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. The Action is responsive to Applicant’s amendment, filed on June 11, 2026.
3. It is acknowledged that as a result of the amendment, claims 1, 3, 4, 6-8, 10, 11, 13, 17, 19, and 20 have been amended. Claims 2 and 18 have been canceled.
4. Claims 1, 3-17, and 19-20 are pending.
Response to Arguments
5. Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1, 3-17, and 19-20 have been considered but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection necessitated by Applicant’s amendment of the claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
6. The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior office action.
In view of the amendments to the claims, the Examiner withdraws all pending rejections under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
7. The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior office action.
In view of the amendments to the claims, the Examiner withdraws all pending rejections under 35 U.S.C. 112.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
8. 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.
9. Claim(s) 1, 3-10, 13-14, 17, and 19-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Smyth et al (US 2012/0271807), in view of Hunter (2014/000695), hereinafter “Smyth” and “Hunter” respectively.
As per Claim 1, Smyth discloses:
A content search method, performed by a computer device, the method comprising: displaying an input method program based on a content input area of a first application interface; (Par [0033], “The web browser 506 receives user input causing it to access 506 the first content source. For example, a web-based search interface to a search engine of the first content source is displayed at the web browser. A query is input by a user and the web browser 500 sends 508 the query to the first content source” and see Figures 4-7)
obtaining, through the input method program, a search term from the content input area of the first application interface, and displaying at least two candidate search engines, the at least two candidate search engines comprising search engines of different sources or search engines in different fields, (Par [0026], “FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a web browser 200 displaying combined search results using a content insertion element 214. A query entry field 210 is provided to enable a user to enter a query. Retrieved search results 212 are displayed in a ranked list. For example, these are search results 212 from an internet search engine. A content insertion element 214 is represented as a rectangular region containing search results 216 from a second search engine. In some examples the content insertion element 214 is marked on the display using a boarder, shading, color or the like. This provides a visual indication to the user that the results 216 are from a different source that the results 212.” And par [0037], “These may be used to modify the query by adding key words which seek to bias the query towards obtaining results tailored to the language preferences of the user.” and see Figures 2-6) the search engines of different sources corresponding to different websites or different applications; (Par [0026] and par [0051], “FIG. 7 illustrates various components of an exemplary computing device 700 which may be implemented as any form of a computing and/or electronic device, and in which embodiments of a entity which is part of a system for combining search results from different sources may be implemented.” and see Figures 2-6)
switching from the first application interface to a second application interface in response to a selection operation on a target search engine in the at least two candidate search engines; (Par [0022], “For example, there may be two or more public domain search engines which have access to different types of content or two or more search engines where access to content is controlled.” And par [0045], “The first content source may specify more than one insert point within its results page. Instructions associated with the content insertion element (such as a script) which execute when the second content source results are made available to the web browser are then able to select which one or more of the insert points to use for inserting the second search results into the web page. In this way the position for the content insertion element relative to the first search engine results may be controlled according to features of the web page or web browser.” and see Figures 2-6) and displaying, on the second application interface, a search result obtained after a searching process of the search term on the target search engine, the first application interface and the second application interface being interfaces of different applications. (Par [0055], “An output interface 704 is also provided such as an audio and/or video output to a display device 702 integral with or in communication with the computing device. The display device 702 may provide a graphical user interface, or other user interface of any suitable type although this is not essential. The display device may provide a graphical user interface. In an embodiment the display device 702 may also act as a user input device if it is a touch sensitive display device. The output interface 704 may also output data to devices other than the display device” and see Figures 2-6)
Smyth do not specifically discloses “switching”, Smyth mostly merges different content sources, inherently you see different results from different sources.
As per Claim 3, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further Smyth discloses: wherein the input method program comprises an intelligent search control; and the obtaining the search term from the content input area of the first application interface comprises: obtaining, in response to a trigger operation on the intelligent search control, the search term from the content input area of the first application interface when the content input area comprises the search term. (Par [0018], query terms, par [0024], “The web browser sends the query to a first one of the search engines, such as the internet search engine 112. The web browser may also send the identifier together with the query to the first search engine.” And par [0042], “In other examples the content insertion element comprises a reusable software component defined in a programming language independent manner. For example a Java (trade mark) applet or ActiveX.RTM. control. For example, where the second content source is a desktop search engine the reusable software component may be arranged to pull the desktop search results and insert them into the web page with the first content source results.” And par [0052], “input interface” and see Figures 2-7).
