DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Election/Restrictions
2. Applicant’s election without traverse of claims 16-20 in the reply filed on May 04, 2026 is acknowledged.
Priority
3. Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority based on an application filed in China on December 26, 2023. It is noted, however, that applicant has not filed a certified copy of the CN202311810244.1 application as required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
4. 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 of this title, 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.
5. Claim(s) 1-2 and 9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li (US 2025/0203223 A1, hereinafter referred as “Li”) in view of Diard (US 2012/0188270 A1, hereinafter referred as “Diard”).
Regarding claim 1, Li discloses a display controller (Fig. 2 and ¶0036 discloses image processing circuit) comprising:
a first manager unit configured to receive first display data from a first data source by way of a service manager unit (Fig. 2 and ¶0092 and ¶0094 discloses the second direct rendering management unit may be configured to process image data transmitted through the second data transmission path which originates from the image enhancement chip and includes the surface flinger), and produce first composed data using the first display data (¶0094 discloses the second direct rendering management unit may be configured to process image data transmitted through the second data transmission path); and
a second manager unit configured to receive second display data directly from a second data source (Fig. 2, ¶0091, ¶0094 and ¶0125-¶0126 discloses image data acquired by an image sensor is forwarded to the first direct rendering management unit), and produce second composed data using the second display data (¶0053 and ¶0094 discloses first direct rendering management unit may be configured to process image data transmitted through the first data transmission path).
Li doesn’t disclose wherein the display controller is configured to provide the first composed data and the second composed data to a graphic processing unit configured to perform rendering process using the first composed data and the second composed data, and produce rendered display data to be provided to a display apparatus.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Diard discloses wherein the display controller is configured to provide the first composed data (rendered frame associated with application A) and the second composed data (rendered frame associated with application B and stored in temporary buffer 406) to a graphic processing unit (426) configured to perform rendering process using the first composed data and the second composed data (Fig. 4A and ¶0028 discloses the primary GPU 426 renders the frame associated with the application A, it then pulls the rendered image from the temporary buffer 406, applies the appropriate blending weights to the two rendered images, and blends the two weighted images in step 456), and produce rendered display data to be provided to a display apparatus (Fig. 4A and ¶0028 discloses the primary GPU 426 stores the blended results in a primary frame buffer in video memory 428 to be scanned out to a display device 438).
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 Li in order to enable high quality images from multiple applications to be displayed on a single display device cost effectively (¶0010).
Regarding claim 2, Li discloses display controller of claim 1, wherein the first manager unit and the second manager unit are Direct Rendering Manager modules (¶0094 discloses first direct rendering management unit and the second direct rendering management unit may be two relatively independent rendering units obtained by partitioning rendering resources in the direct rendering manager (DRM)).
Regarding claim 9, Li discloses display controller of claim 1, wherein the first manager unit (¶0094 discloses second direct management unit) comprises a first status indicator (¶0090 discloses initialization completion signal), wherein the first manager unit is configured to receive the first display data in response to a status of the first status indicator being available (¶0090 discloses upon receiving the initialization completion signal, the camera hardware abstraction layer (camera HAL) may further transmit data to the direct rendering manager (DRM)); and the second manager unit (¶0094 discloses first direct management unit) comprises a second status indicator (¶0090 discloses initialization completion signal), wherein the second manager unit is configured to receive the second display data in response to a status of the second status indicator being available (¶0090 discloses upon receiving the initialization completion signal, the camera hardware abstraction layer (camera HAL) may further transmit data to the direct rendering manager (DRM)).
6. Claim(s) 5-6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li in view of Diard and in further view of Yang (CN 116339659 A, hereinafter referred as “Yang”).
Regarding claim 5, Li as modified doesn’t disclose the display controller of claim 1, wherein the display controller is within a kernel zone of an operating system; and the service manager unit is within a user space of the operating system.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Yang discloses wherein the display controller is within a kernel zone of an operating system (¶0052 discloses the kernel is provided with a hardware layer unit (Plane-1, Plane-2, Plane-3, Plane-4), a display controller (Visual Output Processor, VOP) and a display device (DispLayer)); and the service manager unit is within a user space of the operating system (¶0052 discloses wherein the user space is provided with an image-related service (SurfaceFlinger)).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to further modify Li in order to retain the conventional surfaceflinger-managed display path and a direct DRM path while having an established android division between user-space display services and kernel-side display resources.
