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 .
Priority
The present application has claimed priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 from Australian Patent Application No. 2023210528 filed July 31, 2023. Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) were filed on 2/16/2025 and 8/4/2025. The submissions are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
Specification
The lengthy specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
Drawings
The drawings filed 2/16/2025 were accepted.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
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) 1-2, 4, 6-15, 17, and 19-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Collins et al (US20060259858A1; filed 5/13/2005; hereinafter referred to as Collins) in view of Tanaka (US20070097148A1; filed 10/30/2006) and Borders (US20170024362A1; filed 5/19/2016).
With regards to claim 1, Collins discloses A computer implemented method for generating a set of replacement design elements based on a set of source fills and a destination element (Collins, abstract: “A new slide layout having an arbitrary number of placeholders is applied to an existing slide… The placeholders in the original slide are mapped to a new slide layout”), the method including:
selecting a set of... arrangements, wherein each... arrangement defines a number of... sections that is equal to a number of source fills in the set of source fills (Collins, abstract: “The placeholders in the original slide are mapped to a new slide layout that may have… the same… placeholders than the original slide layout”), and wherein each... section is associated with... section data defining a... section size and a... section origin (Collins, paragraph 14: “a layouts' position and size of: title placeholders; header, footer and slide placeholders.” The size and origin of the sections are interpreted as the size and position of Collins’ placeholders); …
generating the set of replacement design elements, wherein each replacement design element is based on the destination element and corresponds to a different... section defined by the first... arrangement (Collins, paragraph 19: “FIG. 3 shows a process for matching placeholders when a new layout is applied”), and wherein generating the set of replacement design elements includes generating a first replacement design element corresponding to a first... section by:
determining a size and position of the first replacement design element based on the first... section (Collins, paragraph 19 and fig. 3: the best match is found for the placeholder using information about the original placeholder such as the size and type);
assigning a first source fill to the first replacement design element; and transferring the first source fill to the first replacement design element (Collins, Fig. 4: elements from the original layout are transferred to the new layout).
However, Collins does not disclose grid arrangements… grid sections (grid arrangements and grid sections are used multiple times in the claim, but for the purpose of brevity of the rejection they are only listed once each)… calculating a final... arrangement score for each... arrangement, the final... arrangement score for a selected... arrangement being a measure of how well the set of... sections of the selected... arrangement accommodate the source fills, wherein calculating the final... arrangement score for each selected... arrangement includes:
calculating a set of aspect ratio differences for the selected... arrangement,
wherein each aspect ratio difference corresponds to a particular... section of the selected... arrangement and a matched source fill; and
calculating the final... arrangement score for the selected... arrangement based on the sum of the set of aspect ratio differences;
selecting a first... arrangement from the set of... arrangements based on the first... arrangement having the smallest sum of aspect ratio differences amongst the final... arrangement scores.
Tanaka teaches grid arrangements… grid sections… (Tanaka, paragraph 3: “setting a grid in a layout region and arranging a layout element along the grid”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Collins and Tanaka such that the layout was grid-based. This would have made it easier for a user to make a layout look nice (Tanaka, paragraph 3: “a layout system, a layout program, and a layout method capable of reducing labor required for a layout operation and making a layout look nice”).
Borders teaches calculating a final... arrangement score for each... arrangement, the final... arrangement score for a selected... arrangement being a measure of how well the set of... sections of the selected... arrangement accommodate the source fills, wherein calculating the final... arrangement score for each selected... arrangement (Borders, abstract: “generating a plurality of candidate object layouts, scoring the plurality of candidate object layouts, and selecting a layout from the candidate object layouts for the region based on the scores;” paragraph 85: “generating candidate tree structures with desirable values of properties (like aspect ratio, the ratio of the largest to smallest leaf node, etc.). This section provides a procedure for scoring a generated tree layout to determine if it is more desirable than other layouts”) includes:
calculating a set of aspect ratio differences for the selected... arrangement (Borders, paragraph 87: “if one goal is to match a target aspect ratio R, then an effective way to compute a penalty score based on the layout aspect ratio S is to divide the greater of S and R by the other value, producing a normalized ratio Q>=1 of the actual aspect ratio to the target aspect ratio;” paragraphs 85-89 provide more details on the calculations),
wherein each aspect ratio difference corresponds to a particular... section of the selected... arrangement and a matched source fill (Borders, paragraph 87: “an effective way to compute a penalty score based on the layout aspect ratio S is to divide the greater of S and R by the other value”); and
calculating the final... arrangement score for the selected... arrangement based on the sum of the set of aspect ratio differences; selecting a first... arrangement from the set of... arrangements based on the first... arrangement having the smallest sum of aspect ratio differences amongst the final... arrangement scores (Borders, paragraph 89: “the SCORE procedure can output this value, and it can be used to select the most desirable tree layout by choosing the layout with the best (lowest) value”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Collins, Tanaka, and Borders such that the layouts are scored based on a scoring of the aspect ratio of the elements. This would have enabled the invention to select the most desirable layout (Borders, paragraph 85: “a procedure for scoring a generated tree layout to determine if it is more desirable than other layouts”).