Smyth discloses search engine that search and insert results, from query terms however not specifically a trigger operation.
Hunter discloses the above claimed features as follows:
(Par [0401], “info screen--triggered by the user pressing an `info` button (or similar), to display information about the current item of media content (optionally including links to related content” and par [1041], “…all user input to the Device is processed by Direct Frame Buffer (DirectFB) and raw input events are converted to window events by the Window Manager and then filtered and routed to the correct component to ensure that the associated function is handled).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date to incorporate the teachings of Hunter specifically inferring using a trigger operation into the method of Smyth to take advantage on requesting the respective information regarding to a specific search. The modification would have been obvious because one of the ordinary skills in the art would implement providing an instruction to generate results.
As per Claim 4, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further Smyth discloses: wherein the input method program comprises a first content input area and an intelligent search control; and obtaining the search term from the content input area of the first application interface comprises: displaying, in response to a trigger operation on the intelligent search control, a second content input area when the first content input area does not comprise the search term; (Par [0018], “The search engine 112 has access to an index 111 of documents 110. It is arranged to receive query terms 108 from an end user at a client terminal 107 (either in the public or private domain) and to return a ranked list of documents using the index 111 as known in the art. The ranked list of documents may be displayed at a user display 114. The search engine has access to mapping data 116 which may be stored at the search engine itself or may be at another location in communication with the search engine. The mapping data is described in more detail below. In embodiments described herein search results from another search engine such as intranet search engine 105 may be included with the display if criteria are met. This is achieved without the need for a merging engine.” See Figures 2-7) and obtaining an inputted search term from the second content input area in response to a search term input operation in the second content input area. (Par [0024-0025], “When a query passes the filtering stage, the first search engine generates at least one content insertion element holding at least the query and an address of a second search engine. Optionally other parameters may be included in the content insertion element as described in more detail later…” and see Figures 2-7).
Smyth discloses search engine that search and insert results, from query terms however not specifically a trigger operation.
Hunter discloses the above claimed features as follows:
(Par [0401], “info screen--triggered by the user pressing an `info` button (or similar), to display information about the current item of media content (optionally including links to related content” and par [1041], “…all user input to the Device is processed by Direct Frame Buffer (DirectFB) and raw input events are converted to window events by the Window Manager and then filtered and routed to the correct component to ensure that the associated function is handled).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date to incorporate the teachings of Hunter specifically inferring using a trigger operation into the method of Smyth to take advantage on requesting the respective information regarding to a specific search. The modification would have been obvious because one of the ordinary skills in the art would implement providing an instruction to generate results.
As per Claim 5, the rejection of Claim 4 is incorporated and further Hunter discloses: further comprising: invoking a start input view interface; performing a bit operation based on an attribute parameter and a constant parameter in editor information parameters of the start input view interface, (Par [2163], “2. On-demand Portal Services may optionally provide the CRID of a media player Application. This media player will then be invoked to present all Publications associated with the Service. If no Service locator is specified in the Service fragment a default media player will be used for playback.” And par [2170-2175], disclosing types of service and media) to obtain an object type attribute of the content input area of the first application interface; (Par [2163], “2. On-demand Portal Services may optionally provide the CRID of a media player Application. This media player will then be invoked to present all Publications associated with the Service. If no Service locator is specified in the Service fragment a default media player will be used for playback.” And par [2170-2175], disclosing types of service and media) and determining the content input area of the first application interface as the first content input area when the object type attribute is an edit box constant. (Par [0674], box to set a PIN, and par [0914], “The system has provided a metadata field to specify sort order by title alphabetically. Preferably, where the programme or web app begins with `The` or `A`, the content supplier provides the Sort Title with a following comma and the word appended to the end e.g. `The One Show` should be supplied as `One Show, The` in the Sort Title field. This process is not done by the platform, as the CP has full editorial control to decide if the programme is listed under "T" or "O". The programme cannot be listed under both in the alphabetical list.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date to incorporate the teachings of Hunter specifically inferring using a trigger operation into the method of Smyth to take advantage on requesting the respective information regarding to a specific search. The modification would have been obvious because one of the ordinary skills in the art would implement providing an instruction to generate results.
