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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 5/23/2026 and 6/10/2026 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements have been considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 2 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as failing to set forth the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant regards as the invention. Claims 2 and 18 recite “and/or” which renders the claim indefinite for not clearly defining if both claimed elements are required or not.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-18, 20 and 25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kiyooka (U.S. Patent Application Publication 2020/0351560) in view of Lee (U.S. Patent Application Publication 2017/0366855).
Referring to claim 1, Kiyooka discloses after posting a plurality of videos (see Paragraphs 0050-0051 for uploading a plurality of videos from a content creator), displaying first video identifiers corresponding to the plurality of videos on a first page (see Figure 4 for displaying first video identifiers).
Kiyooka also discloses that in response to satisfying a preset condition, displaying a plurality of video identifiers (see Paragraphs 0057-0058 and Figure 4).
Kiyooka fails to explicitly teach that when a different category is selected (satisfying a preset condition), switching the first video identifiers corresponding to the plurality of video to second video identifiers.
Lee discloses switching first video identifiers to second video identifiers according to a different category/preset condition selected by the user (see Figure 4A and Paragraphs 0076-0077).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the user interface, as taught by Kiyooka, using the category selection functionality, as taught by Lee, for the purpose of increasing satisfaction of a user for consumption of contents (see the bottom of Paragraph 0010 of Lee).
Referring to claim 2, Lee discloses that in response to a plurality of first video covers corresponding to the plurality of videos being consecutive video covers (see Figure 4B and Paragraphs 0076-0078 for displaying a plurality of video covers (consecutively) after selecting a category), switching the first video covers corresponding to the plurality of videos to second video covers (see Figure 4A and Paragraphs 0076-0078 for allowing a user to select a different category to display second video covers).
Referring to claim 3, Lee discloses that before switching the first video identifiers corresponding to the plurality of videos to the second video identifiers, receiving an enabling operation for a video identifier switching function and in response to the enabling function, enabling the video identifier switching function (see Figure 4A and Paragraphs 0076-0078 for allowing a user to select a different category to display second video covers).
Referring to claim 4, Lee discloses displaying first prompt information, wherein the first prompt information is used for prompting that the video identifier switching function has been enabled (see Figure 4B for displaying the prompt “Music Video”, which prompts that the video identifier category/switching function has been enabled).
Referring to claim 5, Lee discloses that the second video covers are obtained according to the plurality of pieces of video content (see Paragraphs 0076-0078 for selecting any of the categories displayed in Figure 4A, wherein once a category is selected, first and second video covers are obtained and displayed to the user, as illustrated in Figure 4B).
Referring to claim 6, Lee discloses that in response to the plurality of first video covers corresponding to the plurality of videos being the consecutive video covers (see the rejection of claim 2).
Kiyooka and Lee fail to teach that the second video covers are obtained by splicing the plurality of first video covers corresponding to the plurality of videos.
The Examiner takes Official Notice that when displaying a playlist of videos, second video covers can correspond to splicing first video covers corresponding to a plurality of videos.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the display of multiple videos, as taught by Kiyooka and Lee, using the splicing functionality, as taught by the Examiner’s statement of Official Notice, for the purpose of including relevant videos that can share multiple categories in order for the user to not miss a relevant video and not constraining a plurality of videos to a single category.
Referring to claim 7, Kiyooka discloses that in response to the plurality of pieces of video content corresponding to the plurality of videos being the consecutive video content (see Figure 16 for managing video that were consecutively uploaded 3 weeks ago) and the plurality of first video covers corresponding to the plurality of videos being not the consecutive video covers (see Figure 4 for a subset of the uploaded videos displayed on the right side of the user interface not being consecutive videos, as indicated by the videos being uploaded at different periods of time).
Lee discloses that the second video covers are obtained according to the plurality of pieces of video content (see Figure 4B for displaying a particular subset of videos according to the selected category of a plurality of videos in Figure 4A).
Referring to claim 8, Lee discloses switching the first video identifiers corresponding to the various videos among the plurality of videos to the second video identifiers respectively corresponding to the various videos (see Paragraphs 0076-0078 for selecting any of the categories displayed in Figure 4A, wherein once a category is selected, first and second video covers are obtained and displayed to the user, as illustrated in Figure 4B).
Referring to claim 9, Lee discloses canceling displaying the plurality of first video identifiers of the plurality of videos, and displaying the second video identifier jointly corresponding to the plurality of videos, wherein the second video identifier is a collection identifier of a video collection corresponding to the plurality of videos (see Paragraphs 0076-0078 for selecting any of the categories displayed in Figure 4A, wherein once a category is selected, first and second video covers are obtained and displayed to the user, as illustrated in Figure 4B, therefore once a user is viewing a first category of videos and then decides to view a second category of videos, the first category of videos is cancelled, the user returns to the category menu in Figure 4A and a second category is selected to view a different collection of videos), and a video arrangement sequence in the video collection is determined according to a posting sequence of the plurality of videos (see Paragraph 0078 and 4B for allowing the user to order the videos accordingly to the latest order instead of popularity).
