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 Objections
Claims 7 and 17 are objected to because of the following informalities: they recite “the value represented by a part . . .,” and the antecedent basis is unclear. For the purposes of art rejections, the Examiner is reading the limitation as “a value represented by a part . . ..” Appropriate correction is required.
Claims 5 and 15 are objected to because of the following informalities: they recite “a predetermined value by the user of the electronic device,” and limitation should be clarified. For the purposes of art rejections, the Examiner is reading the limitation as “a predetermined value set by the user of the electronic device.” Appropriate correction is required.
Applicant’s specification states, “For example, the inappropriate expression may include abusive language, profanity, sexually offensive language, or expressions corresponding to a preset value by the user.” Spec. ¶ 80.
Applicant’s specification states, “The changed value may be a value preset in relation to the virtual environment or set by the user of the electronic device.” Spec. ¶ 81.
Claim 10 is objected to because of the following informalities: they recite “identify a region being capable of identifying in the virtual environment corresponding to a direction viewed by a user of the electronic device,” and its meaning appears unclear. How is a region capable of identifying? The region is not a machine or person. For the purposes of art rejections, the Examiner is reading the limitation as “identify a region being capable of being [[identifying]] identified in the virtual environment corresponding to a direction viewed by a user of the electronic device” Appropriate correction is required.
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 (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.
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 1-6, 8-9, 11-16, and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Roche et al. (US 10,586,369 B1) in view of Yoon et al. (“Design of Metaverse for Two-Way Video Conferencing Platform Based on Virtual Reality”) and KR-Unknown (KR 20150017131 A).
Regarding Claim 1, Roche teaches An electronic device comprising: a display; memory comprising one or more storage media storing instruction; and at least one processor comprising processing circuitry, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively, cause the electronic device to (Roche Fig. 12-14; col. 8 lines 4-38; col. 38 lines 6-40):
display, via the display, a virtual environment (Roche Title “Using Dialog And Contextual Data Of A Virtual Reality Environment To Create Metadata To Drive Avatar Animation”) including a visual object (Roche Fig. 11A 1110, 1112 “avatar”) (
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obtain voice information (Roche Fig. 11A 1102 “text” that directs dialogue; Title “Dialog And Contextual Data”) with respect to the visual object (Roche Fig. 11A 1108, 1110, 1112: “avatar”)
identify at least one word from the voice information (“In some examples, the text may be translated from a first language to a second language prior to or after processing by the text-to-speech processor 104E.” Roche col. 12 lines 53-56. The words in the text are identified and recognized to be translated.),
identify that a first word from among the at least one word corresponds to a reference value ( “For example, the animation manager 204 may utilize the language service 104J to translate text into a language specified by the user 120, or some other authorized user.” Roche col. 21 lines 60-66. “In some examples, the text may be translated from a first language to a second language prior to or after processing by the text-to-speech processor.” Roche col. 22 lines 15-17.
The reference value is mapped to a setting value that specifies a specific language service setting for translation from a first language to a second language.
A word from the input text is identified as in the first language, or identified as not in the second language, to be translated into the second language.),
based on the first word corresponding to the reference value, change the first word to a second word (“In some examples, the text may be translated from a first language to a second language prior to or after processing by the text-to-speech processor 104E.” Roche col. 12 lines 53-56. The first word, e.g., “policeman,” is changed to the second word, e.g., “el policía,” after translation when, for example, a user specifies the translation setting from English to Spanish.), and
display, via the display, an animation (Roche Fig. 11A 1114) representing uttering the at least one word including the second word through the visual object in the virtual environment (
Roche teaches speech animation, see Roche Figs. 6B and 8B, of a visual object, mapped to “avatar,” in a virtual environment based on text/dialogue input, stating “At 1114, the animation service 104A may output the audio data synchronized with output of combined animation sequences of the avatar that include the one or more first animation sequences and the one or more second animation sequences. . . . The output may include a virtual environment that includes at least one object in the virtual environment along with the avatar.” Roche col. 35 lines 3-17.
Roche teaches including the second word, e.g., “el policía,” in a translated script to be animated, stating “As discussed above, the animation service 104A can be configured to provide animation of one or more avatars. The animation manager 204A can communicate with different services 104 to receive input text to be spoken by an avatar. For example, the animation manager 204 may utilize the language service 104J to translate text into a language specified by the user 120, or some other authorized user.” Roche col. 21 lines 60-66.).
