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 communication is in response to the application filed on 05/12/2025 in which Claims 1-13 are presented for examination.
Drawings
The applicant’s drawings submitted on 05/12/2025 are acceptable for examination purposes.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 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.
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 1-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Doganaksoy US 20090083132 A1 in view of Sarafa US 20180241871 A1.
As to claim 1, Doganaksoy teaches a method for preventing content item piracy, the method comprising (Doganaksoy [0021]) [The answers to such questions help the content owner to optimize the utilization of their anti-piracy resources]: distributing a content item to at least a first user with a first interactable element; distributing the content item to at least a second user with a second interactable element (Doganaksoy [0004]) [some digital content that is subject to P2P distribution. The content is typically divided into pieces according to the respective P2P protocol, wherein peers distribute the pieces amongst themselves. The peers share their pieces and try to obtain a complete copy of the content. The content may be initially stored on some origin seed peer that also participates in the P2P sharing and helps distributes the pieces of the content among the peers. The content can be legitimate materials that the content provider wishes to disseminate but can also be material that the content provider does not want distributed, such as new movies, books, music and videos.] [0083] [The digital assets include television, movies and other assets that are subject to P2P distribution], wherein the first interactable element and the second interactable element are different (Doganaksoy Fig. 1, [0045]) [These hashes are placed in a metafile describing the information about the content to be distributed. The content data itself can be any form of digitized data and may consist of one or more files or folders (The files or folders can be different]; receiving a communication as a result of an interaction with the first interactable element or the second interactable element; analyzing attributes of the interaction to determine whether the first interactable element was interacted with by a user other than the at least one first user (Doganaksoy Fig. 3A, [0075-0094]) [The data from the P2P crawlers of suspected unauthorized distributors is collected 310 and contains various fields of data such as the user name, user IP address, P2P protocol…The data is typically cleaned, processed and/or formatted 320 into a form that is more usable for the post processing. The formatting typically attempts to place the data in a usable format that allows for post processing since the data may arrive in various formats and from multiple sources…The processed data is then subject to an overall characterization 330…The results of the processing are reported 350 and can be displayed in a number of ways and implement a number of visualization tools to provide the end user with a clear presentation of the process and results.]; determining that the at least one first user is a potential initiation node for an unauthorized distribution of the content item when the attributes of interaction indicate that the first interactable element was interacted with by an unauthorized user (Doganaksoy Fig. 1, [0009-0010]
[the content owner provides the third party monitoring service with a list of copyrighted digital content that it wishes to protect from improper distribution or otherwise believes may be the subject of infringing activity. This is particularly relevant to motion pictures that are new or recently released.
[0010] The monitoring systems attempt to detect the unauthorized distribution of the digital content over various P2P networks along with some identification of the propagators. To determine whether certain specific digital content is being offered on the P2P network, the monitoring service provider connects to the P2P networks and searches for users who are offering copies of the content, typically using crawlers.]
It is noted that Doganaksoy does not appear explicitly disclose the aspect of “interactable element”.
However, Sarafa discloses [0085-0090] [The ephemeral content interface may include an interactable element 108 allowing new ephemeral content to be generated or selected. Upon selecting the interactable element 108, the application may display an interface for generating or selecting content. For example, selecting the interactable element 108 may cause a camera interface to be displayed, as shown in FIG. 1C in order to generate new photo or video
content. Alternatively or in addition, selecting the interactable element
108 may cause a menu to be displayed, similar to the menu shown in FIG. 1L, for generating new ephemeral content or for selecting existing content to be shared in an ephemeral content message.]
Thus, it would have been recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, that applying the known technique taught by Sarafa to the piracy content prevention system of Doganaksoy would have yield predictable results and resulted in an improved system, namely, a system that would provide communications services, messaging services, and social networking services, allow users to exchange messages with other users (Sarafa Pa. [0002])
As to claim 2, Doganaksoy teaches wherein the first interactable element is specific to the first user (Doganaksoy Fig. 1, [0010]) [To determine whether certain specific digital content is being offered on the P2P network, the monitoring service provider connects to the P2P networks and searches for users who are offering copies of the content, typically using crawlers.]
As to claim 3, the combination of Doganaksoy and Sarafa teaches wherein a personalization service selects the first interactable element to be associated with the content item distributed to the at least the first user, wherein the first interactable element is configured to entice the at least the first user to engage with the first interactable element (Sarafa Pa. [0090]) [the indicator 116-i may represent a number of content items available from or associated with the user identified in conjunction with the thumbnail 114-i. For example, the indicator 116-1 indicates that six ephemeral content items are currently available from the user Jane. Meanwhile, the indicator 116-2 indicates that two ephemeral content items are currently available from the user Joe. The thumbnail 114-i displayed may correspond to a most-recent content item available from the identified user.]
Thus, it would have been recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, that applying the known technique taught by Sarafa to the piracy content prevention system of Doganaksoy would have yield predictable results and resulted in an improved system, namely, a system that would provide communications services, messaging services, and social networking services, allow users to exchange messages with other users (Sarafa Pa. [0002])
As to claim 4, Doganaksoy teaches wherein the second interactable element is specific to the second user (Doganaksoy Fig. 1, [0010]) [To determine whether certain specific digital content is being offered on the P2P network, the monitoring service provider connects to the P2P networks and searches for users who are offering copies of the content, typically using crawlers.]
