DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 2/6/2025 and 2/9/2026 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97 and the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over N'guessan; Sylvia et al. US 20240147008 A1 (hereafter N'guessan) and in further view of SILVERMAN; LEON et al. US 20150063781 A1 (hereafter Silverman) and in further view of Shimy; Camron US 20150382068 A1
(hereafter Shimy).
Regarding claim 1, “a method for content interaction, comprising: in response to a content presentation indication, playing a first video clip associated with a recommended object; presenting a plurality of thumbnails in association with the first video clip, the plurality of thumbnails being linked to a plurality of video clips associated with the recommended object, respectively; and in response to detecting a selection of a second thumbnail in the plurality of thumbnails, playing a second video clip associated with the second thumbnail while maintaining presentation of at least one of the plurality of thumbnails” N'guessan Fig. 2 and 3a to 3d and para 24, 46 disclosing a streaming application that uses a video feed to provide available content to the user relating to a particular object like soccer or tennis; para 39 teaches video cards 221-232 can include thumbnail images, text (e.g., title of the video, user name of the video creator, etc.), tags, emoji, and/or any other suitable content. In some embodiments, video cards 221-232 can be selectable, and can navigate a user to a media player where a video (indicated in the selected video card) can begin playback. Whereas N'guessan teaches navigating content presentation comprising video content, N'guessan does not use the term video clip. In an analogous art, Silverman teaches navigating content presentation comprising video clips (para 19-20, 27-29).
In an analogous art, Shimy discloses a motivation for modifying the presentation of video content as disclosed in N'guessan and including video clips related to video content objects (para 25 and Fig. 2 and Fig. 5).
See prior art made of record but not relied upon - Ferren; Bran et al. US 10212484 B2
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 N'guessan for presenting a plurality of thumbnails for videos associated with a recommended content object by further incorporating known elements of Silverman’s invention for navigating video content comprising video clips for associated objects appearing in the related video in order to improve the user’s ability to easily view video content and video clips corresponding to associated objects.
Regarding claim 2, “further comprising: highlighting a first thumbnail linked to the first video clip in the plurality of thumbnails while playing the first video clip; and highlighting the second thumbnail while playing the second video clip” is further rejected on obvious grounds as discussed in the rejection of claim 1 above wherein the prior art renders obvious the navigation of a cursor for selecting displayed thumbnails and wherein Shimy para 71-72 teaches moving a cursor in relation to selection a thumbnail and a person of ordinary skill in the art would have reasonably inferred that the moving cursor highlights the thumbnail for selection by the viewer.
Regarding claim 3, “wherein the plurality of video clips is arranged in sequence, and the method further comprises: in response to an end of playing the first video clip, in response to a presence of a third video clip after the first video clip, playing the third video clip; and in response to the first video clip being a last video clip in the plurality of video clips, playing a first one video clip in the plurality of video clips” is further rejected on obvious grounds as discussed in the rejection of claims 1-2 above wherein the prior art renders obvious the navigation of a cursor for selecting displayed thumbnails and wherein Silverman Fig. 2 element 50 provides the viewer with an option of playing all the video content in a particular sequence and wherein N'guessan teaches video content is ranked (para 28, 50 process 100 can rank the media content items according to any suitable criteria, such as a prediction of user engagement with each media content item in the ranking. In another example, in some embodiments, process 100 can include any suitable user engagement signals from the user interface (either in the current session and/or aggregated over many prior sessions) to determine media content items that the user is likely to engage with in a positive manner, and can rank those media content items higher in the presentation order than other media content items.
Regarding claim 4, “wherein a playing order of the plurality of video clips is the same as an arrangement order of the plurality of thumbnails” is further rejected on obvious grounds as discussed in the rejection of claims 1-3 above wherein the prior art renders obvious the navigation of a cursor for selecting displayed thumbnails and wherein Silverman Fig. 2 element 50 provides the viewer with an option of playing all the video content in a particular sequence and wherein N'guessan teaches video content is ranked (para 28, 50 process 100 can rank the media content items according to any suitable criteria, such as a prediction of user engagement with each media content item in the ranking. In another example, in some embodiments, process 100 can include any suitable user engagement signals from the user interface (either in the current session and/or aggregated over many prior sessions) to determine media content items that the user is likely to engage with in a positive manner, and can rank those media content items higher in the presentation order than other media content items.