As per Claim 6, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further Hunter discloses: wherein the input method program comprises an intelligent search control; and obtaining the search term from the content input area of the first application interface comprises: displaying the content input area on the first application interface in response to a trigger operation on the intelligent search control; (Par [0063], “Preferably, the user interface further comprises means for displaying content items that have previously been broadcast together with content items that have yet to be broadcast.” And par [0401], “triggered by the user pressing an `info` button (or similar), to display information about the current item of media content (optionally including links to related content”) and obtaining an inputted search term from the content input area in response to a search term input operation in a second content input area. (Par [0401], “info screen--triggered by the user pressing an `info` button (or similar), to display information about the current item of media content (optionally including links to related content” and par [1041], “…all user input to the Device is processed by Direct Frame Buffer (DirectFB) and raw input events are converted to window events by the Window Manager and then filtered and routed to the correct component to ensure that the associated function is handled”)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date to incorporate the teachings of Hunter specifically inferring using a trigger operation into the method of Smyth to take advantage on requesting the respective information regarding to a specific search. The modification would have been obvious because one of the ordinary skills in the art would implement providing an instruction to generate results.
As per Claim 7, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated, and further Smyth discloses: wherein displaying the at least two candidate search engine engines comprises: displaying the at least two search engines in a display area of an input method control of the input method program. (See Figures 2-7).
As per Claim 8, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further Hunter discloses: wherein a second application comprises an application corresponding to the target search engine; (Par [1877], “Additionally, the ongoing status of transactions can be monitored asynchronously by the Metadata Publishing Party via a second HTTP service endpoint.”) and switching from the first application interface to the second application interface in response to the selection operation on the target search engine in the at least two candidate search engines comprises: (Par [0713], “presented to the viewer following selection of content (or a player) in one of the entry points.” Par [1563], “Closed User Group targeting metadata may be supplied for any type of Service Information Fragment: Par [1564], “If a Linear Service is targeted at one or more Closed User Groups, the search engine then only returns results from its schedule if the client is a member of one of those groups” and par [1565] An On-demand Portal Service that is targeted”) in response to the selection operation on the target search engine in the at least two candidate search engines, jumping from a first application to the application corresponding to the target search engine based on uniform resource locator information corresponding to the application of the target search engine; and (Par 1564-1565 and Figures 19-21)
transmitting the search term to the application corresponding to the target search engine, to switch from the first application interface to the second application interface provided by the second application for displaying. (Par [0474], “In some embodiments, the media client device 130 monitors the bitrate at which the CDN 1100 provides the media content and determine whether to report performance to the ISP 132 and/or whether to switch another possible CDN 1100 if required.” And see Figures 19 and 21).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date to incorporate the teachings of Hunter specifically inferring using a trigger operation into the method of Smyth to take advantage on requesting the respective information regarding to a specific search. The modification would have been obvious because one of the ordinary skills in the art would implement providing an instruction to generate results.
As per Claim 9, the rejection of Claim 8 is incorporated and further Smyth discloses: wherein the second application further comprises a browser; and the method further comprises: when the jumping is incapable of being performed from the first application to the application corresponding to the target search engine, (Par [0026], “For example, these are search results 212 from an internet search engine. A content insertion element 214 is represented as a rectangular region containing search results 216 from a second search engine. In some examples the content insertion element 214 is marked on the display using a boarder, shading, color or the like. This provides a visual indication to the user that the results 216 are from a different source that the results 212.”) jumping from the first application to the browser based on uniform resource locator information corresponding to the browser; (Par [0038], “ In an example the content insertion element is an iframe where a source of the iframe is a universal resource locator (URL) of the second content source together with the query and optional parameters. For example, an iframe with a source of the following form may be used:…” and see Par [0039]) and transmitting the search term to the browser, to switch from the first application interface to the second application interface provided by the browser for displaying. (Par [0055], “The display device 702 may provide a graphical user interface, or other user interface of any suitable type although this is not essential. The display device may provide a graphical user interface. In an embodiment the display device 702 may also act as a user input device if it is a touch sensitive display device. The output interface 704 may also output data to devices” and see Figures 2-7)
As per Claim 10, the rejection of Claim 1 is incorporated and further Hunter discloses: wherein displaying the at least two candidate search engines comprises: displaying the search engine list, the search engine list comprising the at least two candidate search engines; and the method further comprises: obtaining a first application identifier of the first application and a search engine distribution table, the search engine distribution table being configured for representing distribution of switching from the first application to different candidate search engines for searching by users when using the first application; and generating the search engine list based on the first application identifier and the search engine distribution table. (Par [0463-0464], “Typically, media content providers providing media content over IP networks make use of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) 1100, third party distributed computer systems that cache copies of the media content at a plurality of points in the network so that a media content client can access a relatively local copy in preference to one directly from the media content provider.” Par [0741-0752], “feedback messages/icons must be displayed for the following scenarios...”, par [0930-0931], “The user is able to select one or more filters which will be used in conjunction to return the search results” and par [2269], “…considered by the search engine indexer” See Figures 85-86)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date to incorporate the teachings of Hunter specifically inferring using a trigger operation into the method of OMOIGUI to take advantage on requesting the respective information regarding to a specific search. The modification would have been obvious because one of the ordinary skills in the art would implement providing an instruction to generate results.
