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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This non-final office action is responsive to the U.S. patent application no. 19/094,514 filed on March 28, 2025.
Claims 1-19 are pending.
Claims 1-19 are rejected.
Priority
The application claims foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d) to Chinese application No. CN202410381718.3 filed on March 29, 2024.
A certified copy of the Chinese application submitted under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d) was retrieved on April 14, 2025 and has been placed in the file of record.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-9 and 12-19 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.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 11-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Claim 11 recites “a computer readable storage medium” which when given its broadest reasonable interpretation could be directed to transitory signals or carrier waves that are considered non-statutory under 35 U.S.C. 101, causing the claimed invention not to fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter.
Dependent claims 12-19 inherit the issue from their parent claim 11.
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 of this title, 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, 10 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being obvious over Iyer et al. (U.S. 2021/0026460) in view of Martin et al. (US 2017/0374274).
Regarding claim 1, Iyer disclosed a control method, applied to a first device (Iyer disclosed in Fig. 1 and [0037] an “Embedded Controller 120” that may anticipates the first device),
the first device including a first processor and a target sensor (Iyer disclosed in Fig. 1 and [0028] that “graphics processor 107 may be comprised … within an embedded controller installed within IHS 100”),
the first processor being configured to configure the target sensor based on first configuration information (Iyer disclosed in Fig. 1 and [0038] that “ Embedded controller 120 may also implement operations for interfacing with a power adapter 124 in managing power for IHS 100. Such operations may be utilized to determine the power status of IHS 100, such as whether IHS 100 is operating from battery power or is plugged into an AC power source. Embedded controller 120 may also implement operations in support of the detection of changes to the physical configuration of IHS 100 and in managing the modes corresponding to different physical configurations of IHS 100 ”), comprising:
determining connection state information of a second device (Iyer disclosed in [0038] that “Embedded controller 120 may also implement operations in support of the detection of changes to the physical configuration of IHS 100 and in managing the modes corresponding to different physical configurations of IHS 100.” Iyer’s IHS 100 anticipates the “second device” in the claim), the second device including a second processor (Iyer disclosed in [0022] that “ IHS 100 includes one or more processors 101, such as a Central Processing Unit (CPU)”), the second processor being configured to configure the target sensor based on second configuration information (Iyer disclosed in [0052] that “f the IHS is configured in a laptop mode and an external mouse is coupled to the IHS, a first configuration of pointing device sensitivity settings may be selected from the retrieved peripheral settings of the user. However, if the IHS is configured in a tablet mode and no external mouse is detected, a second configuration of pointing device sensitivity settings may be selected, where the second configuration of settings is specialized for user inputs via a stylus or a finger rather than using a mouse”); and
switching the target sensor to a subordinate device of the second device when the second device is connected to the first device to cause the second processor to configure the target sensor based on the second configuration information and receive sensor data from the target sensor (Iyer disclosed in [0054] that “any such changes in the mode of the IHS are detected and, based on the new mode, any changes to the configuration of peripherals are applied.” See [0022] for additional disclosure in this regard).
Iyer might not have explicitly disclosed that
the second configuration information and the first configuration information being adapted to different operating systems.
However, Martin disclosed a convertible computer that can operate in a laptop mode or a tablet mode (Martin, Abstract). In particular, Martin disclosed that the convertible computer has a first configuration when operating in the laptop mode and a second configuration when operating in the tablet mode (Martin, Figs. 1A and 1B). Martin specifically disclosed that
the second configuration information and the first configuration information being adapted to different operating systems (Martin, [0051], “The components (e.g., modules, processing units 724) of the convertible computer system 100 can be configured to operate based on one or more platforms (e.g., one or more similar or different platforms) that can include one or more types of hardware, software, firmware, operating systems, runtime libraries, and/or so forth”).
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Iyer and Martin because both references disclosed convertible computer systems that can switch from a laptop mode to a tablet mode and vice versa (Iyer, [0052]; Martin, Figs. 1A, 1B and [0027]).
Claim 10 lists substantially the same elements as claim 1, in device form rather than method form. Therefore, the rejection rationale for claim 1 applies equally as well to claim 10.
Claim 11 lists substantially the same elements as claim 1, in computer readable medium form rather than method form. Therefore, the rejection rationale for claim 1 applies equally as well to claim 11.
Related Prior Art
Hamlin et al. (U.S. 2025/0291763) is directed to an Information Handling System (IHS) that may include: a controller, where the controller comprises firmware that, upon execution by a processing core, causes the processing core to instantiate an orchestrator; and a plurality of devices coupled to the controller, where each device comprises firmware that, upon execution by a corresponding processing core, causes the corresponding processing core to instantiate a node, and where each node is configured to communicate, to the orchestrator, one or more exposed capabilities and one or more exposed interfaces usable to access the one or more exposed capabilities without any involvement by any Operating System (OS) of the IHS.
Chang et al. (U.S. 2012/0243165) is directed to a dual-screen portable computer and methods for switching between the screens.
Paranjape et al. (U.S. 2021/0318727) is directed to a method and system for setting the pre-boot display orientation of a multi-posture device based on the posture the device is in at the time of booting up.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHIRLEY X ZHANG whose telephone number is (571)270-5012. The examiner can normally be reached 8:30am - 5:00pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Joon H Hwang can be reached at 571-272-4036. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/SHIRLEY X ZHANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2447
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