Referring to claim 10, Lee discloses that the first video identifiers are first video covers, the second video identifier is a second video cover (see Paragraphs 0076-0078 for selecting any of the categories displayed in Figure 4A, wherein once a category is selected, first and second video covers are obtained and displayed to the user, as illustrated in Figure 4B, therefore once a user is viewing a first category of videos and then decides to view a second category of videos, the first category of videos is cancelled, the user returns to the category menu in Figure 4A and a second category is selected to view a different collection of videos), and a quantity of videos comprised in the video collection is further displayed on the second video cover (see Figure 4B for displaying 5 videos and further displaying the number of times a video has been viewed).
Referring to claim 11, Lee discloses displaying second prompt information on the first page, wherein the second prompt information is used for promoting to switch the first video identifiers of the plurality of videos to the second video identifiers (see Figure 4A for displaying multiple prompts on the first page, which is used to promote switching videos in a first category to videos in a second category).
Lee also discloses correspondingly, switching the first video identifiers corresponding to the plurality of videos to the second video identifiers comprises that in response to a confirming operation for the second prompt information, switching the first video identifiers corresponding to the plurality of videos to the second video identifiers (see the transition from Figure 4A to Figure 4B and Paragraphs 0076-0077 for viewing different categories of videos).
Referring to claim 12, Lee discloses that the first video identifiers are first video covers, the second video identifiers are second video covers (see the rejection of claims 2 and 10),
Kiyooka teaches that the first video covers comprise first video serial numbers, the second video covers do not comprise the first video serial numbers, and the second video covers comprise second video serial number, and an association relationship between the plurality of second video serial numbers corresponding to the plurality of videos is consistent with an association relationship between the plurality of first video serial numbers corresponding to the plurality of videos (see Paragraph 0035 for every video that is uploaded and stored a video ID is given when uploading a video, therefore every video placed in different categories are identified with a single video ID upon uploading and storing the videos).
Referring to claim 13, Kiyooka discloses that the second video identifiers are second video covers, the second video covers further comprise a video title and the video title is determined by determining a title of a video that is posted first in the plurality of videos to the video title (see Figures 4 and 13 for the uploaded videos having video titles and displaying the video titles with the video covers).
Referring to claim 14, Kiyooka discloses that in response to a triggering operation for the second video identifier, displaying a video displaying page, wherein the video playing page is used for playing a first video in the plurality of videos (see Paragraphs 0057-0058 and 0062).
Kiyooka also discloses that an interaction control is further displayed on the video displaying page (see Figure 4 for displaying additional category selection options).
Kiyooka also discloses that the interaction control is used for triggering displaying of video information of the video collection (see Figure 4 for the category selection being used to trigger display of different videos in a video collection).
Referring to claim 15, Kiyooka discloses that in response to a triggering operation for the interaction control, displaying video information of the plurality of videos comprised in the video collection, wherein the video information of the first video comprises third prompt information, and the third prompt information is used for prompting that a video played on the video playing page is the first video (see Figure 4 for the various controls/prompts that can be accessed during playing of the first video, which includes the title of the first video that is being played in the video window 400).
Referring to claim 16, Kiyooka discloses that the first video is played on a second page displayed by a first client (see Figure 4 for user interface having multiple pages, wherein the video display window can be interpreted as the second page), and before displaying the second video identifier of the video collection, displaying the second page wherein the second page is used for playing the first video (see Figure 4 for user interface having multiple pages, wherein the video display window can be interpreted as the second page) and displaying the second video identifier jointly corresponding to the plurality of videos comprises that in response to a triggering operation for the second page, displaying the first page, and displaying the second video identifier jointly corresponding to the plurality of videos on the first page (see Figure 4 for jointly displaying a second video identifier on a first page to the right displaying all of the video identifiers available for display in the video display window 400 from the selected category).
Referring to claims 17-18 and 20, see the rejection of claims 1-2 and 5-6.
Referring to claim 25, see the rejection of claim 1.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JASON P SALCE whose telephone number is (571)272-7301. The examiner can normally be reached 5:30am-10:00pm M-F (Flex Schedule).
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Nathan Flynn can be reached at 571-272-1915. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Jason Salce/Senior Examiner, Art Unit 2421
Jason P Salce
Senior Examiner
Art Unit 2421
September 28, 2026
