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 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 1-8 and 11-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yoon et al. (US 2018/0301112) in view of Okuda et al. (US 2010/0250988).
Regarding claim 1, Yoon teaches a display device (Abstract: “display apparatus”; Figs. 1-5: display apparatus 100) comprising:
an external device interface (Fig. 4: one of HDMI input ports 144-1 to 144-n);
a display (Figs. 1, 5: display 110) that displays content (Figs. 2-4: content provided by currently selected first source; [0035]: “The display 110 may display an image corresponding to a first source of a plurality of sources. In particular, the source may provide an image signal and/or a sound signal to the display apparatus 100. The source may be an external apparatus connected to an input/output (I/O) port of the display apparatus 100 to provide content or may be an internal memory of the display apparatus 100. In this case, the content refers to images, voices, music, data, or the like”);
a controller (Figs. 1, 5: processor 120) that receives a power-off (Fig. 8, step S810: detected power-off signal) from an external equipment (Fig. 8, step S810: “external apparatus A”) connected through the external device interface, and, if determining that the content displayed on the display is not content provided by the external equipment (Fig. 8: “N” branch from S820), ignores and does not process the power-off (Fig. 8: “N” branch from S820 corresponds to no processing of the power-off signal).
Yoon does not further teach the detected power-off signal is a power-off request signal.
However, in view of Yoon’s disclosure in [0076], the external device interface is of a HDMI-Consumer Electronic Control (CEC) function. It is known that a HDMI-CEC function supports an external device connected to a display device to send a power-off request signal to the display device to achieve power-off.
Okuda, for instance, teaches in Figs. 2-3 that an HMD CEC cable 400 used to connect an external device 200A/200B to a digital broadcast receiving device (a display device) 100A/100B and in Fig. 10 that an external device on the plug-in module side connected to a display device on the digital broadcast receiving device side sends a power-off request signal to the display device to turn off the main power of the network including the external device and the display device.
Before the effective filing date of the invention, it would have been obvious for one ordinary skill in the art to combine Okuda’s teaching with Yoon’s teaching to take advantage of the HDMI-CEC capability of simple control of power management across multiple devices.
Regarding claim 2, Yoon teaches the display device of claim 1,
wherein the controller processes power off of the display device in response to the power off request signal received from the external equipment when determining that the content displayed on the display is content provided from the external equipment (Fig. 8: “Y” branch from step S820).
Regarding claim 3, Yoon/Okuda teaches the display device of claim 1,
wherein the external device interface and the external equipment are connected using a HDMI protocol (Fig. 2 in view of [0076]: “For example, the processor 120 may detect the change of the power state of the external apparatus connected through the first to n-th HDMI input ports 144-1 to 144-n through a HDMI-Consumer Electronic Control (CEC) function”), and the power off request signal is transmitted by the HDMI-CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) power sync function of the external equipment (Okuda: Figs. 2-3 and 10).
Regarding claim 4, Yoon teaches the display device of claim 1,
wherein the external equipment connected through the external device interface includes a first external equipment and a second external equipment (Fig. 8: external apparatus A and external apparatus B), and
wherein, when the content provided from the first external equipment is displayed on the display, if the power-off request signal is received from the second external equipment, the controller ignores and does not process the power-off request signal (Fig. 8: with external apparatus A as second external equipment and external apparatus B as first external equipment, steps S810, S820 and “N” branch from step S820 reads on the limitation).
Regarding claim 5, Yoon teaches the display device of claim 4,
wherein when the content provided from the first external equipment is displayed on the display, if the power-off request signal is received from the first external equipment, the controller processes the power-off of the display device in response to the power-off request signal (Fig. 8: with external apparatus A as first external equipment and external apparatus B as second external equipment, “N” branch from step S820 reads on the limitation).
Regarding claim 6, Yoon teaches the display device of claim 1,
wherein the content displayed on the display is driven as a foreground on the display (Fig. 3: foreground image 310 resulting from currently selected external apparatus).
Regarding claim 7, Yoon teaches the display device of claim 1,
wherein, if the content displayed on the display is displayed by a content providing application provided by the display device (Fig. 8: “N” branch from step S820; [0035]: “The source may be an external apparatus connected to an input/output (I/O) port of the display apparatus 100 to provide content or may be an internal memory of the display apparatus 100”), the controller ignores and does not process the power off request signal.
Regarding claim 8, Yoon teaches the display device of claim 1,
wherein the controller determines whether to process the received control signal from the external equipment connected through the external device interface and filters and processes the received control signal according to (Fig. 8: step S850, type of external equipment “reproducing image/sound”).
Claims 10 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Yoon et al. (US 2018/0301112) in view of Okuda et al. (US 2010/0250988), and further in view of Yoo et al. (US Patent NO. 11,347,897).
Regarding claim 10, Yoon further teaches the display device of claim 1, further comprising:
a network interface accessed to a network (Fig. 5 and [0071]: “The wireless interface 130 performs wireless communication with diverse external apparatuses”).
Yoon/Okuda do not further teach the display device,
wherein the controller transmits a control signal or data to be transmitted to the external equipment through the network interface, if the external equipment connected through the external device interface is also connected through the network interface.
The differentiating limitations indicates an alternative connection approach for the display device and the external device via a network. The approach is not new, however.
Yoo, for instance, teaches in Fig. 1 a controller transmits a control signal or data to be transmitted to the external equipment through the network interface, if the external 6 connected through the external device interface is also connected through the network interface (Col. 3, ll. 36-41: “the electronic device 101 in the network environment 100 may communicate with an electronic device 102 via a first network 198 (e.g., a short-range wireless communication network), or an electronic device 104 or a server 108 via a second network 199 (e.g., a long-range wireless communication network)”; Col. 5, ll. 10-18: “The interface 177 may support specified protocols to be used for the electronic device 101 to be coupled with the external electronic device (e.g., the electronic device 102) wiredly or wirelessly. According to an embodiment, the interface 177 may include, for example, a high definition multimedia interface (HDMI)”).
Before the effective filing date of the invention, it would have been obvious for one ordinary skill in the art to further modify the technique of Yoon/Okuda with the technique of Yoo to enable the coupling between the display device and the external device via an alternative wireless-network approach to enhance compatibility of the display device coupling with various types of external devices.
Claim 20 is rejected for substantially the same rationale as applied to claim 10.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 9 and 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Each of claims 9 and 19 includes allowable subject matter “when the initialization of the display device is completed, processes input switching to the external equipment corresponding to the input switching request signal stored in the memory”, which, in view of the instant invention as a whole, is not taught in prior art.
Regarding claims 9 and 19, the feature “a memory that stores an input switching request signal received from the external equipment connected through the external device interface” alone is taught in US 2018/0176001 by Masuda (see [0073]). The feature concerning a condition “a power-on request signal both the power-on request signal and the input switching request signal by external equipment to initialize the display device, the differentiating feature “when the initialization of the display device is completed, processes input switching to the external equipment corresponding to the input switching request signal stored in the memory”.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 2022/0210504 by Huo et al. discloses power on/off techniques using HDMI interfaces among a display apparatus of external devices, which includes controlling the display apparatus to power-on a plurality of external devices in a predetermined order.
US 2018/0143838 by Seo et al. discloses a power controlling technique for a device network (including an electronic apparatus, an external input device and a remote controller) using a function of HDMI-CEC (High-Definition Multimedia Interface-Consumer Electronics Control).
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/XUEMEI ZHENG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2629