Roche does not explicitly disclose; however, Yoon teaches obtain voice information with respect to an avatar while the virtual environment is displayed (
“‘Spatial’ is a platform for helping team members interact by supporting meetings as avatars in virtual spaces [8]. Spatial users can share traditional document files in a virtual space, share their computer screens with colleagues, and talk about work.” Yoon p. 190 left col.
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“Design of Metaverse for Two-Way Video Conferencing Platform Based on Virtual Reality” Yoon Title.
Here, we have real-time video conferencing in a virtual environment. Therefore, while the virtual environment is displayed, a participant of the video conferencing provides voice information for a dialogue to animate an avatar that represents the participant for the other participant to see and hear.
The voice information could be the participant’s voice input or the extracted natural language based on the voice input.
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The teaching closely matches Roche’s teaching about translation.
After Roche is combined with Yoon, the voice information could be mapped to Yoon’s voice input or Roche’s text input.
).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Yoon’s virtual conferencing with Roche. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make video conferencing more entertaining and/or engaging. “As non-face-to-face activities have become commonplace, online video conferencing platforms have become popular collaboration tools. However, existing video conferencing platforms have a structure in which one side unilaterally exchanges information, potentially increase the fatigue of meeting participants. In this study, we designed a video conferencing platform utilizing virtual reality (VR), a metaverse technology, to enable various interactions.” Yoon Abstract.
Roche in view of Yoon teaches all limitations of Claim 1. However, with respect to change the first word to a second word, the mapping is based on Roche in view of Yoon’s teaching of translation from one language into another. The mapping does not teach applicant’s invention as disclosed. The specification states:
[0064] According to an embodiment, in the conversion operation 225, the processor may change a value represented by a part of a word. For example, the processor may identify that the value represented by the identified word “Fuxx” 226 corresponds to the reference value. Accordingly, the processor may change the value of “F” 227 of “Fuxx” 226 to the value of “B” 229″ and change “Fuxx” 226 to “Buck” 228. In such a case, changing the value of “F” 227″ to the value of “B” 229 may be changed based on an algorithm or a statistical model (e.g., a decision tree or a deep learning model) preset in the processor.
[0065] According to an embodiment, in the generation operation 230, the processor may generate an animation of the visual object based on the at least one word changed in the conversion operation 225. The processor may generate an animation representing that the at least one word is uttered. For example, the processor may generate an animation representing that at least one word including “Buck” 228 is uttered.
For the purposes of compact prosecution, the Examiner introduces next reference to address the invention as disclosed.
KR-Unknown teaches change the first word to a second word (“For example, if the profanity word is extracted by the word dictionary unit 406, the caption conversion unit 408 can generate the second caption data by replacing the profanity with another word, a special character, an image, or the like.” KR-Unknown pp 15-16.
After Roche in view of Yoon is combined with KR-Unknown, the translation context and profanity screening could be both applied. Roche Title “Using Dialog And Contextual Data Of A Virtual Reality Environment To Create Metadata To Drive Avatar Animation.” KR-Unknown’s profanity screening is one type of Roche’s contextual data.
After these references are combined, the claimed reference value could include:
a setting value that specifies a specific language service setting for translation from a first language to a second language, and/or
computer values that represent each term from a list of offensive terms that could be replaced.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine KR-Unknown’s removing offensive language with Roche in view of Yoon. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to protect minors and/or maintain civilities during a virtual conversation.
Regarding Claim 2, Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown teaches The electronic device of claim 1,
wherein the voice information includes at least one of first information in which a user of another electronic device different from the electronic device has input with respect to the virtual object in the virtual environment, or second information to be displayed in a server related to a software application displaying the virtual environment (
“Design of Metaverse for Two-Way Video Conferencing Platform Based on Virtual Reality” Yoon Title. ),
wherein the reference value includes a predetermined value by a user of the electronic device and/or a value representing an expression unavailable in the virtual environment (
“For example, if the profanity word is extracted by the word dictionary unit 406, the caption conversion unit 408 can generate the second caption data by replacing the profanity with another word, a special character, an image, or the like.” KR-Unknown pp 15-16.
expression unavailable [Wingdings font/0xE0] profanity removed.),
wherein processor is configured so that the virtual environment is displayed based on information received from the server (Roche Fig. 13; col. 36 line 47 – col. 37 line 46), wherein the visual object represents an avatar corresponding to the user of the another electronic device (
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It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Yoon’s virtual conferencing with Roche. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make video conferencing more entertaining and/or engaging.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine KR-Unknown’s removing offensive language with Roche in view of Yoon. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to protect minors and/or maintain civilities during a virtual conversation.
