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 .
Examiner’s Note
Examiner has cited particular columns and line numbers or figures in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested from the applicant, in preparing the responses, to
fully consider the references in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed 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.
Claim(s) 1-3, 8-12, 17-18 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kong et al. (2006/0095249) and in view of Schulz et al. (US 2025/0273197).
As to claim 10, Kong teaches a multi-language communication method for making an announcement to a plurality of passengers performed by an aircraft inflight entertainment (IFE) computer server, the method comprising: receiving an announcement including digitized speech and/or text in a first language generated by a crew member or by a controller (Par.94);
processing the announcement, through a language conversion module 12, in the first language to output a set of translated announcements each corresponding to a different one of the set of passenger preferred languages; translating, through the language conversion module, the announcement from one language to an available set of translated languages (Pars.99-102);
identifying a set of passenger preferred languages based on information obtained for passengers onboard an aircraft and served by the IFE computer server (Pars.54-58, 99); and for each of the passengers who have a preferred language that is different from the first language of the announcement, identifying a VDU 22, 26 associated with a passenger and routing through an aircraft cabin network one of the translated announcements in a passenger preferred language of the passenger to the VDU associated with the passenger (Pars.83-88, 99-100).
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It is noted that Kong doesn’t explicitly teach where the message is outputted on a personal electronic device. However, Schulz teaches a multi-language communication system and method for speech to text conversion of announcements aboard an aircraft and translating the announcements into a preferred language of the passenger, wherein the translated announcements are forwarded to passengers output devices 11 and personal electronic devices (PED) 8 associated with the passengers (Fig.1; Pars,19-22, 41, 45, 48).
The modification and combination of the analogous systems would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the time of applicant’s invention for the purpose of allowing the passengers to access the translated announcements on their personal devices.
As to claim 11, Schulz teaches a machine learning model configured to generate the digitized speech and/or text to a plurality of the available set of translated languages (Fig.2; Pars.17-18, 39-41).
As to claim 12, the step of training the machine learning model using a set of preconfigured passenger announcements to translate any of the preconfigured passenger announcements from one language to another is inherent in the system of Schulz.
As to claim 17, Kong teaches wherein the information obtained for passengers onboard the aircraft and served by the IFE computer server comprises at least one of information indicating language settings a passenger has selected, information indicating a home country, and information indicating citizenship of the passenger (Fig.2).
As to claim 18, Kong teaches routing the one of the translated announcements in the passenger preferred in parallel with a video to the same VDU 22 for simultaneous display (Fig.1; Pars.32-41).
Regarding claim 1-3, 8-9 and 19, the corresponding server and instructions comprising the steps similar to the steps addressed in the method claims above are analogous, therefore rejected as being unpatentable over Kong et al. and in view of Schultz for the foregoing reasons.
Claim(s) 13-16, 4-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kong et al. (2006/0095249) in view of Schulz et al. (US 2025/0273197) and further in view of Klose et al. (US 2018/0086465).
As to claims 13-14 and 4-5, it is noted that the prior arts of Schultz and Kong, while they teach routing preconfigured translated announcements, they do not explicitly teach determining where a preconfigured passenger announcement of the set of preconfigured passenger announcements is to occur in a present aircraft operational state. However, Klose teaches a method of providing an audio signal containing flight-related information to passengers on board the aircraft, comprising a receiving a trigger to provide the audio signal, obtaining one or more predefined data fragments, obtaining flight-related information (operational state) corresponding to a current flight of the aircraft, generating the audio signal based on the one or more predefined data fragments and the flight-related information, and providing the audio signal to one or more of the passengers on board the aircraft, wherein the pre-recorded announcements are generated in multiple languages (Pars.10-16, 32-40).
The combination of the analogous arts would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the time of applicant’s invention for the purpose of automatically providing the announcements.
As to claims 15-16 and 6-7, Klose teaches obtaining aircraft state data from the aircraft cabin network indicating the aircraft is presently in one of a set of defined aircraft operational states when the announcement is received, and matching the received announcement to one of the preconfigured passenger announcements in the set based on correlating a pattern of content of the received announcement to a pattern of content of the one of the preconfigured passenger announcements in the set and based on correlating the likelihood value indicating likelihood that the preconfigured passenger announcement will occur in the indicated present aircraft operational state; wherein the set of defined aircraft operational states comprises a plurality of closing of aircraft doors, taxi of the aircraft, takeoff and climb to cruising altitude, turbulence, inflight emergency, cruising altitude, decent approach for landing, on-ground emergency, and opening of aircraft doors (Pars.3, 15-16, 32, 39, 47, 51).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Trunk et al. (US 2020/0369386).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DANIEL DEMELASH ABEBE whose telephone number is (571)272-7615. The examiner can normally be reached monday-friday 7-4.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Daniel Washburn can be reached at 571-272-5551. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/DANIEL ABEBE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2657
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