With regards to claim 2, which depends on claim 1, Collins does not disclose wherein the grid section data of the first grid section defines the first grid section's origin by an origin X value and an origin Y value.
However, Tanaka teaches wherein the grid section data of the first grid section defines the first grid section's origin by an origin X value and an origin Y value (Tanaka, paragraph 222: “Each of the records includes a grid identifier 420 for identifying a grid, a start x coordinate 422 of a grid point, a start y coordinate 424 of the grid point, an interval 426 between grid points in an x direction, an interval 428 between grid points in a y direction, an end x coordinate 430 of a grid point, an end y coordinate 432 of the grid point, and an attachment position 434 that is matched with the grid point in a content region.”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Collins, Tanaka, and Borders such that the layout was grid-based. This would have made it easier for a user to make a layout look nice (Tanaka, paragraph 3: “a layout system, a layout program, and a layout method capable of reducing labor required for a layout operation and making a layout look nice”).
With regards to claim 4, which depends on claim 1, Collins does not disclose wherein the grid section data of the first grid section defines the first grid section's size by a grid section width value and a grid section height value.
However, Tanaka teaches wherein the grid section data of the first grid section defines the first grid section's size by a grid section width value and a grid section height value (Tanaka, paragraph 222: “Each of the records includes a grid identifier 420 for identifying a grid, … an interval 426 between grid points in an x direction, an interval 428 between grid points in a y direction…”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Collins, Tanaka, and Borders such that the layout was grid-based. This would have made it easier for a user to make a layout look nice (Tanaka, paragraph 3: “a layout system, a layout program, and a layout method capable of reducing labor required for a layout operation and making a layout look nice”).
With regards to claim 6, which depends on claim 1, Collins does not disclose wherein calculating the set of aspect ratio differences for the first grid arrangement includes:
calculating an aspect ratio for each source fill;
calculating an aspect ratio for each grid section of the first grid arrangement;
identifying matching source fill/grid section pairs based on the source fill aspect ratios and the grid section aspect ratios; and
calculating an aspect ratio difference for each matching source fill/grid section pair based on the aspect ratio of the pair's source fill and the aspect ratio of the pair's grid section.
Tanaka teaches grid arrangement… grid section… (Tanaka, paragraph 3: “setting a grid in a layout region and arranging a layout element along the grid”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Collins, Tanaka, and Borders such that the layout was grid-based. This would have made it easier for a user to make a layout look nice (Tanaka, paragraph 3: “a layout system, a layout program, and a layout method capable of reducing labor required for a layout operation and making a layout look nice”).
Borders teaches wherein calculating the set of aspect ratio differences for the first grid arrangement includes: calculating an aspect ratio for each source fill; calculating an aspect ratio for each grid section of the first grid arrangement; identifying matching source fill/grid section pairs based on the source fill aspect ratios and the grid section aspect ratios (Borders, paragraph 29: “FIG. 3 shows a layout of multiple content objects into four different regions; this shows a minimal layout where fewer content objects (in this case 1) may be inserted into a region if those objects have an aspect ratio closely matching the region;” matching/comparing the aspect ratios of the objects (source fill) and regions (grid section) requires determining the aspect ratio of each); and
calculating an aspect ratio difference for each matching source fill/grid section pair based on the aspect ratio of the pair's source fill and the aspect ratio of the pair's grid section (Borders, paragraph 87: “if one goal is to match a target aspect ratio R, then an effective way to compute a penalty score based on the layout aspect ratio S is to divide the greater of S and R by the other value, producing a normalized ratio Q>=1 of the actual aspect ratio to the target aspect ratio;” paragraphs 85-89 provide more details on the calculations).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Collins, Tanaka, and Borders such that the layouts are scored based on a scoring of the aspect ratio of the elements. This would have enabled the invention to select the most desirable layout (Borders, paragraph 85: “a procedure for scoring a generated tree layout to determine if it is more desirable than other layouts”).
