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
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 1-4,10-12 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Walter et al. (US 9069499) in view of Saito et al. (US 20260100976) and Anno et al. (US 20140240753).
Regarding claim 1, Walter teaches an apparatus, comprising: a cloud print mediator (secondary server 108 in fig. 1) configured to communicatively couple between a plurality of printers and a cloud printing service provisioned on a cloud-computing platform; the cloud print mediator comprising at least one processor and memory (fig. 3); the at least one processor configured to cause the cloud print mediator at least to: establish a first network connection with the cloud printing service that uses a secure messaging protocol (fig. 1: fig 1: primary server <-> Secondary server 108)); establish a second network connection with the cloud printing service that uses a secure transfer protocol (fig 1: primary server <-> Secondary server 108); receive a print request to print a print job from the cloud printing service over the first network connection (col.2, Lines: 30-35) a primary print server 107 that serves print requests via network 106 to printers 109), retrieve print data for the print job from the cloud printing service over the second network connection (a secondary print server to download a first print job data stream from a primary print server); and submit the print job to a selected printer of the plurality (claim 9:transmit the first print job data stream to the printer).
Walter does not teach network connections using secure messaging protocol and secure transfer protocol.
Saito teaches network connections using secure messaging protocol and secure transfer protocol (p0125:the communication ports of the port numbers 8883 (MQTT), 443 (HTTPS or MQTT over WebSocket).
Walter and Saito are combinable because they both deal with management servers with a printing apparatus. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Walter with the teaching of Saito for purpose the printer can communicate with another device connected to an external network(p0006).
Walter in view of Saito still does not teach first and second connection are different.
Anno teaches first and second connection are different (p0009: transmit or receive print commands over a first one of the one or more communication channels; and transmit or receive other data over at least a second one of the one or more communication channels).
Walter in view of Saito and Anno are combinable because they both deal with management servers with a printing apparatus. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Walter in view of Saito with the teaching of Anno for purpose implementing cloud-based connections between printers and servers and an adaptive printer-based application framework.
Regarding claim 11, Walter in view of Saito teaches a printing system, comprising: the cloud print mediator of claim 1; and the printers (Saito: fig.1: 3).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 2, Walter in view of Saito teaches the apparatus of claim 1, wherein: the secure messaging protocol used for the first network connection comprises Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol; and the secure transfer protocol used for the second network connection comprises Hypertext Transfer Protocol secure (HTTPS) ((p0125:the communication ports of the port numbers 8883 (MQTT), 443 (HTTPS or MQTT over WebSocket).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 12, The structural elements of apparatus claim 2 perform all of the steps of method claim 12. Thus, claim 12 is rejected for the same reasons discussed in the rejection of claim 2.
Regarding claim 10, The structural elements of apparatus claim 1 perform all of the steps of method claim 10. Thus, claim 10 is rejected for the same reasons discussed in the rejection of claim 1.
Claim 20 has been analyzed and rejected with regard to claim 1 and in accordance with Saito’s further teaching on: A computer-readable memory that contains instructions, which when executed by a processor perform steps in a method (Saito:p0019).
Regarding claim 3, Walter in view of Saito teaches the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to cause the cloud print mediator at least to: use a same secure standardized port for the first network connection and the second network connection (Saito:443 (HTTPS or MQTT over WebSocket).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 13, The structural elements of apparatus claim 3 perform all of the steps of method claim 13. Thus, claim 13 is rejected for the same reasons discussed in the rejection of claim 3.
Regarding claim 4, Walter in view of Saito teaches the apparatus of claim 3, wherein: the secure standardized port comprises port “443” ((Saito:443 (HTTPS or MQTT over WebSocket).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 1 has been incorporated herein.
Regarding claim 14, The structural elements of apparatus claim 4 perform all of the steps of method claim 14. Thus, claim 14 is rejected for the same reasons discussed in the rejection of claim 4.
Claims 5 and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Walter in view of Saito and Anno as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Hirata (US 20160154616).
