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
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 3-5, and 8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Moon et al (hereinafter Moon) US 20090158309.
Referring to claim 1, Moon discloses a system, comprising:
one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media configured to store instructions and one or more processors communicatively coupled to the one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media (see Paragraphs 0054 and 0056-0069 for disclosing computer algorithms are processed/computed to execute the instructions of the computer algorithm and therefore a processor and memory must be present to carry these computer algorithm functions out) and configured to, in response to execution of the instructions, cause the system to perform operations, the operations comprising:
obtain first data associated with a person location in a venue, the first data being a subset of a collection of person location data (see Paragraphs 0058 and 0069 for disclosing obtaining crowd occupancy data of the venue/site, each location’s data point being a subset of the plurality/collection of different locations (e.g., different floors of the site) crowds will gather);
obtain second data associated with one or more displays in the venue, the second data being a subset of a collection of display data (see Paragraphs 0057-0058 and 0086 for disclosing obtaining data/parameters regarding the display(s) in the site, wherein there are multiple display parameter considered);
determine a first weight corresponding to the first data relative to the collection of person location data and a second weight corresponding to the second data relative to the collection of display data (see Paragraphs 0057 and 0086-0088 for disclosing using a site-viewership analysis, the data regarding the location/site where the crowd gathers and the data regarding the display parameters are weighted (e.g., based on most amount of viewers/people in a given location and display parameters including position, orientation, size, brightness, and content are all affect the viewing behavior) among other factors such as the crowd and audience when designing the media audience measurement solution); and
based on the determination of the first weight and the second weight, obtain an estimate of viewership data using the first data and the second data (see Paragraphs 0085 and 0088 for disclosing based on the analysis/weight regarding the four major system parameters (site, display, crowd, and audience), the site-viewership analysis stage determines the viewership sampling method, wherein an estimate of viewership data is obtained that is influenced by the site and display parameters).
Referring to claim 3, Moon discloses the viewership data is associated with viewing an event in a non-residential location (see Figs. 2, 6, 8, and 10 and Paragraph 0086 for disclosing the media measurement system is deployed in a public (i.e., nonresidential) space).
Referring to claim 4, Moon discloses the first data comprises one or more of a person location relative to the venue and an amount of time a person is located at the venue (see Fig 8 and Paragraphs 0087, 0094, and 0101 for disclosing the site/location data includes temporal information and duration information in regards to the people in the audience and their time considered to be part of the viewership).
Referring to claim 5, Moon discloses the second data comprises an event minute display count associated with a particular event displayed in the venue (see Paragraphs 0101 for disclosing processing the video input images from a viewership measurement sensor, taking live video input images, the face detection step finds people's faces in the video, and the face tracking step tracks individual faces by keeping the identities, and estimates the 3-dimensional facial pose, time-stamps the appearance and disappearance, and collects the data, thereby effectively collecting the time and duration of the viewership).
Referring to claim 8, Moon discloses obtaining the estimate of the viewership data comprises applying the first weight to the collection of person location data to obtain first weighted data, applying the second weight to the collection of display data to obtain second weighted data, and aggregating the first weighted data and the second weighted data to obtain the estimate of the viewership data (see Abstract and Paragraphs 0057 and 0086-0088 for disclosing the site-viewership analysis wherein the influence/weight of the site/location parameters and the influence/weight of the display parameters to the audience behavior , and the influence of the measurement algorithm to the viewership measurement data, have been derived. As products of the analysis, the notions of occupancy, visibility, and the viewership relevancy have been identified; they are crucial elements extracted from the set of the system parameters that affect the audience behavior and the viewership measurement process. The geometry of site 105 constrains the degree of occupancy at each floor position, so that the people in the general public form the spatial distribution of the crowd. The display (including its position, size, and the direction) determines the visibility at each floor position; the visibility affects how the crowd converts into an audience. In a typical scenario, the people in the crowd convert into the audience more frequently when the display is more easily visible. The viewership relevancy captures the comprehensive effect of the site to the audience behavior, and of the viewership measurement algorithm to the viewership measurement data).
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 2, 9-17, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Moon et al (hereinafter Moon) US 20090158309 in view of Tidwell et al (hereinafter Tidwell) US 20100131969.
Referring to claim 2, Moon discloses the limitations as seen in the rejection of claim 1.
Moon is unclear as to obtaining a request for the viewership data from a requesting entity and transmitting the estimate of the viewership data to the requesting entity.
Tidwell discloses obtaining a request for the viewership data from a requesting entity and transmitting the estimate of the viewership data to the requesting entity (see Paragraph 0242 for disclosing collecting data regarding audience viewership for subsequent analysis and sending audience research information to a destination of a requesting entity).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the transmission of collected audience data of Tidwell with the system of Moon in order to fulfill the need for improved methods and apparatus which more accurately, securely, and uniformly generate and exchange audience measurement data (see Tidwell, Paragraph 0028).
Claim 9 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 2, further noting it is the method performed by the system of claim 2.
Claim 10 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 3.
Claim 11 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 4.
Referring to claims 12 and 13, Moon discloses the first data is supplemented with additional first data to improve an accuracy of the first data, wherein the additional first data comprises a personal identifier scan associated with the person (see Paragraph 0101).
Claim 14 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 5.
Referring to claim 15, Tidwell discloses a tracked TV is configured to self-determine and track the particular event displayed thereon (see Abstract and Paragraphs 0127 and 0172 for disclosing data is collected regarding events occurring at CPE (i.e., a “tracked” TV), wherein the data may contain information regarding the channel, program description, and date/time the program is displayed).
Referring to claims 16 and 17, Moon discloses the second data is supplemented with additional second data to improve an accuracy of the second data, wherein the additional second data comprises a floor plan of the venue (see Paragraphs 0087-0088 for disclosing the site parameters include the size (location size and direction) of pathways/obstacles of the site as well as locations of other attractions that could draw attention away from the display, causing these less dependable locations to be assigned lower viewership relevancy).
Claim 20 is rejected on the same grounds as claim 8.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6-7 and 18-19 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
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Wolinsky et al US 20090204479 for disclosing electronic displays interspersed among product displays and arranged to present a shopper with each advertisement among multiple repeating advertisements a predicted number of multiple times as a function of shopper metrics and a configuration of the electronic display network during a shopping trip in a retail store.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NICHOLAS T CORBO whose telephone number is (571)270-5675. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday - Friday 11am-7pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Benjamin Bruckart can be reached at 571-272-3982. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/NICHOLAS T CORBO/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2424
06/24/2026
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