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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 08/12/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1, 3 and 5-8 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Claims 1, 3, 6 and 8 have been amended and claims 2 and 4 have been canceled.
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, 3 and 5-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kaftan (US 2010/0043022) in view of Cox (US 2016/0094300) ad further in view of Gaydou (US 2015/0281792).
Regarding claim 1, Kaftan discloses a management method implemented by a management entity device and comprising:
managing storage of parts of content following successive broadcasts of said parts, wherein the parts that have been broadcast are stored over a given time range preceding a current broadcast time, wherein the time range varies over time (caching or storing each content stream as it is being broadcast for a predefined period of time which depends on the duration of the content currently being broadcast. Furthermore, different contents will have different duration, therefore, the predefined period of time varies over time; see at least paragraph 0098).
Kaftan is not clear about storing content that have been previously broadcast before the content currently being broadcast and only the content currently being broadcast is available for delayed playback. Furthermore, Kaftan is not clear about updating a time range to coincide a start time of a time range with a start time of a content currently being broadcast, so that a delayed playback of stored content begins from the start time the content currently being broadcast.
Cox discloses t storing content that have been previously broadcast before the content currently being broadcast and only the content currently being broadcast is available for delayed playback; at T1, content preceding time T1 will have been cached in content buffer. If the user is listening to a channel at T1 and chooses to select one of the other channels, the content available for play from the content buffer; see at least paragraphs 0020 and 0063-0065.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify Kaftan by the teachings of Cox by having the above limitations so to be able to enhance playback of content while switching among channels while being received; see at least the Abstract.
Kaftan in view of Cox are not clear about updating a time range to coincide a start time of a time range with a start time of a content currently being broadcast, so that a delayed playback of stored content begins from the start time the content currently being broadcast.
Gaydou discloses the above missing limitation; an interactive TV program guide may automatically adjust the bar display to reflect times specific to the currently broadcasting program. For example, the guide application may adjust the start time and the end time of recorded buffer displayed on the bar to the start and end time of the currently broadcasting program and when the user initiates a playback of the recorded video at a later time, the guide may display zero as the start time on the control bar; see at least paragraphs 0236-0238.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify Kaftan in view of Cox by the teachings of Gaydou by having the above limitations so to provide a transport control interface to provide information, control live and recorded video programming; see at least the Abstract.
Regarding claim 3, Kaftan in view of Cox and further in view of Gaydou disclose the management method according to claim 1, comprising executing a time delay before the delayed playback of the stored parts of the content (Kaftan; the start over service is implemented within the context of a near video on demand service and the start over request is only processed periodically and different instances of the cached copy of the stream are transmitted on a periodic bases, i.e. once a minute, once every 5 minutes, etc.; see at least paragraph 0107).
Regarding claim 5, Kaftan in view of Cox and further in view of Gaydou disclose the management method according to claim 1, wherein the content currently being broadcast is broadcast on a plurality of different broadcast channels, and a sum of the time ranges associated with some or all of the channels is less than a given value (Cox; see at least Figs. 6-8 and paragraphs 0051, 0072 and 0075-0076).
Claim 6 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 1.
Claim 7 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 1, wherein the server is met by an edge router of Kaftan; see at least paragraph 0099.
Claim 8 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 1.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to YASSIN ALATA whose telephone number is (571)270-5683. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 7-4 ET.
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/YASSIN ALATA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2426
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