time.
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, Pierre Vital can be reached at (571)272-4215. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/TIMOTHY A MUDRICK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2198 8/21/2026
Prosecution Insights