As per Claim 13, the rejection of Claim 10 is incorporated and further Hunter discloses: wherein the search engine distribution table comprises a manually configured search engine distribution table; and the method further comprises: obtaining a first sample application identifier of a first sample application, and manually configured candidate sample search engine identifiers corresponding to the first sample application identifier; (Par [1679-1680], “The placeholders in some templates may be replaced with multiple terms separated by Boolean operators. The Valid Operators column of the filter tables for each service indicates which operators may be used with each filter.” URLs configurated and represented according to filter.)
and generating the manually configured search engine distribution table based on the first sample application identifier and the manually configured candidate sample search engine identifiers, the manually configured search engine distribution table being configured for representing distribution of switching from the first sample application to different candidate sample search engines for searching by users when using the first sample application. (Par [0084-0085], “Preferably, the means for providing configuration settings comprising storage means, adapted to store a configuration settings look-up table, the look-up table including data relating said data communications network to the configuration settings.” And Figures 85-86, configuration table could be done manually, see par [0541], “4. STAGIS is not currently able to publish TV-Anytime Service Information Fragments at all, so this reference data needs to be managed manually by MIPS in the short term.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date to incorporate the teachings of Hunter specifically inferring using a trigger operation into the method of Smyth to take advantage on requesting the respective information regarding to a specific search. The modification would have been obvious because one of the ordinary skills in the art would implement providing an instruction to generate results.
As per Claim 14, the rejection of Claim 8 is incorporated and further Hunter discloses: further comprising: configuring uniform resource locator information for each candidate search engine, the uniform resource locator information being configured for pointing to a search result obtained through searching for the search term on the corresponding candidate search engine. (Par [0463-0464], “Typically, media content providers providing media content over IP networks make use of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) 1100, third party distributed computer systems that cache copies of the media content at a plurality of points in the network so that a media content client can access a relatively local copy in preference to one directly from the media content provider.” par [0930-0931], “The user is able to select one or more filters which will be used in conjunction to return the search results” and par [2269], “…considered by the search engine indexer” see Figures 85-86)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the effective filing date to incorporate the teachings of Hunter specifically inferring using a trigger operation into the method of Smyth to take advantage on requesting the respective information regarding to a specific search. The modification would have been obvious because one of the ordinary skills in the art would implement providing an instruction to generate results.
As per Claims 17 and 19-20, being the computer device and non-transitory computer-readable storage medium claims corresponding to the system claims 1 and 3 respectively and rejected under the same reason set forth in connection of the rejections of Claims 1 and 3 and further Kollenkark discloses: (Col. 8, lines 65-67).
Allowable Subject Matter
10. Claim 11-12 and 15-16 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 101, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
11. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure.
Johnson; Bruce (US-20120023104-A1) relates to an approach such as this may be useful both in terms of returning semantically relevant search results in accordance with the remainder of the present invention in addition to results from another search engine, rather than using the semantic engine of the present invention to simply refine the results extracted from another source. In a context of the combination of different search engines search result sets, it would be desirable to be able to rank or blend together the results obtained from more than one search catalog in certain applications.
Molenda; Matthew A. (US-20230368878-A1), relates to Inputting a search query; Searching a medium for data relevant to the search query; Generating a list of relevant data representative of the search results; Selectively modifying and/or organizing the relevant data in a generated list of search results; Outputting a modified and/or organized list of search results to a physical display.
Hill; James (US-20100306249-A1), relates to search engine 410 may sort the identified documents based on their IR scores and output them as a list of search results to category suggestion engine 420. In another implementation, search engine 410 may generate total
12. THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
13. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANGELICA RUIZ whose telephone number is (571)270-3158. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
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/ANGELICA RUIZ/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2154 September 3, 2026
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