Detailed Action
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
The Office Action is in response to claims filed on 10/4/2024 where claims 1-20 are pending and ready for examination.
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.
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The filing of a terminal disclaimer by itself is not a complete reply to a nonstatutory double patenting (NSDP) rejection. A complete reply requires that the terminal disclaimer be accompanied by a reply requesting reconsideration of the prior Office action. Even where the NSDP rejection is provisional the reply must be complete. See MPEP § 804, subsection I.B.1. For a reply to a non-final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.111(a). For a reply to final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.113(c). A request for reconsideration while not provided for in 37 CFR 1.113(c) may be filed after final for consideration. See MPEP §§ 706.07(e) and 714.13.
The USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/patent/patents-forms. The actual filing date of the application in which the form is filed determines what form (e.g., PTO/SB/25, PTO/SB/26, PTO/AIA /25, or PTO/AIA /26) should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens. An eTerminal Disclaimer that meets all requirements is auto-processed and approved immediately upon submission. For more information about eTerminal Disclaimers, refer to www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/applying-online/eterminal-disclaimer.
Claims 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claim 1-20 of U.S. Patent No. 12,113,639 Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claims from the Instant Application are a broadened version of the claims from U.S. Patent No. 12,113,639. Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to apply the teachings from U.S. Patent No. 12,113,639 to solve and/or contemplate the features from the Instant Application NO. 18/906,500.
The Examiner has conducted a side by side analysis for all of the claims (see e.g. Independent claim 1 below)
Instant Application No 18/906,500
US Patent No. 12,113,639
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Independent claims 8 and 15 are statutory equivalents of claim 1 and are also rejected based on the same rationale.
The Examiner also conducted the same side by side analysis for the dependent claims (2-7, 9-14, and 16-20). it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to apply the teachings from the dependent claims of U.S. Patent No. 12,113,639 to solve and/or contemplate the features from the Instant Application NO. 18/906,500.
Accordingly, claims 1-20 are rejected .
Claims 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claim 1-20 of U.S. Patent No. 12,113,639 Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claims from the Instant Application are a broadened version of the claims from U.S. Patent No. 12,119,947. Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to apply the teachings from U.S. Patent No. 12,119,947 to solve and/or contemplate the features from the Instant Application NO. 18/906,500.
The Examiner has conducted a side by side analysis for all of the claims (see e.g. Independent claim 1 below)
Instant Application No 18/906,500
US Patent No. 12,119,947
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Independent claims 8 and 15 are statutory equivalents of claim 1 and are also rejected based on the same rationale.
The Examiner also conducted the same side by side analysis for the dependent claims (2-7, 9-14, and 16-20). it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to apply the teachings from the dependent claims of U.S. Patent No. 12,119,947 to solve and/or contemplate the features from the Instant Application NO. 18/906,500.
Accordingly, claims 1-20 are rejected .
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 1-5, 8-12, and 15-19 are rejected under 35 USC 103 as being unpatentable over Levy (US 2020/0057866) in view of Hui (US 2013/0090973)
Regarding claim 1. Levy discloses a method comprising:
detecting a regulated user account joining a virtual meeting (Levy; Levy teaches storage policies influencing and/or effecting user accounts (i.e., regulated user accounts) are detected and/or analyzed with respect to enacting the storage policies for virtual meetings;
see e.g. [0013] “Note that a “conference” or “meeting’ between users can be telephone based; Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) based, video conferenced based, Virtual Reality (VR) based, Augmented Reality (AR) based, or based on any online meeting, collaborations, or interactions ...”
see e.g. [0020] “The conference management system 105 can store the various data compliance policies in a data storage system 110 ... store a mapping of the policies applicable to a user, e.g., in the user profile ...”
see e.g. [0023] “The conference management system 105 can determine the data compliance policies ... when the participants join the meeting ...”);
capturing, via the virtual meeting participant instance, communication data associated with the regulated user account (Levy; Levy teaches the recording of the virtual meeting (i.e. communication data) may occur;
see e.g. Abstract “ ... A conference management system (“system”) facilitates data compliance in recording conversations between users ...”);
Levy does not expressly disclose:
in response to detecting the regulated user account joining a virtual meeting, instantiating a virtual meeting participant instance by executing a bot program as a virtual meeting participant to join the virtual meeting;
generating an archival file corresponding to the regulated user account by applying a compliance policy associated with the regulated user account to the communication data.
However in analogous art Hui discloses:
in response to detecting the regulated user account joining a virtual meeting, instantiating a virtual meeting participant instance by executing a bot program as a virtual meeting participant to join the virtual meeting (Hui; Hui teaches the creation (i.e. instantiation) of a conversation entity instance object (i.e. bot program);
see e.g. [0011] “.... creating an executable conversation instance entity object ...”
see e.g. [0012] “... virtual meeting of live persons detected by virtual presence ...”);
generating an archival file corresponding to the regulated user account (Hui; Hui teaches archives may be generated based on the captured instances
see e.g. [0015] “ ... archiving the interaction records and results thereof as searchable interaction records tied to the conversation instance entity”
see e.g. [0016] “... the interactions include messages and message chains, voice interactions, video interactions, presentations ... live persons or a virtual meeting of live persons ...”
see e.g. [0005] “ ... communication channels ...”)