Regarding claim 5, Walter in view of Saito and Anno does not teach the apparatus of claim 1, wherein: the secure transfer protocol used for the second network connection comprises Hypertext Transfer Protocol secure (HTTPS); and the at least one processor is further configured to cause the cloud print mediator at least to: download the print data for the print job from the cloud printing service over the second network connection using a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) .
Hirata teaches wherein: the secure transfer protocol used for the second network connection comprises Hypertext Transfer Protocol secure (HTTPS); and the at least one processor is further configured to cause the cloud print mediator at least to: download the print data for the print job from the cloud printing service over the second network connection using a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) (p0094:downloads (HTTP GET) print data from a temporary URL of one or a plurality of print data URLs described in the index file).
Walter in view of Saito and Anno and Hirata are combinable because they both deal with management servers with a printing apparatus. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Walter in view of Saito with the teaching of Hirata for purpose to establish a new authority to issue a temporary URL on a storage server, thereby preventing a client terminal from issuing a temporary URL by using authorization information for accessing a data conversion server.
Regarding claim 15, The structural elements of apparatus claim 5 perform all of the steps of method claim 15. Thus, claim 15 is rejected for the same reasons discussed in the rejection of claim 5.
Claims 6-9 and 16-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Walter in view of Saito and Anno as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Walter (US 20230305778) (Walter’778).
Regarding claim 6, Walter in view of Saito and Anno does not teach the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to cause the cloud print mediator at least to: receive status messages from the selected printer regarding processing of the print job; and send status notifications to the cloud printing service in response to the status messages received from the selected printer over the first network connection.
Walter’778 teaches wherein the at least one processor is further configured to cause the cloud print mediator at least to: receive status messages from the selected printer regarding processing of the print job; and send status notifications to the cloud printing service in response to the status messages received from the selected printer over the first network connection (p0067:Print manager 306 also transmits a status message to the cloud printing service 110 indicating that the print job 102 has ended).
Walter in view of Saito and Walter’778 are combinable because they both deal with management servers with a printing apparatus. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Walter in view of Saito with the teaching of Walter’778 for purpose of transform the printable content and the control data of the print job into the plurality of printer-specific print streams in parallel (p0007).
Regarding claim 16, The structural elements of apparatus claim 6 perform all of the steps of method claim 16. Thus, claim 16 is rejected for the same reasons discussed in the rejection of claim 6.
Regarding claim 7, Walter in view of Saito and Walter’778 teaches the apparatus of claim 6, wherein: the status messages comprise at least one of a job status of the print job and a device status of the selected printer (Walter’778 : p0067:Print manager 306 also transmits a status message to the cloud printing service 110 indicating that the print job 102 has ended).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 6 has been incorporate herein.
Regarding claim 17, The structural elements of apparatus claim 7 perform all of the steps of method claim 17. Thus, claim 17 is rejected for the same reasons discussed in the rejection of claim 7.
Regarding claim 8, Walter in view of Saito and Walter’778 teaches the apparatus of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to cause the cloud print mediator at least to: receive device capabilities from at least one of the printers; and send the device capabilities to the cloud printing service over the second network connection (Walter’778: abstract: a cloud printing service that stores device capability information for different types of printers supervised by a print server).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 6 has been incorporate herein.
Regarding claim 18, The structural elements of apparatus claim 8 perform all of the steps of method claim 18. Thus, claim 18 is rejected for the same reasons discussed in the rejection of claim 8.
Regarding claim 9, Walter in view of Saito and Walter’778 teaches the apparatus of claim 8, wherein: the secure transfer protocol used for the second network connection comprises Hypertext Transfer Protocol secure (HTTPS) (Walter’778: p0042); and the at least one processor is further configured to cause the cloud print mediator at least to: upload the device capabilities to the cloud printing service over the second network connection using a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) () (Walter’778: p0055).
The rational applied to the rejection of claim 6 has been incorporate herein.
Regarding claim 19, The structural elements of apparatus claim 9 perform all of the steps of method claim 19. Thus, claim 19 is rejected for the same reasons discussed in the rejection of claim 9.
Conclusion
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HELEN ZONG
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2683
/HELEN ZONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2683
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