Regarding Claim 3, Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown teaches The electronic device of claim 2, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively, cause the electronic device to:
receive, from the another electronic device (e.g., another virtual conferencing participant’s virtual/augmented reality device ), a result (after translation and/or profanity removal) of the first information (voice or text input by the another participant), wherein the result (the translated and/or cleaned version of the another participant’s input) includes information (replacement word/character, image, or the like: “replacing the profanity with another word, a special character, an image, or the like.” KR-Unknown p. .) for representing whether the first word (profanity) of the at least one word identified from the first information corresponds to the reference value (a computer value that represents a profane word) representing an expression unavailable (profanity to be removed, thereby unavailable) in the virtual environment (
“For example, if the profanity word is extracted by the word dictionary unit 406, the caption conversion unit 408 can generate the second caption data by replacing the profanity with another word, a special character, an image, or the like.” KR-Unknown pp 15-16.
expression unavailable [Wingdings font/0xE0] profanity removed.
“Design of Metaverse for Two-Way Video Conferencing Platform Based on Virtual Reality” Yoon Title.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Yoon’s virtual conferencing with Roche. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make video conferencing more entertaining and/or engaging.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine KR-Unknown’s removing offensive language with Roche in view of Yoon. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to protect minors and/or maintain civilities during a virtual conversation.
Regarding Claim 4, Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown teaches The electronic device of claim 3, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively, cause the electronic device to:
identify information representing a relationship (e.g., age of a participant of a conversation; which represents a responsibility relationship between two users) between the user (e.g., first participant of a virtual conference) of the electronic device and the user (e.g., second participant of the virtual conference) of the another electronic device corresponding to the visual object (avatar that represents the user of the another electronic device) in the virtual environment (shared virtual space),
in case that the information representing the relationship (age) is less than another reference value (age threshold/limit), identify a change level (for profanity filtering) of the animation as a first level,
in case that the information representing the relationship (age) is greater than or equal to the another reference value (the age threshold/limit), identify the change level (changed level of profanity filtering) of the animation as a second level lower than the first level (less filtering when older), display the animation with the identified change level through the visual object (
“In the present embodiment, the mobile terminal 100 restricts viewing of content data according to the age of the user. The video data 1010 of the content data shown in FIG. 10 is a movie. In addition, a part of the first caption data includes words (e.g., profanity, hermit, etc.) not suitable for a minor. In the process of converting the first caption data into the second caption data, the caption conversion unit 408 of the control unit 110 may replace the second caption data with another word, And the like. Accordingly, the second caption data can be generated as a form in which a word inappropriate for a minor is replaced with another word, a special character, an image, or the like by the caption conversion unit 408.” KR-Unknown pp 15-16.
A person’s age represents a relationship or required relationship between two people. The younger one person is, the more responsibility the other person has towards the young person.
In addition, the Examiner takes an Official Notice that it would have been well-known in the art that content moderations are set for multiple age groups for a minor. The benefits of combining this well-known knowledge would have been that a young person would not suffer from corrupting influences.
Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown teaches a virtual conference/meeting/conversation between at least two people. “Design of Metaverse for Two-Way Video Conferencing Platform Based on Virtual Reality” Yoon Title.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Yoon’s virtual conferencing with Roche. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make video conferencing more entertaining and/or engaging.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine KR-Unknown’s removing offensive language with Roche in view of Yoon. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to protect minors and/or maintain civilities during a virtual conversation.
Regarding Claim 5, Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown teaches The electronic device of claim 2, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively, cause the electronic device to:
identify whether the first word (e.g., “policeman”) of the at least one word identified from the first information corresponds to a predetermined value (e.g., setting to translate into Spanish) by the user of the electronic device (
“For example, the animation manager 204 may utilize the language service 104J to translate text into a language specified by the user 120, or some other authorized user.” Roche col. 21 lines 60-66. “In some examples, the text may be translated from a first language to a second language prior to or after processing by the text-to-speech processor.” Roche col. 22 lines 15-17.).
Regarding Claim 6, Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown teaches The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively, cause the electronic device to:
perform a processing of input information including the voice information, wherein the processing includes identifying the at least one word by obtaining at least one phoneme for the voice information, wherein the input information includes text information, the voice information, and video information (
Roche’s 6B teaches identifying word (644) by obtaining phonemes through analyses of phonic symbols (646).
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“The words may be analyzed by the ASR service 104F to create the speech markup data that includes the phonic symbols 646. The specific phonic symbols 654 may be associated with animation sequences of facial features and/or mouth movements 656. ”
Further, Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown teaches following input information:
Voice information: Yoon teaches that the voice information could be the participant’s voice input or the extracted natural language based on the voice input.