Levy in view of Hui discloses:
generating an archival file corresponding to the regulated user account by applying a compliance policy associated with the regulated user account to the communication data (The combined solution provides for generating archival files per Lui and where the information archived is directly impacted by the recording compliance policies explicitly taught by Levy;
see e.g. Levy [0023] “... a metadata indicator associated with a user for determining a data compliance policy applicable to the recording ...” );
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Hui’s instances entities. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies in capturing data associated with virtual meetings.
Regarding claim 2, Levy in view of Hui disclose the method of claim 1, further comprising:
instantiating the virtual meeting participant instance comprising detecting an initial regulated user account requesting access or joining the virtual meeting (The combined invention per Hui as Hui teaches the monitoring and/or detection of events associated with start times of the virtual meeting providing one of ordinary skill in the art to instantiate the instance at an appropriate time;
see e.g., Hui [0053] “The capture services may actively monitor for event during the expected start time for those events ...”
see e.g., Hui [0011] “.... creating an executable conversation instance entity object ...”
see e.g., Hui [0012] “... virtual meeting of live persons detected by virtual presence ...”)); and
capturing the communication data starting from an entry time point when the initial regulated user account joining the virtual meeting (The combined solution provides for an entry point time per Hui’s time and event-based monitoring;
see e.g., Hui [0053] “The capture services may actively monitor for event during the expected start time for those events ...”
see e.g., Hui [012] “... virtual meeting of live persons detected by virtual presence ...”).
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Hui’s instances entities. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies in capturing data associated with virtual meetings.
Regarding claim 3, Levy in view of Hui disclose The method of claim 1, further comprising:
identifying that the regulated user account is associated with a geographic region (Levy;
see e.g. [0017] “... A metadata indicator associated with a user can include one or more of a geographical location of the user ...” The examiner notes one of ordinary skill in the art is readily able to extrapolate geographical locations to regions/zone and/or locales)
executing the bot program to instantiate a regional virtual meeting participant instance associated with the geographical region(Levy; As Levy teaches geographical metadata the bot program may be associated with the geographical region;
see e.g. [0017] “... A metadata indicator associated with a user can include one or more of a geographical location of the user ...”) and
generating the archival file corresponding to the regulated user account comprising applying a regional compliance policy associated with the regulated user account to the communication data (Levy; Levy teaches the compliance polices are impacted by geographical regions;
see e.g. [0017] “For example, if the first user 160 is located in Europe, the conference management system 105 can determine that a data compliance policy such as GDPR is applicable to the recording of the meeting. Examples of data compliance policies include policies, laws, or regulations of various countries, such as Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) of Canada, California Law, Illinois law, 2-party US states laws, Switzerland, United Kingdom and European Union (EU) laws ...”)
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Hui’s instances entities. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies in capturing data associated with virtual meetings.
Regarding claim 4, Levy in view of Hui disclose the method of claim 1, further comprising:
detecting multiple regulated user accounts joining the virtual meeting (Levy; Per Independent claim 1 there are multiple meeting participants having regulated user accounts and are detected such that their policies are enacted;
see e.g. [0020] “The conference management system 105 can store the various data compliance policies in a data storage system 110 ... store a mapping of the policies applicable to a user, e.g., in the user profile ...”
);
determining that the multiple regulated user accounts are associated with different geographical regions, comprising a first geographical region and a second geographical region (Levy;
see e.g. [0017] “For example, if the first user 160 is located in Europe, the conference management system 105 can determine that a data compliance policy such as GDPR is applicable to the recording of the meeting. Examples of data compliance policies include policies, laws, or regulations of various countries, such as Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) of Canada, California Law, Illinois law, 2-party US states laws, Switzerland, United Kingdom and European Union (EU) laws ...”);
executing the bot program to instantiate a first virtual meeting participant instance associated with the first geographical region and a second virtual meeting participant instance associated with the second geographical region (As the combined solution provides for a bot participant that captures meeting communication (Hui) and multiple regulated users associated with different regions (Levy) it would have been obvious to instantiate multiple bot instances, each corresponding to the respective users or regions, to capture their communication data; see also MPEP 2144.04 Duplication of Parts);
capturing, via the first virtual meeting participant instance and the second virtual meeting participant instance, corresponding communication data associated with the multiple regulated user accounts (Levy; Per independent claim 1 communication data is captured); and
generating multiple archival files corresponding to the multiple regulated user accounts comprising applying corresponding compliance policies associated with the multiple regulated user accounts to the communication data (The combined solution per Hui provides for the archival of archival of files corresponding to the multiple regulated user accounts associated with their compliance polices (Levy;
see e.g. [0017] “For example, if the first user 160 is located in Europe, the conference management system 105 can determine that a data compliance policy such as GDPR is applicable to the recording of the meeting. Examples of data compliance policies include policies, laws, or regulations of various countries, such as Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) of Canada, California Law, Illinois law, 2-party US states laws, Switzerland, United Kingdom and European Union (EU) laws ...”);
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Hui’s instances entities. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies in capturing data associated with virtual meetings.
