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 .
2. Claims 1-20 filed on 12/23/2024 are pending and being examined. Claims 1, 11, and 20 are independent form.
Priority
3. This application is a continuation of US patent application 18/128,249, now US Patent 12,229,187, which is a CIP of the earliest application 16/251,436 filed on 01/18/2019, now PAT 10,789,453.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
4. 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 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.
5. 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.
6. Claims 1, 3-4, 6-11, 13-14, and 16-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Franks et al (US Pub 2014/0074813, hereinafter “Franks”) in view of Sanio et al (US Pub 2015/0095329, hereinafter “Sanio”).
Regarding claim 1, Franks discloses a method (the method and the system for generating a video playlist based on a user request; see fig.11 and abstract) comprising:
receiving, by a computing device, via a communication chat between a user of the computing device and a further user of a further computing device (via the communication network 1000 including end users 1020 and server user 1010; see figs.10A-10B and para.119), a user selection of a category from a set of pre-determined categories ((the system may receive “a user search query”; see 1101 of fig.11, and para.129 lines 1-3.);
selecting, by the computing device, from a pool of videos, a first subset of videos, a first video from the first subset of videos being associated with the category and having a calculated value of a performance metric; selecting, by the computing device, from the pool of videos, a second subset of videos, a second video from the second subset of videos being associated with the category and having an unknown value for the performance metric; generating, by the computing device and based on a predetermined rule, a third set of videos, the third set of videos including at least one video from the first subset of videos and at least one video from the second subset of videos (the system may research video sites by comparing the tags/phrases extracted from the user’s query object to the tags extracted from the video sites and create/deliver “a playlist of music videos” to the user; see 1002—1103 of fig.11, and para.129.); and
presenting, by the computing device, the third set of videos via the communication chat (see para.148, lines 7-9: “the playable videos returned from the video storage sites may be re-ranked based on the number of keyword hits for each playable video.”).
As explained above, although Franks does not explicitly disclose: “selecting, [,], a first subset of videos, a first video from the first subset of videos being associated with the category and having a calculated value of a performance metrics”, “selecting, [,], a second subset of videos, a second video from the second subset of videos being associated with the category and having an unknown value for the performance metric, and “generating, [,], a third set of videos, the third set of videos including at least one video from the first subset of videos and at least one video from the second subset of videos”, as recited by claim 1, the “playlist of music videos” created for the user in Franks would comprise both the videos associated with the user’s category and shared from other users and the new videos--merely associated with the user’s category. Moreover, in the same field of endeavor, Sanio teaches,
establishing share rates of the personalized videos by a plurality of users; determining first rankings of personalized videos in the first subset of personalized videos, wherein the first rankings are based on global statistical data associated with the personalized videos and the share rates of the personalized videos (see para.41, lines 1-24: “to rank the list of relevant media content items. For example, each relevant media content item can be associated with a degree of contextual relevance that can reflect how relevant the media content item is to the query. Such a degree of contextual relevance can be determined using any suitable techniques, and can for example, reflect how similar the subject of a relevant media content item is to the subject of a media content item used as the basis for the query received at 102. As another example, a popularity of each relevant media content item can be used in determining the ranking of the media content items. The popularity of each relevant media content item can be based on various measurements of popularity, such as the total number of requests for the media content item, an acceleration or deceleration in requests for the media content item (e.g., a change in the number of requests per day, per week, etc.), a number of times the media content has been shared,”). In other words, Sanio teaches, to rank the list of relevant media content items for a user, the media content raking system 200 shown in fig.2, the system needs to calculate both:
[1] the similarity between the subject of a relevant media content item and the subject of a media content item used as the basis for the query received, and
[2] the popularity of each relevant media content item, i.e., how many times the media content has been shared.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention was made to incorporate the teachings of Sanio into the teachings of Franks and rank the playlist of videos taught by Franks based on both the similarity and the popularity taught by Sanio. Suggestion or motivation for doing so would have been to recommend media content items for users based on social cues and generate a list of relevant media content items for users based on the query and the social relevance scores of the items as taught by Sanio. Cf., Abstract. As a further rationale, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have improved the video playlist ranking of Franks by including the teachings of Sanio to achieve predictable results. The combination of Franks and Sanio teaches or suggests all the limitations recited in claim 1, and thus the claim is obvious over Franks in view of Sanio.