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Text information: After Roche is combined with Yoon, the voice information could be mapped to Yoon’s voice input or Roche’s text input or text information. Roche 7A, 8A, 9A, 11A-B.
Video information:
“The animation service may be designed to interact with one or more users and/or interact with the virtual environment presented by the VR/AR application. The animation service may generate animations that cause the avatar to interact with objects within a virtual environment, appear to interact with objects in the real world (e.g., look at a person or object identified at a specific location in the real world via image capture from one or more cameras, etc.), or both. In some examples, the animation service may receive input signals that indicate objects and locations (e.g., coordinates) of the objects in the real world.” Roche col. 5 lines 22-38.
“In some examples, the recognition service 104D can be used to identify objects and scenes in an environment represented as graphical data. For example, a camera associated with computing device 102 can capture images of the environment and provide the images to the recognition service 104D for analysis. Is some configurations, the recognition service 104D locates faces within images and analyze face attributes, such as whether or not the face is smiling or the eyes are open.” Roche col. 10 lines 11-24.
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Yoon p. 190 right col. Here, Oculus Quest 2 have cameras to capture continuous images, videos, to monitor user gestures.
).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Yoon’s virtual conferencing with Roche. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make video conferencing more entertaining and/or engaging.
Regarding Claim 8, Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown teaches The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively, cause the electronic device to:
obtain information on a space of the virtual environment by using a software application for displaying the virtual environment, identify the animation based on the information on the space of the virtual environment (
“‘Spatial’ is a platform for helping team members interact by supporting meetings as avatars in virtual spaces [8]. Spatial users can share traditional document files in a virtual space, share their computer screens with colleagues, and talk about work.”
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“Design of Metaverse for Two-Way Video Conferencing Platform Based on Virtual Reality” Yoon Title.
Here, we have real-time video conferencing in a shared virtual environment. Therefore, while the virtual environment is displayed, a participant of the video conferencing provides voice information for a dialogue to animate an avatar that represents the participant for the other participant to see and hear.
When an avatar is animated in a virtual space, the animation/expression of the avatar is constrained by the virtual space.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Yoon’s virtual conferencing with Roche. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make video conferencing more entertaining and/or engaging.
Regarding Claim 9, Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown teaches The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the electronic device further comprises a speaker (Roche Fig. 8B; Yoon:
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, where Oculus Quesst 2 has a speaker), wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively, cause the electronic device to:
output, via the speaker, the at least one word including the first word while displaying the animation through the visual object (
Roche
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“In various examples, different speaker attributes may be selected or employed to create different sound effects, such as a female voice, a male voice, a deep voice, a high pitched voice, and so forth. In addition to the audio data, speech markup data (SMD) may be created from the text by the text-to-speech service 104E and/or the ASR service 104F and stored in the data store 202A.” Roche col. 12 lines 42-49.).
Claims 11-16, and 18-19 are substantially similar to Claims 1-6 and 8-9. The rejection analyses of Claims 1-6 and 8-9 based on Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown are applied to Claims 11-16, and 18-19. In addition, Claims 11 recites, “A method performed by an electronic device . . .” (Roche Fig. 11 A).
Claim 20 is substantially similar to Claim 1. The rejection analyses of Claim 1 based on Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown are applied to Claim 20. In addition, Claims 20 recites, “A non-transitory computer readable storage medium, storing one or more programs including instructions which when executed by a processor of the electronic device cause the electronic device to: . . .” (Roche Fig. 12-14; col. 38 lines 6-40).
Claims 7 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown as applied to Claim 1, in further view of Keyngnaert et al. (US 20200111021 A1).
Regarding Claim 7, Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown teaches The electronic device of claim 1.
Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown does not explicitly disclose; however, Keyngnaert teaches wherein the value represented by a part of the first word includes a consonant or a vowel,
wherein, in case that the part of the first word is a first consonant, portion of the second word corresponding to the part is a second consonant different from the first consonant,
wherein, in case that the part of the first word is a first vowel, portion of the second word corresponding to the part is a second vowel different from the first vowel (
“In some embodiments, the terms 134 generated by the string generator 132 can be input to a string optimizer 160 before being input to the class predictor 140. For example, for terms generated by the string generator 132 that are specific to a particular category or industry, the string optimizer can optimize the terms 134 by generating one or more variants of the terms 134. The string optimizer 160 can replace the terms 134 with one or more variants that reduce a similarity compared to pre-existing names (e.g., registered trademarks). The variants of the terms 134 can be generated by the string optimizer 160 by using one or more of the following approaches: swapping a character within the term/string; swapping consonants and vowels within the term/string; replacing a character with another random character in the term/string; replacing a vowel with another random vowel in the term/string; replacing either a consonant or a vowel with another random consonant or vowel in the term/string; combining both swapping and replacing of characters in the term/string; changing, adding, or dropping a random character in the term/string; and/or swapping and replacing common substrings of a generated term that matches with a similar pre-existing generated name.” Keyngnaert ¶ 55.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Keyngnaert’s swapping of consonants and vowels with Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make the words sound dissimilar. Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown teaches replacing profanity with another word. Keyngnaert teaches that one could achieve the goal by swapping the consonants and vowels of a word. “The string optimizer 160 can replace the terms 134 with one or more variants that reduce a similarity compared to pre-existing names (e.g., registered trademarks).” Keyngnaert ¶ 55.