With regards to claim 7, which depends on claim 6, Collins does not disclose wherein the first grid section has a largest grid section aspect ratio and a first source fill has a largest fill aspect ratio, and wherein identifying matching source fill/grid section pairs includes identifying the first grid section and the first fill as a matching source fill/grid section pair.
Tanaka teaches grid section… (Tanaka, paragraph 3: “setting a grid in a layout region and arranging a layout element along the grid”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Collins, Tanaka, and Borders such that the layout was grid-based. This would have made it easier for a user to make a layout look nice (Tanaka, paragraph 3: “a layout system, a layout program, and a layout method capable of reducing labor required for a layout operation and making a layout look nice”).
Borders teaches wherein the first… section has a largest… section aspect ratio and a first source fill has a largest fill aspect ratio (“a largest” aspect ratio doesn’t limit the limitation because it needs to be compared to other values explicitly), and wherein identifying matching source fill/… section pairs includes identifying the first… section and the first fill as a matching source fill/… section pair (Borders, paragraph 29: “FIG. 3 shows a layout of multiple content objects into four different regions; this shows a minimal layout where fewer content objects (in this case 1) may be inserted into a region if those objects have an aspect ratio closely matching the region”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Collins, Tanaka, and Borders such that the layouts are scored based on a scoring of the aspect ratio of the elements. This would have enabled the invention to select the most desirable layout (Borders, paragraph 85: “a procedure for scoring a generated tree layout to determine if it is more desirable than other layouts”).
With regards to claim 8, which depends on claim 1, Collins discloses wherein determining the size and position of the first replacement design element determining the size of the first replacement design element based on the first… section's size and determining the position of the first replacement design element based on the first… section's origin (Collins, paragraph 16: “Each layout, such as original layout 210 and new layout 212, may include its own number and arrangement of body placeholders that share the global style definition from the slide master by default, but may also store unique size and position information for each layout”).
However, Collins does not teach grid section… grid section Tanaka teaches grid arrangements… grid sections… (Tanaka, paragraph 3: “setting a grid in a layout region and arranging a layout element along the grid”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Collins, Tanaka, and Borders such that the layout was grid-based. This would have made it easier for a user to make a layout look nice (Tanaka, paragraph 3: “a layout system, a layout program, and a layout method capable of reducing labor required for a layout operation and making a layout look nice”).
With regards to claim 9, which depends on claim 1, Collins discloses wherein assigning the first source fill to the first replacement design element (Collins, Fig. 4: elements from the original layout are transferred to the new layout).
However, Collins does not disclose … based on an aspect ratio of the first source fill and an aspect ratio of the replacement design element.
Borders teaches based on an aspect ratio of the first source fill and an aspect ratio of the replacement design element (Borders, paragraph 87: “an effective way to compute a penalty score based on the layout aspect ratio S is to divide the greater of S and R by the other value;” paragraph 89: “the SCORE procedure can output this value, and it can be used to select the most desirable tree layout by choosing the layout with the best (lowest) value;” paragraphs 85-89 further describe the computation and usage of the aspect ratios).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Collins, Tanaka, and Borders such that the layouts are scored based on a scoring of the aspect ratio of the elements. This would have enabled the invention to select the most desirable layout (Borders, paragraph 85: “a procedure for scoring a generated tree layout to determine if it is more desirable than other layouts”).).
With regards to claim 10, which depends on claim 9, Collins does not disclose wherein a first replacement design element has a largest replacement design element aspect ratio and the first fill has a largest fill aspect ratio.
Borders teaches wherein a first replacement design element has a largest replacement design element aspect ratio and the first fill has a largest fill aspect ratio (“a largest” aspect ratio doesn’t limit the limitation because it needs to be compared to other values explicitly; Borders, paragraph 87: “an effective way to compute a penalty score based on the layout aspect ratio…;” paragraph 13: “The slots may be different aspect ratios that are more suitable to content that has a similar aspect ratio.”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Collins, Tanaka, and Borders such that the layouts are scored based on a scoring of the aspect ratio of the elements. This would have enabled the invention to select the most desirable layout (Borders, paragraph 85: “a procedure for scoring a generated tree layout to determine if it is more desirable than other layouts”).).