Regarding claim 3, 13, the combination of Franks and Sanio discloses, wherein the performance metric includes a popularity metric (Sanio, see para.41, lines 1-24: “The popularity of each relevant media content item can be based on various measurements of popularity, such as the total number of requests for the media content item, an acceleration or deceleration in requests for the media content item (e.g., a change in the number of requests per day, per week, etc.), a number of times the media content has been shared,”).
Regarding claim 4, 14, the combination of Franks and Sanio discloses, wherein the performance metric is determined based on a group that the user belongs to (Sanio, see para. 36: “such affirmative connections can be grouped by a user into various categories denoting the user's relationship to the other users that are social connections. Any suitable categories can be used, such as family, friend, acquaintance, business connection, etc.”).
Regarding claim 6, 16, the combination of Franks and Sanio discloses, wherein the second video is modified by the further user (Franks, see para.147: “At state 1703 the playable videos are scored. Playable videos are scored according to the strength of the relationship between each playable video's external tags and the internal tags”).
Regarding claim 7, 17, the combination of Franks and Sanio discloses, wherein the second video includes a text modified by the further user (Franks, ibid.).
Regarding claim 8, 18, the combination of Franks and Sanio discloses, wherein: the first subset of videos is ordered based on rankings associated with videos from the pool of videos; and the selection of the first subset of videos is based on the rankings (Sanio, see para.41, lines 1-24: “to rank the list of relevant media content items, [,] The popularity of each relevant media content item can be based on various measurements of popularity, such as the total number of requests for the media content item, an acceleration or deceleration in requests for the media content item (e.g., a change in the number of requests per day, per week, etc.), a number of times the media content has been shared,”).
Regarding claim 9, 19, the combination of Franks and Sanio discloses the method of claim 8, wherein the rankings are based on the performance metric (Sanio, ibid.)
Regarding claim 10, the combination of Franks and Sanio discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising, prior to generating the third set of videos: determining that a number of videos in the second subset of videos is less than a predetermined number; and in response to the determination (Franks, wherein the playlist of videos is ranked by comparing the tags/phrases extracted from the query object to the tags extracted from the video sites; see 1104 of fig.11, and para.129; see also fig.17 and para.145—para.147), adding, to the second subset of videos, further videos from the pool of videos, the further videos being associated with a further category from the set of pre-determined categories (Franks, after performing the text retrieve, add the retrieved video into the playlist; see also 1830 of fig.18 and para. 151-153).
Regarding claims 11, 20, each of them is an inherent variation of claim 1, thus it is interpreted and rejected for the reasons set forth above in the rejection of claim 1.
7. Claims 2 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Franks in view of Sanio and further in view of Wu et al (US Pub 2020/0154170, hereinafter “Wu”).
Regarding claim 2, 12, the combination of Franks and Sanio does not disclose, wherein the category is associated with an emotional expression. However, in the same field of endeavor, that is, in the field of recommending media content through intelligent automated chatting, Wu teaches a video classification method (a gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) which may be trained for ranking videos based on emotion classification, such as, a happy movie and a sad movie. See para.175. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention was made to incorporate the teachings of Wu into the teachings of the combination of Franks and Sanio and use the emotion classification as taught by Wu to select a ranked media content to users based on their input.
8. Claims 5 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Franks in view of Sanio and further in view of Emery et al (US Pat. 9,615,136, hereinafter “Emery”).
Regarding claim 5, 15, the combination of Franks and Sanio, does not disclose, wherein the group includes one of the following: an age group and a gender group. However, in the same field of endeavor, Emery teaches, the at least one characteristic associated with the user includes one of the following: an age of the user and a gender of the user (user profile data, such as “age”; see col.5 lines 1-3). It would have been obvious to persons skilled in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention was made to incorporate the teachings of Emery into the teachings of the combination of Franks nd Sanio and include user profile data including age and gender to perform a video search as taught by Emery. Suggestion or motivation for doing so would have been to identify category affinities for videos (Emery, see 110, 112,…120 of fig.1 and col.2 lines 38-55) and rank the videos based on the degree of similarity between phrases as taught by Emery (see col.2 lines 21-25; Franks, see fig.18). The combination of Franks, Sanio, and Emery suggests or teaches all the limitations recited in the claim, and thus the claim is obvious over Franks in view of Sanoi and further in view of Emery.
Conclusion
9. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
De Mello Maia: US2017/0195733.
10. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RUIPING LI whose telephone number is (571)270-3376. The examiner can normally be reached 8:30am--5:30pm.
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/RUIPING LI/Primary Examiner, Ph.D., Art Unit 2676
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