Regarding claim 5, “wherein the playing order of the plurality of video clips and the arrangement order of the plurality of thumbnails are determined based on orchestrating information from a video provider” is further rejected on obvious grounds as discussed in the rejection of claims 1-4 above wherein the prior art renders obvious the navigation of a cursor for selecting displayed thumbnails and wherein Silverman Fig. 2 element 48 and 50 provides the viewer with an option of playing the video content in a particular sequence and wherein N'guessan teaches video content is ranked by a provider (para 28, 48-50 process 100 can rank the media content items according to any suitable criteria, such as a prediction of user engagement with each media content item in the ranking. In another example, in some embodiments, process 100 can include any suitable user engagement signals from the user interface (either in the current session and/or aggregated over many prior sessions) to determine media content items that the user is likely to engage with in a positive manner, and can rank those media content items higher in the presentation order than other media content items.
Regarding claim 6, “further comprising: presenting a video clip progress bar indicating a number of the plurality of video clips and a current playing video clip in the plurality of video clips” is further rejected on obvious grounds as discussed in the rejection of claims 1-5 above wherein the prior art renders obvious the navigation of a cursor for selecting displayed thumbnails and wherein Silverman Fig. 2 element 48 and 50 provides the viewer with an option of playing the video content in a particular sequence and wherein para 31 teaches there may be options for the user to view all of the scenes sequentially, as they appear in the original linear video content, or the user may be given the option to view all of the scenes chronologically (i.e., in their order along the fictional timeline), or the user may sort or arrange the results in alternative sequences according to the user's preferences.
Regarding claim 7, “further comprising: in response to the content presentation indication, pre-loading at least one of the plurality of video clips and the plurality of thumbnails; and loading other video clips in the plurality of video clips while playing the at least one video clip” is further rejected on obvious grounds as discussed in the rejection of claims 1-6 above wherein the prior art renders obvious the navigation of a cursor for selecting displayed thumbnails and wherein N'guessan para 23-24 teaches the mechanisms described herein relate to the presentation of media content received in an update to a user interface, where the update contains additional media content that can be displayed in the user interface. The mechanisms can, in some embodiments, replace unseen media content in the user interface with media content included in the update. In some embodiments, the mechanisms can receive user engagement signals and can determine the similarity of media content that received engagement with media content that was received in the update and/or with media content that is queued for display… consider a user that is scrolling through videos in a streaming application that uses a video feed to provide available content to the user. Continuing this example, when the user dislikes a video from the video feed which happens to be a soccer-related video, the next update to the video feed (which can include new content) can reflect this information, where the recommendation system included with the streaming application can send content to the user's device that includes comedy sketches and other types of sports (e.g., tennis). However, it is often the case that an update to a video feed happens while there are still additional items from a previous update that are yet to be presented.
Regarding claim 8, “wherein the plurality of thumbnails is presented in a tile manner” is further rejected on obvious grounds as discussed in the rejection of claims 1-7 above wherein the prior art renders obvious the navigation of a cursor for selecting displayed thumbnails and wherein N'guessan Fig. 2 teaches a tiled display; See also Silverman Fig. 2.
Regarding claim 9, “wherein the plurality of thumbnails comprises description information of video clips to which the plurality of thumbnails is linked, respectively” is further rejected on obvious grounds as discussed in the rejection of claims 1-7 above wherein the prior art renders obvious the navigation of a cursor for selecting displayed thumbnails and wherein Silverman para 19-21 teaches video content comprises metadata tags are added to individual scenes or clips in the video content; metadata tags relate to objects in the video.
Regarding the device claims 10-18 and non-transitory computer readable media claim 19, the claims are grouped and rejected with the method claims 1-9 because the steps of the method claims are met by the disclosure of the apparatus and methods of the reference(s) as discussed in the rejection of claims 1-9 and because the steps of the method are easily converted into elements of computer device and computer implemented methods by one of ordinary skill in the art.
CONCLUSION
See prior art made of record but not relied upon - Ferren; Bran et al. US 10212484 B2
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/ALFONSO CASTRO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2421
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