With regards to claim 11, which depends on claim 1, Collins discloses wherein the destination element is an element of a deck-format design page, and the method further includes replacing the destination element with the set of replacement design elements (Collins, abstract: “A new slide layout having an arbitrary number of placeholders is applied to an existing slide. Placeholders in an original slide are mapped to placeholders within a new slide layout configuration;” a “deck-format” is interpreted as being a slide, based on the description in paragraph 4 of the specification).
With regards to claim 12, which depends on claim 1, Collins discloses receiving a first set of one or more user inputs selecting the set of source fills; and receiving a second set of one or more user inputs selecting the destination element (Collins, paragraph 15: “Presentation authors can also add additional custom layouts having an arbitrary number of placeholders that can be used and that are based on their own design criteria. Presentation authors may also apply a new layout to existing slides to create a new look and feel for a presentation;” the first input(s) are interpreted as the selection of the slide to be edited, and the second input(s) are interpreted as the editing of the layout)
With regards to claim 13, which depends on claim 1, Collins discloses wherein the set of source fills and the destination element are automatically determined (Collins, abstract: “The placeholders in the original slide are mapped to a new slide layout that may have fewer, the same, or more placeholders than the original slide layout. The placeholders may be matched based on many different criteria, including, the function of the placeholder; the name of the placeholder; the type of the placeholder; and the position ID of the placeholder.” Mapping the placeholder (elements) based on criteria is interpreted as performing the mapping automatically).
Claims 14-15 recite substantially similar limitations to claims 1-2 respectively and are thus rejected along the same rationales.
Claim 17 recites substantially similar limitations to claim 4 and is thus rejected along the same rationale.
Claim 19 recites substantially similar limitations to claim 6 and is thus rejected along the same rationale.
Claim 20 recites substantially similar limitations to claim 1 and is thus rejected along the same rationale.
Claim(s) 3, 5, 16, and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Collins et al in view of Tanaka and Borders, and further in view of Young et al (US20050237321A1; filed 3/31/2004).
With regards to claim 3, which depends on claim 2, Collins, Tanaka, and Borders do not disclose wherein the origin X value is expressed as a proportion of a total width of the first grid arrangement and the origin Y value is expressed as a proportion of a total height of the first grid arrangement.
However, Young et al teaches wherein the origin X value is expressed as a proportion of a total width of the first grid arrangement and the origin Y value is expressed as a proportion of a total height of the first grid arrangement (Young et al, paragraph 25: “The rows R and columns C themselves are owned by the grid canvas parent 10, and can be sized in a conventional manner (e.g., fixed size, percent size, auto-size, weighted size)”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Collins, Tanaka, Borders, and Young et al such that the layout uses grid-based coordinates. This would have enabled the layout to be adjusted flexibly with fine-grained control (Young et al, paragraph 11: “The relationship between objects and the grid is bi-directional so that moving one (gridline or object) will affect the other (object or gridline). In other words, expanding/collapsing the object will push the gridlines, and moving the gridline will expand/collapse the object. The virtual grid can be created before or after the objects to provide further flexibility. A child object can have its own virtual grid, which allows fine-grained control where desired.”).
With regards to claim 5, which depends on claim 4, Collins, Tanaka, and Borders do not disclose wherein the grid section width value is expressed as a proportion of a total width of the first grid arrangement and the grid section height value is expressed as a proportion of a total height of the first grid arrangement.
However, Young et al teaches wherein the grid section width value is expressed as a proportion of a total width of the first grid arrangement and the grid section height value is expressed as a proportion of a total height of the first grid arrangement (Young et al, paragraph 25: “The rows R and columns C themselves are owned by the grid canvas parent 10, and can be sized in a conventional manner (e.g., fixed size, percent size, auto-size, weighted size)”).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to have combined Collins, Tanaka, Borders, and Young et al such that the layout uses grid-based coordinates. This would have enabled the layout to be adjusted flexibly with fine-grained control (Young et al, paragraph 11: “The relationship between objects and the grid is bi-directional so that moving one (gridline or object) will affect the other (object or gridline). In other words, expanding/collapsing the object will push the gridlines, and moving the gridline will expand/collapse the object. The virtual grid can be created before or after the objects to provide further flexibility. A child object can have its own virtual grid, which allows fine-grained control where desired.”).
Claim 16 recites substantially similar limitations to claim 3 and is thus rejected along the same rationale.
Claim 18 recites substantially similar limitations to claim 5 and is thus rejected along the same rationale.
Conclusion
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/B.C.A/Examiner, Art Unit 2178
/STEPHEN S HONG/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2178