Regarding claim 6, Li as modified doesn’t disclose the display controller of claim 5, wherein the operating system is an Android operating system, and wherein the service manager unit is a Surfaceflinger unit in the Android operating system.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Yang discloses wherein the operating system is an Android operating system, and wherein the service manager unit is a Surfaceflinger unit in the Android operating system (¶0052 discloses the Android (Android) system is loaded with an application program (APPs), comprising a user space (Userspace) and a kernel (Kernel); wherein the user space is provided with an image-related service (SurfaceFlinger)).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to further modify Li in order to retain the conventional surfaceflinger-managed display path and a direct DRM path while having an established android division between user-space display services and kernel-side display resources.
7. Claim(s) 7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li in view of Diard, in further view of Yang, and still in further view of Yu et al. (CN 105701037 A, hereinafter referred as “Yu”).
Regarding claim 7, Li as modified doesn’t disclose the display controller of claim 5, wherein the operating system is a Linux operating system, and wherein the service manager unit is a Weston unit in the Linux operating system.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Yu discloses wherein the operating system is a Linux operating system (pg. 10 discloses adopt linux as the operating system of the processor of vehicle entertainment system), and wherein the service manager unit is a Weston unit in the Linux operating system (abstract and pg. 10 discloses simultaneously accessing to a display controller by a weston and a DRM in a vehicle-mounted entertainment system).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to further modify Li for the purpose of applying known operating-system specific compositor and DRM architecture according to its established function.
8. Claim(s) 8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li in view of Diard, and in further view of Yu.
Regarding claim 8, Li as modified doesn’t disclose the display controller of claim 1, wherein the service manager unit is configured to allow only one access by one data source to the first manager unit.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Yu discloses wherein the service manager unit is configured to allow only one access by one data source to the first manager unit (pg. 10 discloses the Weston has exclusive control of the DRM, thereby preventing another independent application from concurrently accessing that DRM).
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 Li for the purpose of predictably provide centralized control of the DRM by the service manager and prevent conflicting independent access to the same DRM resource.
9. Claim(s) 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li in view of Yang.
Regarding claim 10, Li discloses a method for displaying display data (¶0003 discloses electronic devices can output high-quality images) comprising:
[initializing] a manager unit (¶0090 discloses the direct rendering manager (DRM) performs initialization based on the target configuration information) comprising a status indicator as a target for receiving display data (¶0090 discloses the direct rendering manager (DRM) feeds back an initialization completion signal to the camera hardware abstraction layer (camera HAL) through the direct rendering manager wrapper (DRMWrapper));
at the manager unit, in response to the status indicator indicating that the manager unit is available, receiving display data directly from a data source (¶0090 discloses upon receiving the initialization completion signal, the camera hardware abstraction layer (camera HAL) may further transmit data to the direct rendering manager (DRM));
producing, by the manager unit, composed data using the received display data (¶0058 discloses the first image and the shooting timestamp of the first image are synthesized by the direct rendering manager (DRM));…
Li doesn’t disclose registering a manager unit; and providing the composed data for rendering and displaying.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Yang discloses registering a manager unit (pg. 21 discloses after the initialization of the screen projection information is completed, the registration process is called to complete the registration of the direct rendering manager); and providing the composed data for rendering and displaying (pg. 23 discloses render the data to be projected, and write the rendered data to be projected into the preset memory In the display area…. The direct rendering manager sends the data to be projected in the target hardware layer unit to the display device for display according to the screen projection request).
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 Li in order for the operating system to recognize the DRM and expose it as an available target that applications or services can access for display-data processing.
Allowable Subject Matter
10. Claims 3-4 and 11-15 are 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
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PRIYANK J SHAH whose telephone number is (571)270-3732. The examiner can normally be reached on 10:00 - 6:00 M-F.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ghebretinsae, Temesghen can be reached on (571) 272-3017. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/PRIYANK J SHAH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2626
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