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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
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, 10-12, 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yu et al (US 20200356508, Yu) in view of Lais et al (US 20110320653, Lais).
As to claim 1, Yu discloses a data transmission method, comprising:
obtaining, by a docking station (fig. 1, hub 102), an initial transmission mode of the docking station (par. 14 “the device role”) connected to a host device (first host 110);
obtaining device information of a computing device (par. 32 “exchange of information between the host-to-host chip 120 and the second host 130”) connected to a port of the docking station (see fig. 4); and
determining a data transmission mode of the port based on the initial transmission mode and the device information of the computing device (par. 19, 40. Note: The determination of host-to-host or host-to-device mode is based on the initial transmission mode in which chip 120 plays a device role and host 110 play a host role); and
transmit, based on the data transmission mode of the port, data from the host device to the computing device (par. 30).
Yu does not disclose the step of sending an instruction to the host device to transmit, based on the data transmission mode of the port, data from the host device to the computing device. In the same field of art (peripheral configuration), Lais discloses a method comprising receiving requests at an I/O hub from a plurality of I/O adapters (par. 6). In one embodiment, Lais further discloses the step of sending an instruction (par. 37, s603 “request” to a host device (fig. 1 host 124) to transmit data from the host device to the computing device (“response from the host system 124). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Yu and Lais, by sending an instruction to a host device to transmit, based on the data transmission mode of the port, data from the host device to the computing device. The motivation is to x of the system (Background).
As to claim 2, Yu/Lais discloses the data transmission method according to claim 1, wherein the determining the data transmission mode of the port comprises:
determining a device type of the computing device based on the device information of the computing device (Yu, par. 32); and
determining the data transmission mode of the port based on the device type of the computing device and the initial transmission mode (par. 39).
As to claim 3, Yu/Lais discloses the data transmission method according to claim 2, wherein the determining the data transmission mode of the port based on the device type of the computing device and the initial transmission mode comprises:
determining an adapted transmission mode of the computing device (Yu, par. 40) based on the device type of the computing device (“iphone” or “Android”), wherein the device type of the computing device indicates that the computing device is one of a display device, a storage device, or a power adapter (Note: A smartphone is a display or storage device); and
determining the data transmission mode of the port based on the adapted transmission mode and the initial transmission mode (par. 34, 35).
As to claims 10-12, all the same elements of claims 1-3 are listed but in an apparatus form with one or more processors (Yu, processor 310; Lais par. 48) and memory storing instructions (Lais, par. 44). Therefore, the supporting rationale of the rejection to claims 1-3 applies equally to claims 10-12 .
As to claims 19-20, all the same elements of claims 1-20 are listed but in a transitory computer-readable medium form (Lais, par. 44). Therefore, the supporting rationale of the rejection to claims 1-2 applies equally to claims 19-20.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-9, 13-19 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
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/D.P/Examiner, Art Unit 2184
/HENRY TSAI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2184
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