Claim 17 is substantially similar to Claim 7. The rejection analyses of Claim 7 based on Roche in view of Yoon, KR-Unknown, and Keyngnaert are applied to Claim 17.
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown as applied to Claim 1, in further view of Van Dusen et al. (US 20140075004 A1).
Regarding Claim 10, Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown teaches The electronic device of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively, cause the electronic device to.
Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown does not explicitly disclose; however, Van Dusen teaches identify a region (“focus of camera viewpoint”) being capable of identifying in the virtual environment corresponding to a direction viewed by a user of the electronic device, applying the animation to the visual object in the region ( “View avatars are placed at a position that user is focused upon (essentially the focus of a camera viewpoint that the other user currently is or was viewing) in the visualization, and may be saved.” Van Dusen ¶ 256.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Van Dusen’s virtual object placement with Roche in view of Yoon and KR-Unknown. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make it easier for a user to focus attention on a virtual object. “View avatars are placed at a position that user is focused upon (essentially the focus of a camera viewpoint that the other user currently is or was viewing) in the visualization, and may be saved.” Van Dusen ¶ 256.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Trout et al. (US 20090276459 A1) teaches Claim 4’s features related to claimed “relationship”:
[0214] In one filtering example, as described above, relationship information 514 of social data 506 (shown in FIG. 5) may list "friends" for first user 108a. These friends may be categorized as "relatives," "spouse," "parents," "children," "cousins," "best friends," "boss," "co-workers," and/or any other suitable category. In an embodiment, content modifier module 2902 may be configured to filter content items received in content results signal 2808 based on the relationship between user 108a and user 108b. For example, if second user 108a is a child of first user 108a, content modifier module 2902 may be configured to filter out content items that second user 108a (child) may not want first user 108a (parent) to view, such as content items related to youth-oriented entertainment brands (e.g., rock bands, rap artists, etc.). In the opposite case, if second user 108a is a parent of first user 108a, content modifier module 2902 may be configured to filter out content items that second user 108a (parent) may not want first user 108a (child) to view, such as content items related to more mature themed brands (e.g., movies having violence or other mature themes, alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, etc.). Content modifier module 2902 may be configured to filter content items based on any indicated relationship between first and second user 108a and 108b. In a similar manner, content modifier module 2902 may be configured to sort, recommend, and/or modify content items based on relationships (and/or based on temporal data 504).
Vong et al. (US 20160156983 A1) teaches Claim 4’s features related to claimed “relationship”:
[0061] Furthermore, a current state of relationship between the user of the computing device 102 and other users in the social community may factor into the filtering/curating of content (e.g., close friends and family activity may be selected over more distant social connections, when applicable).
Coleman et al. (US 20100304806 A1) teaching Claim 1’s replacing the first word by the second word:
[0009] . . . In some cases, filtering comprises identifying an entered word as a word to remove prior to presentation to other characters and dynamically updating the word selected for removal with an approved word for presentation to other characters in the virtual world. Filtering the received dialogue also comprises comparing the received dialogue to a list of profane terms associated with one or more specified chat levels and replacing prohibited terms with character strings prior to presenting the dialogue to other characters in the one or more specified chat levels. Each of the plurality of characters presents a graphical element indicating a chat level associated with the player. Filtering the received dialogue comprises comparing the received dialogue to a list of unacceptable terms associated with a particular chat level; dynamically updating one or more attributes of the received dialogue based, at least in part, on the received dialogue matching the acceptable terms so that the particular player can view the unacceptable term in real-time; and automatically presenting filtered text, based on the unacceptable term, to other players as the dialogue is received from particular player. One updated attribute includes a new color for the unacceptable term.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZHENGXI LIU whose telephone number is (571)270-7509. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9 AM - 5 PM.
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, Kee Tung can be reached at 571-272-7794. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ZHENGXI LIU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2611
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