As to claim 5, the combination of Doganaksoy and Sarafa teaches wherein the first interactable element is a SMS interaction that is designed with a unique phone number or a unique starting code within the message that is specific to the account of the at least the first user (Sarafa [0045]) [a simple message service (SMS)]
Thus, it would have been recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, that applying the known technique taught by Sarafa to the piracy content prevention system of Doganaksoy would have yield predictable results and resulted in an improved system, namely, a system that would provide communications services, messaging services, and social networking services, allow users to exchange messages with other users (Sarafa Pa. [0002])
As to claim 6, the combination of Doganaksoy and Sarafa teaches wherein the first interactable element is a QR Code that is dynamically generated when the content item is requested by the at least the first user, the QR Code includes an embedded identifier that is unique to the at least the first user (Sarafa Fig. 1B) [QR Code is well known in the art, there’s no inventive concept]
Thus, it would have been recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, that applying the known technique taught by Sarafa to the piracy content prevention system of Doganaksoy would have yield predictable results and resulted in an improved system, namely, a system that would provide communications services, messaging services, and social networking services, allow users to exchange messages with other users (Sarafa Pa. [0002])
As to claim 7, the combination of Doganaksoy and Sarafa teaches wherein the first interactable element is a trivia game or poll that is personalized to the at least the first user (Sarafa Pa. [0288]) [coefficients, affinities, or other social-graph information; friends-of-friends connections; pinning or boosting; deals; polls; household income, social clusters or groups; products detected in images or other media; social- or open-graph edge types]
Thus, it would have been recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, that applying the known technique taught by Sarafa to the piracy content prevention system of Doganaksoy would have yield predictable results and resulted in an improved system, namely, a system that would provide communications services, messaging services, and social networking services, allow users to exchange messages with other users (Sarafa Pa. [0002])
As to claim 8, the combination of Doganaksoy and Sarafa teaches wherein the first interactable element is an invitation to provide a voice command, wherein the voice command can be analyzed to compare with a known profile for the at least the first user, whereby a discrepancy compared to the known profile for the at least the first user indicates a possible anomaly in distribution of the content item (Sarafa Pa. [0326]) [The messaging service 900 may comprise one or more voice relay servers 944. The one or more voice relay servers 944 may relay voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) voice communication between messaging clients for the performance of VoIP calls]
Thus, it would have been recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, that applying the known technique taught by Sarafa to the piracy content prevention system of Doganaksoy would have yield predictable results and resulted in an improved system, namely, a system that would provide communications services, messaging services, and social networking services, allow users to exchange messages with other users (Sarafa Pa. [0002])
As to claim 9, the combination of Doganaksoy and Sarafa teaches wherein the first interactable element is a social media link, wherein an interaction with the social media link can be compared with a known account of the at least the first user, whereby a discrepancy compared to the known account for the at least the first user indicates a possible anomaly in distribution of the content item (Sarafa Pa. [0196]) [the ephemeral content message may include a thumbnail and a link to the media in the blob store. Upon activating the link (e.g., by clicking or interacting with a representation of the thumbnail), the receiving client may generate a media request 416 to request the media from the blob store.]
Thus, it would have been recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, that applying the known technique taught by Sarafa to the piracy content prevention system of Doganaksoy would have yield predictable results and resulted in an improved system, namely, a system that would provide communications services, messaging services, and social networking services, allow users to exchange messages with other users (Sarafa Pa. [0002])
As to claim 10, the combination of Doganaksoy and Sarafa teaches further comprising: logging the attributes of the interaction (Sarafa Pa. [0284]) [A privacy setting of a user may determine what information associated with the user may be logged], wherein the attributes of the interaction include a time of interaction (Doganaksoy [0015]) [file and helps identify the content of the file; the time and date at which the file was downloaded from the user; the IP address assigned to each user at the time of activity], an identification of the first interactable element (Sarafa Pa. [0002]), and location data of a computing device used to perform the interaction (Sarafa Pa. [0067]) [different types of full-screen presentations. For example, a location update may bring up an image with map data indicating the tagged location]
Thus, it would have been recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, that applying the known technique taught by Sarafa to the piracy content prevention system of Doganaksoy would have yield predictable results and resulted in an improved system, namely, a system that would provide communications services, messaging services, and social networking services, allow users to exchange messages with other users (Sarafa Pa. [0002])
As to claim 11, claim 11 recites the claimed that contain similar limitations as claims 5-6; therefore, it is rejected under the same rationale.
As to claim 12, the combination of Doganaksoy and Sarafa teaches wherein the logging of the attributes of the interaction is storing the attributes of the interaction on a blockchain (Sarafa Pa. [0074]) [the data may be stored in a secure data storage location that includes safeguards to prevent unauthorized access to the data. The data may be stored in an encrypted format. Identifying information and/or non-identifying information may be purged from the data storage - [blockchain is well known in the art, there’s no inventive concept]
Thus, it would have been recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, that applying the known technique taught by Sarafa to the piracy content prevention system of Doganaksoy would have yield predictable results and resulted in an improved system, namely, a system that would provide communications services, messaging services, and social networking services, allow users to exchange messages with other users (Sarafa Pa. [0002])
As to claim 13, the combination of Doganaksoy and Sarafa teaches wherein at least one of the attributes of the interaction are protected by a zero-knowledge proof, wherein the zero-knowledge proof attests to a characteristic the at least one of the attributes of the interaction without revealing the specific data (Sarafa Pa. [0074])[ [zero-knowledge proof is well known in the art, there’s no inventive concept]
Thus, it would have been recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, that applying the known technique taught by Sarafa to the piracy content prevention system of Doganaksoy would have yield predictable results and resulted in an improved system, namely, a system that would provide communications services, messaging services, and social networking services, allow users to exchange messages with other users (Sarafa Pa. [0002])
Conclusion
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/EVANS DESROSIERS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2491
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