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 .
Double Patenting
The instant application is a continuation of 17/583,581 (issued as US 12,155,708), which is a divisional of 16/914,048 (issued as US 11,418,560). The instant claims are not being rejected for double patenting in view of the parent applications, as the instant claims provide very little overlap with the claims of the parent applications, as the instant claims focus on the streaming of gaming content including the providing of content for two different players with different content, as opposed to the streaming of media content (For example, claim 1 only overlaps with claims of US 12/155,708) with the request and receipt of content from the media delivery system and the identifying of resource elements capable of providing the source data, with the resource elements being part of a network that is separate from the media delivery system. Further, claims 2-8 provide no overlap with the claims of the parent applications.). However, it should be noted that the portions of the instant specification appear to provide little to no detail with regard to this non-overlapping subject matter beyond that which is already provided in the instant claims (with the instant claims providing a more explicit and concise disclosure of the subject matter than is found within the instant specification). Accordingly, Applicant should be aware that, depending on how the instant claims are amended during prosecution, it may become necessary to enter an obvious-type double patenting rejection in a subsequent 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.
Claim(s) 1-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20200179803 (Holmes) in view of US 2018/0139254 (Oyman), US 2016/0134881 (Wang), and EP 0889440 (Deering).
With regard to claim 1, Holmes discloses a method for supporting interactive gaming, the method comprising:
transmitting, from a gaming client, a request to a media delivery system for data to support interactive gaming of at least a first player and a second player (Holmes: Figures 2 and 8 and Paragraph [0049]. A split screen (at least two player) gaming session can be selected from a client, where the gaming session would be streamed from some media delivery system (which would be at least a server configured to provide media to a client, such as the gaming data).);
at the gaming client, using the data to render (i) first gaming media content for the first player and (ii) second gaming media content for the second player, the second gaming media content being different from the first gaming media content (Holmes: Figure 8 and Paragraph [0049]. With split screen, a view would be provided to each player, where the view would be different for each player, even with the view being presented on a same screen.).
Holmes fails to disclose, but Oyman teaches:
receiving, at the gaming client, a response transmission from the media delivery system identifying one or more network resource elements capable of providing the source data, the one or more network resource elements being part of a network; at the gaming client, pulling the data from the one or more network resource elements identified in the response transmission (Oyman: Paragraphs [0029] and [0047] and Figure 3. A client can be provided a location to pull content.). Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to provide a location to retrieve the content of Holmes and to pull the content from that location to efficiently provide the best user experience for the client by providing an optimal server for providing content to the client.
Holmes fails to teach, but Wang teaches that the one or more resource elements are part of a network that is separate from the media delivery system (Wang: Paragraph [0031 and Figure 1. The cloud resources of Wang are invoked to perform operations with regard to the media, where such offloading performed with the system of Holmes in view of Oyman would allow such offloading to be performed, with the cloud resources being invoked by the system with communications being sent along a path similar to that of Oyman: Figure 3, with the cloud components replacing the functions of component 204). Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to utilize cloud resources to have a distinct network to leverage the well-known benefits of cloud computing, such as allowing resources to be provisioned and terminated in accordance with current need.
Holmes fails to teach, but Deering teaches that the data is source data (being treated as being data that is used to render an image as opposed to the image itself) (Deering: Page 6, lines 25-36, Page 4, lines 20-25. Deering teaches the transmission of graphical content by using primitives, such as geometric primitives or other drawing primitives, where such can then be used by the client to render the graphics.). Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to provide the source data (e.g. geometric or other primitives) to reduce the amount of data necessary for the transmission, thus reducing latency and network requirements for the stream.
With regard to claim 2, Holmes in view of Oyman, Wang, and Deering teaches wherein the source data represents an environment in which the first player and the second player are interacting with each other (Holmes: Paragraph [0049]. The split screen game would present an interactive environment that the players are using together.).
With regard to claim 3, Holmes in view of Oyman, Wang, and Deering teaches wherein the source data comprises geometric primitives regarding the environment in which the first player and the second player are interacting with each other (Deering: Page 6, lines 25-36 and page 4, lines 20-25).
With regard to claim 4, Holmes in view of Oyman, Wang, and Deering teaches, wherein the source data comprises visual primitives regarding the environment in which the first player and the second player are interacting with each other (Deering: Page 6, lines 25-36 and page 4, lines 20-25).
With regard to claim 5, Holmes in view of Oyman and Wang teaches wherein (i) the first gaming media content represents a first viewpoint of a scene, (ii) the second gaming media content represents a second viewpoint of the scene, and (iii) the second viewpoint of the scene is different from the first viewpoint of the scene (Holmes: Paragraph [0049]. In split screen, the viewpoint of each player is provided for different portions of the screen, where players playing a game together would have the same scene (game), but different viewpoints.).
With regard to claim 6, Holmes in view of Oyman, Wang, and Deering teaches wherein the one or more network resource elements comprise a storage media processing element storing at least part of the source data (Deering: Page 4, lines 20-24).
With regard to claim 7, Holmes in view of Oyman, Wang, and Deering teaches wherein the one or more network resource elements comprise a compute media processing element configured to adapt at least part of the source data for use by the gaming client (Deering: Page 6, lines 25-36 and page 4, lines 20-25. The client needs to somehow adapt the source data for display, such as rendering the image using the source data.).
With regard to claim 8, Holmes in view of Oyman, Wang, and Deering fails to teach, but knowledge possessed by one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing teaches wherein the request to the media delivery system for source data to support interactive gaming of at least the first player and the second player comprises a request for source data that is predicted to be needed in the future (More specifically, Official Notice is taken that when providing media content for game streaming, it was very well-known to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to perform some prediction of content likely to be used by a player to prepare and/or provide such content to the player before it is needed. As a note, there is no detail of how this functionality is performed in the instant specification beyond the fact the existence of a predicted request, where any traversal should both explicitly state that Applicant does not consider the noticed fact to be well-known in the art (See MPEP 2144.03 C) with consideration of the level of disclosure in the instant specification, which would require such subject matter to be well-known to find support with regard to 35 USC 112b.). Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to perform some form of prediction in the interactive game to improve the responsiveness of the system in cases of a correct prediction, where the content can either be provided to the client or the primitives can be prepared to be sent to the client, where in both cases, the amount of delay would be reduced by varying degrees for any correct predictions.
With regard to claims 9-16, the instant claims are similar to claims 1-8, and are rejected for similar reasons. It is noted that claim 9 refers to client buffers, where such would be the location from which the client game data can be pulled from as the game data would be generated based on the interaction with the game and pulled (which requires storing of such content until it is pulled (i.e. buffering)), where claim 1 provides a location from which the source data can be pulled. In the rejection of claim 1, Oyman is applied to teach pulling of media content from a location provided to the client, with such modifying the game content of Holmes that is provided to a client over a network (See the rejection of claim 1, above).
With regard to claims 17-20, the instant claims are similar to one or more of claims 1-8, and are rejected for similar reasons. It is noted that claim 17 broadly recites the implementing of a media data plane, where such a plane is taken to be an abstraction that provides the components to provide media data (e.g. the gaming content) to a client, where by virtue of implementing the streaming gaming session, some media data plane is established to provide the up and downstream data (e.g. inputs and primitives). If Applicant intends for the implementing of the media data plane to have meaning beyond the implementing of the session for transferring the data, the instant claim should be amended to reflect this (such as by providing details of the steps involved in establishing the media data plane and/or providing the structure of the media data plane).
Conclusion
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SCOTT B. CHRISTENSEN
Examiner
Art Unit 2444
/SCOTT B CHRISTENSEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2444