Regarding claim 5, Levy in view of Hui disclose the method of claim 1, further comprising: generating the archival file corresponding to the regulated user account based on a range of time during which the regulated user account was participating in the virtual meeting (The combined solution per independent claim 1 as Levy and Hui explicitly teaches the monitoring of temporal properties of the meeting which directly impact the archiving taught by Hui;
See e.g. Levy [0023] The conference management system 105 can determine the data compliance policies applicable to the recording at one or more times, e.g., when the host user 150 adds the participants to the meeting invite 125, when the meeting invite 125 is sent to the participants, when the participants accept or reject the meeting invite 125, or when the participants join the meeting.
See e.g. Hui [0061] Timestamps may also be used to help correlate interaction records to match against a conversation instance entity sharing the same or similar time and date ... ).
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Hui’s instances entities. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies in capturing data associated with virtual meetings.
Regarding claim 8, claim 8 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 1 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
Regarding claim 9, claim 9 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 2 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
Regarding claim 10, claim 10 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 3 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
Regarding claim 11, claim 11 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 4 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
Regarding claim 12, claim 12 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 5 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
Regarding claim 15, claim 15 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 1 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
Regarding claim 16, claim 16 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 2 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
Regarding claim 17, claim 17 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 3 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
Regarding claim 18, claim 18 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 4 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
Regarding claim 19, claim 19 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 5 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
Claims 6, 13, and 20 are rejected under 35 USC 103 as being unpatentable over Levy in view of Hui and in further view of Jenkins (US 6,904,435)
Regarding claim 6, Levy in Hui disclose the method of claim 1 further comprising:
storing the archival file at a storage location (The combined solution per Hui’s archiving feature and a physical location is necessarily present or the archived could not be stored);
Levy in view of Hui does not explicitly store:
generating a link for accessing the archival file at the storage location.
However in analogous art Jenkins discloses:
generating a link for accessing the archival file at the storage location (Jenkins;.
See e.g. Column 7, Lines 14 – 18 “ An archive link 270 may provide access to the archive 232, through an appropriate recipient web site such as the web site 230. Other links to other information and web sites may be listed in the information bulletin 260. For example, a link to a provider's web site may be made available”)
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Jenkin’s archive link. The motivation being the combined solution provides for incorporating a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of accessing data.
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Hui’s instances entities. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies in capturing data associated with virtual meetings.
Regarding claim 13, claim 13 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 6 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
Regarding claim 20, claim 20 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 6 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
Claims 7 and 14 are rejected under 35 USC 103 as being unpatentable over Levy in view of Hui and in further view of Natarajan (US 2017/0034571)
Regarding claim 7, Levy in view of Hui disclose the method of claim 1, Levy does not expressly disclose further comprising:
permanently deleting the communication data after a predetermined period of time.
However in analogous art Natarajan discloses:
permanently deleting the communication data after a predetermined period of time (Natarajan;
[0035] In an embodiment, the policy data 117 is associated with each of the one or more video recording devices. The user managing the video recording device configures one or more policies for each video recording device. As an example, the user may be a user/subscriber using the video recording device or a service provider. The policies are defined by the user for managing the storage space in the video recording device. As an example, the policy set by the user may be to delete the events in the video recording device when the disk space or the storage space exceeds the predefined threshold storage space value. The other policies may include but not limited to, to delete the events which are not viewed by the user for more than three months, delete the events whose size is large, delete the events after a predetermined time period and archive the events if the storage space is full.)
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Natarajan’s delete policy. The motivation being the combined solution provides for incorporating a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies of managing storage space.
Therefore it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Hui’s instances entities. The motivation being the combined solution provides for implementing a known technique resulting in increased efficiencies in capturing data associated with virtual meetings.
Regarding claim 14, claim 14 comprises the same and/or similar subject matter as claim 7 and is considered an obvious variation; therefore it is rejected based on the same rationale.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the Examiner should be directed to TODD L. BARKER whose telephone number is (571) 270 0257. The Examiner can normally be reached on Monday through Friday, 7:30am to 5:00pm.
If attempts to reach the Examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the Examiner's supervisor Vivek Srivastava can be reached on (571) 272 7304
/TODD L BARKER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2449